Byron, Noosa, and Fraser Island
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2010
1
44
53
Trip End
Oct 08, 2010
Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia
Monday, July 26, 2010
Byron Bay is a cool, hipster hangout for chilled-out folk, artsy types, and alternative medicine practitioners (what a load of old balls - I'm going to turn out a right miserable 80-year-old one day, aren't I); I spent the day walking around the Cape and lighthouse spotting passing humpback whales drifting past a couple of hundred metres from the beach (one of the perks of being in Oz during the winter), and spent the afternoon people/bird-watching from the bars and the front. I met up with another old friend up on the Gold Coast/Surfers Paradise 1 hour North for the evening, but different to all my other mates, this one is a bone-fide Aussie girl. It does sometimes feel as though the English are invading by stealth, one-by-one. It was great to steal a couple of hours catching up, and felt like a teenager again as we emptied a bottle of wine in the back of the camper parked on the dark residential street. Don't get yer hopes up, mum: no funny business.
First night in the camper was interesting: a borrowed parking spot in residential Gold Coast. Liz was staying at a friends house due to refurbishment of her own, and the friend's family didn't seem to openly object to a random half-bearded traveller staying on their street. WIN. Forgot to take a leak before bed and had to fill up/brim an empty orange juice carton, not completely satiating myself. LOSE. Still, I now have a nice bottle of 'apple-juice lookalike' that I can offer to any Swiss people I don't like. DOUBLE WIN. Sorry for the graphic detail, but this blog/diary is about the experiences I go through, good or bad.
I whizzed up the coast towards the breathtaking Noosa and surrounds, pausing briefly for a nap at a rest stop just off Steve Irwin Way, and pulled into the site as the sun was setting. After cooking up a meal, I wandered down to the lakefront with a cigarette and a bottle of wine to listen to a folk-foursome playing into the last remaining beams of sunlight, with a rag-tag assembly of pelicans, rooks, magpies, herons, seagulls, and parakeets all fighting for space on the sand at my feet. This site really does have some of the best prime-estate in the area.
Dawn came, and guess who slept through his alarm again? However, I somehow managed to squeeze in a 2 hour kayak around the reserve, river, lakes, and waterways before heading back up the coast 3 hours to Hervey Bay where I was to camp for the night before the 2-day Fraser Island tour. Noosa really left an impression on me; hundreds of waterways, canals, rivers and lakes were spanned by spits of land and road bridges, sided by expensive-looking houses all with jetties and boats on the waterfront, and a few villagy towns dotted around. It was a magical 2 hours on the water, and spent most of the time near a reserve island and had the entire place to myself. With the weather being so good and only the odd shower, I was left wondering if it really would be any better in the summer with all the crowds. I think not. There's supposed to be a good 3-day/2-night kayak camping tour you can do here and you end up staying on deserted stretches of mangrove-lined beach, something I'd definitely take on if I had more time and money.
Hervey Bay appears very much to be a retirement village, and the campsite I check into on the seafront is no different. But the location right on the beach is idyllic. A few storms don't dampen the mood and results in one of the most brightest and intense rainbows that I've ever seen. A comfy sleep, then I'm off to Fraser Island in the morning for a 2-day tour. Get chatting to a nice Austrian couple, and the rest of the group seems really nice.
Fraser Island is a monster of a sand dune; almost the entire island is made of nothing but sand. It's a pretty and unique place, and it has a relatively slim ecosystem; most of the vegetation is nitrogen-fixing due to the lack of nutrients in the sandy soil . A matrix of sandy rough-terrain roads and streams criss-cross the landmass in between lush rain-forest. Didn't spot a great deal of wildlife, but saw huge numbers of Southern Humpback whales and a bunch of dolphins up at Indian Head, a few dingos on the shoreline, and a dead rat. There's only a couple of hundred people who live on the island itself, most seemingly in the employ of the tourism industry; there's a tight-knit community feel about the place that is slightly addictive.
Our tour guide for the few days, Dave, is a fountain of knowledge, and recounts for hours interesting little facts, and his fairly unique 'matter-of-fact' philosophy seems to match pretty well with my own. Over the years, some people have questioned my views on morality, society, and view of the world we live in, asking whether it's depressing to think of life as just a load of chemicals with no actual point or reason other than procreation, but I say that in fact it's tremendously liberating and helps to appreciate life and our amazing little world for what it is. And spending a couple of days on Fraser helps reinforce my beliefs. We spend a few hours hopping from forest to beach, from stream to dune, from lake to cliff-top, down roads impassable to regular 2-wheel drive vehicles. And the lodge we stay at is pretty much the only one here and very comfortable; I spend the evening playing pool and chatting with a Scot, Fraiser (coincidentally enough), and two Irish and end up getting horribly but most excellently drunk. Next morning: ouch! It turns out that the two Irish, Anthony and Lee, are from Tipperary, so I tentatively drop a name in the outside chance they might know Damien and Tara who I met on the Inca Trail and through early Bolivia. Turns out they know him, know that he's a PE teacher, and plays a bit of Gaelic Football, so seem to know him pretty well - it's a small old world :)
The last day goes quickly, but the hangover lingers overhead as a painful reminder of the previous nights partying. Should have stayed off the goon. Apparently, the word 'goon' which is used to describe the cheap wine in the silver foil pouches, is an Aboriginal name for 'pillow', as the sacks can be drained and inflated and used as such. We see more sights on the second day, do a lot of swimming in one of the freshwater lakes, all before grabbing dinner and jumping on the ferry back to the mainland. One more sleep until the mammoth drive up to Airly Beach and the Whitsundays.
