HERVEY BAY, AUSTRALIA
To make it to Hervey Bay, the departure point for our trip to Fraser Island tomorrow, Chris and I had to leave Coff's Harbour this morning at 6:30 and drive most of the day through northern New South Wales and into southern Queensland. Unfortunately, this meant bypassing major points of interest along the Gold Coast like Byron Bay, Surfers' Paradise, and Brisbane, but by doing so we were able to just make it to our hostel in time for our 4pm orientation meeting.
The reason we need an orientation? We're doing a "self-guided tour," which means the tour company throws us together with eight other campers, supplies us with a 4WD vehicle (the only kind allowed on the island, as it's all sand), camping gear, and a rough itinerary, and drops us off on the ferry to the island. Three days later, we catch the ferry back to the mainland and they pick us up. Kind of like Survivor, come to think of it.
Our orientation was conducted by a guy named Chris, an almost comically stereotypical Australian (think Crocodile Dundee), who gave us a ton of helpful advice on things we might encounter during our safari: "Right! Dingoes--Dahn't be a deeckhead and fack with a facking dingo! Got it? Right! Spiders--Don't fack with a spider, and it won't kill ya...."
On meeting our fellow campers (see below), it became clear that we might have some problems buying supplies, as five of them are Israelis celebrating the Jewish holiday of Pesach (meaning no pork, no wheat, no alcohol--yikes!). We wisely decided to buy groceries in two groups, and sent our representatives to the store, while Chris and I had dinner at an awful Chinese restaurant on the Esplanade, where the hundreds of lorikeets and bats flapping around and screeching in the trees made for some interesting dinner atmosphere. Afterward, we mingled with our fellow campers at the hostel bar, drank a lot, and even danced on their cheesy little 10-foot-square dance floor.
People met today:
To make it to Hervey Bay, the departure point for our trip to Fraser Island tomorrow, Chris and I had to leave Coff's Harbour this morning at 6:30 and drive most of the day through northern New South Wales and into southern Queensland. Unfortunately, this meant bypassing major points of interest along the Gold Coast like Byron Bay, Surfers' Paradise, and Brisbane, but by doing so we were able to just make it to our hostel in time for our 4pm orientation meeting.
The reason we need an orientation? We're doing a "self-guided tour," which means the tour company throws us together with eight other campers, supplies us with a 4WD vehicle (the only kind allowed on the island, as it's all sand), camping gear, and a rough itinerary, and drops us off on the ferry to the island. Three days later, we catch the ferry back to the mainland and they pick us up. Kind of like Survivor, come to think of it.
Our orientation was conducted by a guy named Chris, an almost comically stereotypical Australian (think Crocodile Dundee), who gave us a ton of helpful advice on things we might encounter during our safari: "Right! Dingoes--Dahn't be a deeckhead and fack with a facking dingo! Got it? Right! Spiders--Don't fack with a spider, and it won't kill ya...."
On meeting our fellow campers (see below), it became clear that we might have some problems buying supplies, as five of them are Israelis celebrating the Jewish holiday of Pesach (meaning no pork, no wheat, no alcohol--yikes!). We wisely decided to buy groceries in two groups, and sent our representatives to the store, while Chris and I had dinner at an awful Chinese restaurant on the Esplanade, where the hundreds of lorikeets and bats flapping around and screeching in the trees made for some interesting dinner atmosphere. Afterward, we mingled with our fellow campers at the hostel bar, drank a lot, and even danced on their cheesy little 10-foot-square dance floor.
People met today:
- Sven and Brett, two Aussie guys from Sydney who met at Uni, where they were both Sports Science majors.
- Camilla, 19-year-old Danish girl, in Australia to learn English and traveling on the Oz Experience bus.
- Yanay, Rinat, Shimrit, Shiran and Gila, four girls and one guy from Israel, just out of the army.
- Laurens, a really fun guy from Holland also traveling on the Oz Experience bus with Camilla, who unfortunately is going on a different tour than us. (We had a good time hanging out in the bar, though.)
posted by John Kuge at 9:14 PM
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