Noosa is a small surf town and it is the end point of sunshine coast. We stayed there for a couple of nights, it was a really nice place. Lots of surfers in the water, nice beach and relaxed atmosphere. There is a little national park with walking tracks out by the water. We walked there one evening just before sunset, the sun made the water look golden and the last surfers came up from the water in the sunset. It was a beautiful place.
To do Fraser Island
Noosa was quite touristy, as it tends to be on the coast in Queensland. There were heaps of tourist agencies and we decided to book a tour of Fraiser Island. That would be where we headed next up the coast and the only way for us to access the island was on a tour. We bought a package deal with a self drive tour on Fraiser with 4x4 car for 3 days and a sailing trip for 3 days on the whitsundays.
Although our car was a 4w drive it was pretty old and not high enough, we weren't sure we would make it through the sanddunes.
Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world. It is a huge sand bar. Over time trees have started to grow there and there are a few lakes sourced from natural springs. The dingo lives there and it is one of a few places where they are pure, they haven't mixed with other dogs. The dingo is Australias wild dog, like the wolf in Sweden.
The trip was leaving from Hervey bay on the mainland so we stayed there for 2 nights before heading out.
The selfdrive tour was the cheapest option. What it meant was that we would be a group of people going in two different big pink 4w drive cars. We would drive the cars ourselves, therefore we were divided into groups making sure atleast two people out of 7 in the car could drive. We got a map of the island and an itinerary that we were supposed to follow. The times on the itinerary were important since they made sure we would drive at low tide only. There are no roads on Fraiser island, you drive on the beach and on sand dunes. We had to avoid driving in salt water since it would damage the engine and we had a bond on the car that we in the tour group would have to pay for any damage. The night before we headed out we met the other people in our travel group and the tour operators had a briefing with us.
Fraiser tours are really popular in Australia, when talking to backpackers in Queensland it is alway "have you done Fraser yet?" or "we did Fraser before", both Fraser island and the withsundays are something that you "do" if you're a backpacker there. Unfortunately the thing with fraser tours is that they are famous for being party trips. What you hear is that the tours are full of immature backpackers who just get drunk the entire day. The briefing we had with the tour operator was full of double standards. He would show us pictures of crashed vehicles and tell us stories about killed or injured tourists on Fraser island, in the same sentence he would tell us about how we should remember to stock up with loads of alcohol before taking off since we wouldn't be able to buy it everywhere on the island.
We were lucky to get a really nice group to travel with. We had to plan what food to bring for the 3 days and who that was going to drive. Aaran ended driving our car the whole trip. He liked to drive, it can be fun to drive a 4w drive on sand I suppose, but I felt comfortable not driving. There was one more in our group that had a drivers license but he would rather drink bundaberg and coke.
We had a great time on Fraser. It was one of the best things we did in Australia, according to me. The island is beautiful. It is so simple: sand, sand and more sand, water in the ocean and water in the lakes and blue sky, but it is the perfect combination for natural beauty.
We slept in tents and cooked all food outdoors. We were told by the rangers to pack away all the food in the car so that the dingoes wouldn't come to our camp. We packed it all away but the smell and the water from washing the dishes still attracted some of them to our camp late at night. I had my flip flops lying outside the tent and in the morning one of them was missing, we found it in the bushes where the dingo had dumped it since it wasn't eatable. Two swiss girls in our group slept with the tent door open to get air but the dingoes got very close and they ended up chasing away dingoes from our camp in the middle of the night.
Bundaberg
Aaran's friends Chad and Jackie that we stayed with outside of Brisbane gave us the number to Chad's cousin Ben in Bundaberg. After Fraser we rang him up and stayed with him for a couple of nights. He had some friends from high school visiting so there was full house. As always we were greeted with incredible hospitality and lots of beer. We got a punctured tire on the way there and Aaran had put the spare tyre on in the middle of nowhere and 30 c weather. Ben helped ud to buy a new tyre. Aaran worked for him a day, helping out with his concreting business. Bundaberg was not much to visit, it is a small country town. The countryside around the town is full with cane sugar that they make their famous Bundaberg rum from. We went to see the destillery but didn't go on a tour, rum is not our preferred drink. When going to the supermarket in Bundaberg I was amazed of the unattractiveness of this town's people. ( Quite sure that no one reading this will be offended.)
Next stop was Agnes water and The town of 1770. The town is named after the year that captain Cook first sighted Australia. It is a small and beautiful little beach town. Since it is out on a peninsula we could see the sunset over the mainland from there. The place is also famous for being the last surf beach up the east coast.
Great Keppel Island and driving to MackayWe were interested in going to Lady Musgrave island out the coast there, since it is surronded by the great barrier reef. But it was a bit expensive. We decided to go to Great Keppel Island instead. It is closer to the mainland, costs less to get there, but still has some of its own reef around. To get there we drove to Rockhampton and then to Yeppoon where we stocked up with supplies and took the ferry.
Great Keppel island really was great. It was so less developed than we thought it would be, and much smaller also, it was delightful. There were no cars and only a handfull of hotels on one of the islands beaches. We camped at a hostel right next to the beach for 2 nights. We hiked to the top of island where we had great 360 views. It must had been breeding season for the butterflies because there were thousands of them. They were bright blue quite big and beautiful, flying like crazy on the hill top. We snorkelled there on a secluded beach where we needed to hike over big rocks to get access. We snorkelled twice a day when the tide was low and we were closer to the coralls where all the animals feed. We saw a turtle, a black and white moray eel and many different fishes and stingrays.
I never thought of the islands outside the east coast in Australia, but they are very much worth a visit on a trip up the coast. The water is so nice out there and many times there are some corall reefs and nice beaches.
Back on the mainland we drove from Rockhampton to Mackay. It was a memorable drive. We drove in the afternoon and it was really beautiful, as it is along the coast there. There's just loads of cane sugar fields and the random mountains dressed in green sticking up from the flats like incredible walls. The sunset was incredible as we saw it from the car. But then it got dark and we noticed that there is really nothing along this stretch of road. Just total darkness, no lamps, no houses, nothing, no curves in the road. This must be one of the easiest roads to fall asleep by the wheel. Along the road where heaps of signs warning you that if you would fall asleep you would die. And really bizarr signs saying "are we there yet mom?" and "still far to go kids". We arrived safe in Mackay. The day after was easter. Checking in at the campsite the manager gave us a packet of chocolate eggs, that was what we had for celebration. But we didn't mind.
The Withsundays
We didn't stay any great length of time in Mackay. We were booked in for a Withsunday trip from Airlie beach so that's where we went. Airlie beach was a nice surprise. It was raining a bit when we came there but it was still warm and as soon as the rain cleared the views were beautiful. It is built on the ocean with green hills sloping down around and there are lots of sailboats on the water. We stayed a couple of nights in airlie. There's a lagoon in town, a man made swim area next to the shore, so that's where we hung out.
We went out on the Withsunday trip, a trip on a catamaran sailboat around a group of islands that is a national park. We were out for 2 nights. The weather was not great, it was raining a bit and the sky was grey the first day as we headed to the islands. We had a bit of a party at night, drank "goon"(cheap white wine in a box) and talked. We slept on the boat, just put out mattresses and sleepingbags on the deck. As we woke up in the morning the two man crew had made breakfast that we ate on our way to White haven beach and Turtle bay. The beach is what you see in postcards, it is just a huge sandbar that changes by the water. We had to wear stinger suits, like a thin wetsuit, in the water since it was still stinger season. ( Stingers are dangerous jelly fish that come in by the shore in northern queensland during the summer months, it is very rarely that someone dies from their stings, but it can happen). We didn't notice any stingers there. It was nice to hang out at the beach, mainly in the water, but since the sun was hiding we didn't get to see the colors of blue ocean and white sand as you see in postcards. But you can never expect anything to look like it does in photos from the tour office. Later we went snorkeling at another island. It was great. Not the best, since the sun would had made the colors appear more and made the visibility higher. We saw lots of fish and we saw a turtle feeding on a jelly fish. That was magic. We went snorlkeling again later in the day. That evening the sun appeared just before setting. The crew drove to a place where they knew some sea eagles hung out. They blew a whistle and two eagles circled around the boat. The captain trew some meat up i the air and the eagle came down near the boat and caught it. It was one of those things that is amazing and repulsive at the same time. I really appreciate being close to wildlife but I hate to see the wild animals being tamed. The crew also threw bread in the water and big batfishes cam to eat it at the surface.
In the night we drank more goon and played games. In the morning we headed towards the mainland and stopped and snorkelled on the way.
The islands are all national parks, there's only one resort on one of them and no people live on them. They are very green and hilly.
It was a great trip. Again the group of people on the boat was a really good mixture. We were all between 20 and 30, someone being a bit older than the average (no names mentioned).
Diving on the Yongala shipwreck
Wecontinued up the coast. The next city was Townsville, but a few kilometers south is the town of Ayr. We had heard of the Yongala shipwreck from some of the divers we met in Thailand. It was supposedly a really good dive, top ten in the world or something. When we saw in some broschures that we were going past there we thought that we should take the opportunity. We went out for two dives with a small group, we were seven people diving. No other dive boats went there that day. The weather was good, about 15 m visibility.
The wreck was from 1911, it had capsized in a storm. The boat was totally covered in coralls and had attracted heaps of fishes and animals that now lived there. The boat was at about 25 metres depth.
When arriving at the wreck I was amazed by all the fish I saw. Tiny fish was upside down on the wreck feeding intensly, while enormous Maori wrass were just hanging out at a bit deeper. It was a big feeling swimming slowly through a school of fish almost the same size as myself. There was lots of sea snakes, eagle rays and turtles. All on this very concentrated area of the wreck. Since the dives were deep and in Australia the safety is a priority we had do ascend after about 40minutes. We did two dives. I would like to go down again next time I'm in the area.
Townsville and Magnetic island
We camped at a beautiful waterhole outside of Townsville. Townsville itself was nothing special. It was a bigger countrytown. The whole north of Queensland is farming area. All around Townsville were beef farms and sugare canes, hardly any towns. Having a little chat with the information lady at the tourist office it turns out that there are people that would like to divide Queensland into the south and the north state and have Townsville as the capital of the north. It makes sense to me since the south and the north are very different. The majority of the population live in the south of Queensland, along the coast. While the larger part of the state is farmland in the north.
Anyhow, we didn't stay in Townsville. We went to Magnetic Island. Only an hour of the coast is the Island. It is rather big. People live there year round and there are cars and buses going around. The ferry was ok price for us without the car, so we parked it in Townsville and took the bus on the island. We camped at a hostel near one of the beaches. Magentic Island is really beautiul. It is made up of small mounts with forest and has heaps of little coves with nice sandy beaches. We hiked up to the old fort on top of one of the mounts and got the most spectaular views of the island and the ocean. It was super hot there and we hurried down to go snorkeling. We found a nice snorkeling beach, there was a little corall reef near to the shore. We saw what we first thought was a small leaopard shark but it turned out to be an Epaulette shark. A beautiful little shark. We were really close to it, just a metre over it. I got a bit scared, since I thought it was a baby leopard shark I was scared that maybe the mother would come, but Aaran ensured me it was fine.
They have lots of animals on the island and in the waters aound. We got the tip from some locals to hang out at the beach just nefore sunset and maybe we could get a gimpse of the Dugong as it comes in to feed. We sat and looked over the waters, saw an amazing sunset but no Dugong. They are the sea cow of Australia. But they are endangered like many of Australias animals. It gets stuck in fish nets and disturbed by boats and jetskis.
The hostel where we camped was an animal sanctuary. They had koalas and wombats and some other animals there. At four in the afternoon they fed the rainbow larikees, small parrots. People could pay to have the birds attacking them, that's what it looked like. They are nice looking birds but I prefer to look at them from a short distance. At feeding time there were hundreds of them making loud noise, going totally crazy.
We were on the island for two nights, it was super relaxed. Back on the road we continued north and camped in a national park, at crystal creek. It is amazing how clear and nice the waterholes and creeks are along the coast. Since you can't swim in the ocean due to crocodiles and stingers the waterholes are perfect. Though not all are croc safe, but they always have warning signs.
We visited the highest waterfall in Asutralia, the Wallaman falls. It was a bit of a detour, but definately worth it.
We had heard some good things about Mission beach from other travellers. It was just a few hours drive north. This is the area where the Cassowary lives. They are enormous birds, like the ostrich, with blue face and a brown helmet like thing on the head. Really cool loking. They are another species to add to the endangered list though. As we drove into Mission Beach there were warning signs everywhere for the Cassowary. Really comic looking warning signs with a giant bird bumping into a car. But then we saw it! Right infront of us on the road a young Cassowary crossed and ran into the bushes. We never imagined it would be so easy to see, but then we thought maybe we would see one again, but that was the only one we saw. Mission beach was really small, a strip of thin sandy beach and dense forrest. We camped right on the beach for one night. There was a short but really nice walk we made up a little mountain to a view point, but there was lots of mosquitos.
We got closer and closer to Cairns and that would be our next camp but on the way there we stopped at a few places. The area around Cairns is full of national forrests with waterfalls, creeks and waterholes. We stopped at a nice waterfall called Josephine falls, and at the Babinda boulders. The boulders were really cool.
Cairns
Our main objective arriving in Cairns was to sell the car. We had given ourselves 10 days there before we flew to New Zealand. We had been told that it could be difficult to sell the car in Cairns, but when we started looking around it seemed almost impossible. We hung out in Cairns for a day and printed lots of posters with a picture of the car, the price and all the details. Then we drove around to about 12 hostels and put them up on the notice boards. The boards were already full with other people's leaflets with cars for sale. We also made an ad on gumtree.com since that seems to be the page backpackers use.
We stayed at the campground in town. When we started talking to the people at the camp it seemed like half of them were backpackers ending their road trip and waiting to sell their cars or camper vans. We felt a little bit stressed about the car, but we couldn't do much more than wait for any interested buyers to ring.
We randomly met a couple English guys from our Withsunday trip in a hostel in town. We suggested to go to Port Arthur and Cape tribulation for a couple of days, and they decided to come along. No problem since we had space in the car.
Port Arthur is a small town mainly based on tourism for the great barrier reef and sailing. It was really pretty. We camped in the garden of a nice hostel with a bar where we bought jugs of beers in the evening and played games. We visited Cape tribulation, that is a bit north of port Douglas. It is a wild nature place, beaches and djungle. We swam in some cool creeks. There are supposedly many crocodiles around there, but we saw none.
Back in cairns a few days later we just took it real easy. It was hot and humid. There is no beach in Cairns, but they have a man made lagoon that is good for refreshing dips. Cairns was nice, not so big. Loads of backpackers everywhere though, and loads of travel agencies.
We went out to dive on the barrier reef one day. We did 3 dives. The reef is so big that it is hard to know which boat that is the best, since they take you to different dive spots. The dives we did were really nice, but not the best ones I've made. I'd like to have more money and come in the winter when the weather is a bit better and dive some more. It's really expensive but in Cairns you can get some deals.
Selling the car!
Finally we sold the car. We really only had it for sale for 5 days before we had some people look at it and buy it. It was great! After that we had 5 days in Cairns without worries. We went out a bit and partied since that's what people do in Cairns. But after 10 days we were relieved to get going again. It felt great to get on the plane for new adventures in the cool and not humid New Zealand!
