Jun 2007

Hey guys

Well when last I wrote I was still in Rainbow Beach, and let me just say I miss it. It was cold, but at least it had a beach.

Right now I'm in Bundaberg at the Workers and Divers Hostel. and I've just finished my first day of farm work. and let me say this, I dont think I could do it for 3 months straight. I'm glad I'm only here for a month!

but first, let me tell you a little story about booking your busses ahead of time.

So I managed to get onto the Oz bus leaving Rainbow beach on very short notice (the day after I got back from Fraser) which suited me just fine. I figured I'd have a day or so in Hervey Bay to find a bus to Bundaberg since Oz bus didnt go there. Well along the ride, my driver happened to mention that the next day's schedule would take him through Bundaberg and 1770! Awesome! thats two of the stops I really wanted to make that werent on the original bus schedule.

I managed to get booked into Koalas (on the beach) for the evening, and I figured I'd be able to book for the next morning heading out to Bundy. Wrong! I got stuck in Hervey bay for 3 days!! Now let me tell you what exactly there is to do in Hervey Bay. ... Zip. The only thing people go there for is to go to Fraser Island. Oh yeah and people go to hervey Bay to die too. its a retirement community >.< and its really spread out. It took me an hour to walk into the CBD which I did every day. I got to see Fantastic 4 though

Anyway, I finally managed to get a bus for early Sunday morning, and with very little fuss, managed to get to my hostel in Bundaberg.

I got picked up in an old beater car, and while I was being checked in, the dude at reception decided to give me the 5th degree on surviving in Bundy.
Rule 1.) Do not leave the hostel alone after dark
Rule 2.) Do not ever go to the pub, any pub, alone or your drinks will be spiked
Rule 3.) If sexual harassment happens on a farm, do not confront the farmers, tell the hostel.
Rule 4.) Do not ever confront a farmer about something, tell the hostel, they will deal with it
Rule 5.) There is no drinking aloud in the hostel except between the hours of 5pm and 7pm on Friday nights, and only if the staff allow it.
Rule 6.) Do not walk off the job at a farm. You will lose your job, your bed, and your deposit.

Sunny happy place huh? its kind of intimidating, but once you get to know some of the other backpackers here its not so bad.

That having been said, yesterday's newspaper ran an article including an interview with 3 of the boys in the hostel here about the recent backpacker beatings. Unfortunately, violence in Bundaberg is a very real thing. Its sad really, since the locals are driving away a large percentage of the work force here, and I know the farmers are angry about it

Well at this point, I've been herer for just over a week, well actually almost 2 weeks now (yeah its taken me a while to update, but i have time now) and I'm working at packing sweet potatoes. Its not too bad, just really really boring.

I've gotten to know some of the people here, and i'll be starting a dive coruse soon with a Swedish girl named Maria. I might also hit a Kareoke club with a bunch of the people from the sweet potato farm this weekend which should be cool.

The hostel here, despite being strict, has decent enough facilities. There is a common area, pool, laundry, internet and the usual. Also, I'm staying in a "unit" which I share with 3 other people. Basically we have our own little house with a full kitchen, living area, bathroom/shower area and cupboards. I'm sharing the unit right now with a French guy and 2 sisters from Hong Kong. It makes for interesting nights some times with the bazar mix of accents around the hostel. I can honestly say this is the first place I've stayed that has a variety of accents other than the usual English and Irish. Theres lots of Scotts here too which is cool

well I wont write too much more yet, i'll wait till I have more to say on the subject of Diving and the Rum tour (hopefully taking that on Sunday) and when I have some new photos to upload.

Oh yeah, and the weather has finally improved! yay! no more rain
Ciao for now!

Hey Guys

Well I'm finally cleanish and warmish and back from my journey to the amazing isle of Fraser. Or uh Fraser Island I guess.

I'll admit I was a little apprehensive about going in the first place, but it was amazing!

So I was originally going to do a guided island tour through some company in Hervey Bay, but the guy at Peter Pan's travel convinced me that a self drive would be more of an adventure and I can definately tell you he was right!

The morning of the 18th we all got up and had the free Pancakes that Dingos hostel offers (they were good but they dont have Syrup here!) and checked out. When you go to the island you cant take all your gear with you, so you have to store it in their "secure 3 day storage shed" ... about the only fitting thing in that title is the word shed. well and I guess 3 day or something. But yeah, its an open shed with shelving in it at the back of the car park. Yay. I didnt leave anything valuable though, so no big deal for me. If someone really wanted to steal my dirty clothing they were welcome to it.

after storing our bags, it was time to see our vehichle ... a wonderfully rusted troopie just like surf camp! I was overwhelmed with a sudden pang of longing for our old troopie, or maybe it was just my pancakes threatening to come back up at the thought of 4x4ing on a remote island in that beast with no mechanic available ... who knows?

Anyway, we sorted our gear, checked the handbrake, and did an inspection of the car, making notes of all the dents, rust spots, and broken things on the car. We ended up circling almost the entire diagram of the car on our sheet, it was just that perty. Then we loaded up and headed off down highway towards our barge point.

I'll take this moment to mention a bit about the Fraser crew I was with. There were 10 of us in total; 2 lovely Irish girls, Emma & Helena, 2 English girls, Izzy & Emma, 2 english boys, George & Andy, Ricky who was Irish I think ... Martin from Austria (yes he sounded like Arnie only ... more geeky) and David the most awesome Korean I'll ever meet.

David decided to take the first driving shift, and I'm currently struggling with words on how to describe what it was like being a passenger in his car. hmm... well lets put it this way, he didnt understand much english, so when he was given the 10 second crash course on soft sand 4x4ing he probably only understoon 1 word in maybe 10. It was hilarious! He just powered down the highway, but he got us to the barge landing safely, and even off the barge and onto the island! Now, when you drive these troopies you are told not to go over 60k an hour because they are too top heavy and you just dont know what the beach ahead of you is going to be like. Fair enough, we were all cool with it, but not David. Nope I think he hit 80 as soon as the barge let us off. He did stop and pull to the side of the beach for a minute, and we thought maybe he was waiting for the other groups from the hostel to catch up to us. One group did pull up along side us, most likely to as us where we were going first, but unfortunately, I'll never know what he wanted. David just turned to him and grinned, having figured something out with the gear shift and said "No break, 2nd gear, its gooood!" and then we shot off like a bullet from a gun! After much loud yelling and white knuckled laughing, we got him straightened out on how to drive on the beach. It wasnt easy! But we made it up to Lake Mackenzie safely (phew!)

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a cold and overcast day on Fraser for day 1, so when we got to the Lake, no one really wanted to go swimming. I did go for a quick dip, but regretted it immediately. The water was beautiful, but freezing! On the plus side, I felt much warmer when I got out of the water. We were given safe driving times, and we wanted to make it to a camp site before high tide hit, so we didnt stay too long at the lake. We grabbed some food (bread, meat, cheese and butter yum!) and then loaded up again with a new driver (thank god) and headed back to the beach to find the Maheno Ship Wreck. We took a wrong turn somewhere on our way back to the beach though, and ended up taking about 45 minutes in the bush, lost as could be.

The Ship Wreck was pretty nifty though. The colors on my photos arent very good, jsut because the sun was setting and it was really overcast, but it was pretty we got a few group shots, got some people's running shoes soaked by the incomming tide, and we may or may not have illegally stood on parts of the wreck ... then it was off to pitch our camp site!

We picked a site nice and close to the ship wreck so that the next day we could get more photos, and it wouldnt take us very long to get up to the Northern end of the island to Indian Head and the Champagne pools. Let me just describe our camp site for you. It was a small alcove in the trees behind the dunes. No fires are allowed on Fraser, and because we were doing a self drive, there were no actual camp sites with facilities available to us unless we wanted to pay. So instead we pitched in the camping "areas" right on the beach. It was awesome! You could clearly hear the surf from our site. We had to set up camp early, about 4pm at the latest because the sun set so soon, so it was only about 3:30 when we had all our tents up. We were happily starting in on our beer when David decided to give us an into to Korean rules dodgeball on the beach It was basically the same as regular dodgeball (in the movie) but ... with less english. It was pretty fun except for the one time the ball almost went into the ocean, but we managed to grab it before the tide did, so all was well.

Speaking of the sea, I'll mention right now that we were warned that under no circumstances were we to go into the ocean around Fraser Island. Strong Currents, Jelly fish, and tons of sharks were all pretty good deterents for me, so I needed no second warnings.

We were making dinner when another group from our hostel pulled up and decided to camp with us. It was nice to have a large group to party with, since it was a cold night. It was one of the girl's birthdays, so they pulled out party hats and sparklers and we had a big boozy party including drinking games like Ring of Fire, and a whole lot of goon. We were warned earlier by rangers that girls were not to go bush toileting alone, and let me tell you, there is no quicker way to get to know people than by having to pee in the bushes and look for dingos while drunk. We were all pretty sauced, and sparing you the worst of the details, we had one girl pass out on the beach, had to drag one skinny dipping girl out of the surf, (note the warning about the sea above) had a full scale wrestling match in our camp, a dance party on the roof of the troopie and much much more. It was a fun night. The next morning was even more fun!

We had to be up by sunrise to start striking out camp and packing up to get to the point before HIgh tide hit. I have no idea how, but everyone managed to get up and packed by 8am. We had a quick breakfast of fried eggs and then we loaded up and booted it up the beach as the tide was coming close behind us.

We finally managed to get parked in what we assumed (rightly) was the Indian Heads parking area. Then we started the climb to the single most spectacular view I've seen in Australia so far. On the top of the heads all you can see is gorgeous beach and ocean. While we were climbing we saw a whale slapping its tail in the distance, which was amazingly cool We sat for a while on the top of the heads taking photos, and a couple of the guys decided to test their climbing skills (Helena and I couldnt watch them) I really wanted to see a shark while we were up there, but alas I had to settle for a few Manta Rays and what may have been a turtle. Having had our fill of the view we headed back down for the long beach walk to the Champagne pools. It was about a half an hour over soft sand, but it was pretty all the same. Once we finally got to the pools, we certainly werent disappointed. The tide was going out, so the pools werent very full, but all the same they were pretty!. The pools are basically a bunch of rocks that make something of a natural swimming pool where the constant waves fill them with warm salt water continuously. A couple of the guys decided to go swimming, but considering the warnings posted around and the size of some of the wave breaks, I settled on wading in the water instead.

I was snoozing on the beach with some of the girls when we heard people yelling about something, so I jumped up to discover there was a huge humpback whale breaching no more than 200meters out! It was a truly amazing site. I dont think i've ever seen Whales in the wild before Fraser, but it was very humbling. This whale kept jumping out of the water for about 10 - 15 mins. Unfortunately my camera was not fast enough to catch any good pictures, but I know a couple of the guys got some good ones, so I'll have to steal a couple. By this time the pools were getting very very crowded, and we still had to find a new camp site, so we said our farewells to the pools and started the long walk back to our troopie.

We decided to camp nearer to the southern part of the island for night 2 mostly because we wanted more time at the lakes and less time driving on our last day. We found a pretty good, sheltered site and unloaded our tents. We sent half the group to get more ice and some soft drinks while the rest of us set up the camp. While we were setting up tents we noticed some cans laying a little ways back from where we were setting up. not thinking much of it, we just cleaned them up thinking the last group here just didnt take care of the Island. We noticed not long after that they last group had actually burried the cans, and dingos had dug them up. Great, turns out we've just finished setting up in Dingo central. The area we were in was known for its Dingo population, as the kind ranger who pulled up shortly after we were set up told us. He reinforced the rules about keeping food stored and making sure no one left camp alone, then went on his merry way. Nice guy, not so nice news. Oh well, we were big bad backpackers. We'd be fine We started dinner (mm steak and potatoes) when the rest of the group got back, and that was when the dingos started poking around. It wasnt a big deal at first because we had lots of daylight left, and afterall, there were 10 of us. We finished dinner really quickly since the dingo kept coming back after we chased it off a few times and started throwing all our food containers into the troopie in an attempt to keep the dingos away. They kept coming around all night though, and you can bet that not a single girl went anywhere alone, nor went far. It was also freezing cold so we started our drinking games early. It was a fun night until we ran out of alcohol, and considering how much we had to start with, thats pretty bad. We started off with 2 cases of beer, 2 6packs of shmirnoff, 1 6pack of jim bean, and 8 4litre packs of goon... all gone before 9pm on our second night. Oops! We made it an early night on account of the cold anyway.

The next day didnt give us any break from the cold. it was freezing on the island! We found out when we got back that it was the coldest day in Queensland in 25 yrs! ick. Just our luck. We didnt get out of the car much, but we did go to Lake Wabby (a short walk from the car across some sand dunes and down a small mountain) then we took a "scenic" tour of the wilderness around the lakes. It took us alot longer than we expected and we almost missed our ferry back!

There are many more interesting little stories to relate, but honestly, I've typed this post out twice now, and both times its screwed up and been deleted and I just cant go through it again! Sorry If you really really want you can ask me in email or on msn or something.

in the mean time, more photos for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30270&l=5d1d4&id=618320647
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30761&l=ccb64&id=618320647
and
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30765&id=618320647

there ya go folks ciao for now. I'm off to Hervey bay!

Love
Amy

Hey Guys

Well first I'd like to say I am safe and sound now in Rainbow Beach. Second of all Id like to say, I miss the girls! and Third of all I'd like to say, the beach here is gorgeous!

Now, back to the story.

So when last I typed ... lets see where was I? Oh right. I was in South Bank Brisbane sort of.

Well, since then, I visted the Cultural Museum, Art Gallery, and Museum on the south bank with Claire, and I wandered around the Botanical gardens in Brisbane on my last day there
photos here
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=28280&l=1c7e4&id=618320647

Anyway, after that, I spent the evening with the girls at a Kareoke bar, and we had a blast! We made it an early evening though, as most of us couldnt afford to get drunk, and I had to be up early to catch my bus.

The bus to Noosa was an adventure all its own! it was supposed to pick me up at the YHA in Brisbane (right up the street from where I was staying) at 6:30 am, so in my usual paranoid fashion, I checked out at 6am, and was at the pick up point by about 6:10. I thought I'd just read my book and try not to think about what I was going to do when I got to Noosa. It worked rather well until I realised it was about 7:00am and my bus still hadnt come yet! I called the company and was put on hold while the operator "called the driver" ... who happened to pull up about 10 mins into my hold time. So I got on the bus, no problem. Just a little late. No one's fault really, they give everyone the same pick up time in Brisbane. From there we headed out, grabbed some breakfast at a truck stop, and went for a short "rainforest walk" which turned out to be about a 700m journey up hill to the summit of a small mountain to view the Glass House Mountains. not great, but thoroughly exhausting. ug! Then back on the bus and on the road ... and stop... in the middle of the highway. Our gear box was broken! Off we all piled and tried to push the bus along the shoulder to get it into second gear or something, but to no avail. Lucky for us this nice guy in a Greyhound company bus pulled up and tried to help us out. When he couldnt get it fixed he just offered to take the bus load of us with him to Noosa! it was great upgrade oh yeah.

Once there I got to wait for an hour for my hostel's courtesy bus, but the hostel itself was gorgeous! I stayed at Dolphins on Sunshine beach. Each unit is like its own little appartment. you have 2, 4 man dorms in each unit and you get your own fully equipped kitchen and bathroom plus a sitting room with cable tv! ... too bad the girls in my unit liked Aussie soaps so much ick! I ended up meeting up with Tom, a guy I knew for a short while in Byron and he took me out for dinner and showed me some sights at the park. It was really nice. The next day I slept in and met up with Tom to walk the national park again. We had a nice day, but it was too over cast to go to the beach. Now people might know, the thing I was looking forward to the most in Noosa was surfing. Sadly for me, the waves were kind of harsh so I didnt get to go out. Or rather, they were harsh until today, when I had to leave! I headed to the beach to kill some time till my bus came and the waves were almost perfect! I could have cried. But I didnt, I read on the beach and watched a pod of dolphins instead, then headed in to catch my bus.

Arrived on schedule in Rainbow Beach, and now i dont know anyone here, which is a very very odd feeling. I went to the beach and read and sunned down there for a while today, and got really freaked out because turns out the I placed my towl about 100ft away from a sky dive landing point! It was cool cuz I got to see people landing for most of the afternoon. It got chilly though, so now I'm back at my hostel.

For those wondering, I'm staying at Dingo's backpackers in Rainbow beach until Monday when I head off to fraser Island. I booked my tour with Peter Pans travel in Noosa, and i'm doing a self guided tour with about 10 other people. Basically they give us tents, food, fuel, and a troupie, and set us loose on the island. Oh and we get maps too. It should be fun! I also booked my Whitsunday sailing while I was there, since you get a deal when you book them together. I had wanted to sail on a ship called the Solway Lass, since its a 100 yr old traditional tall ship, but it was too big and expensive, so instead I took the Ron of Argyll, which is a much smaller boat, but still a classic tall ship design. Instead of housing 38 passengers, it only houses 12, so there is more chance for me to get to actually sail the boat and learn about sailing in general. I cant wait!

In the mean time, if you want to know my Itinerary, I'll be on Fraser Island until Wednesday afternoon, then I'll be back here at Dingos for the evening. From there I'm not sure if I'm going to stay a few extra days or if I'll head straight on to Hervey. Looks like i'll be in Bundaberg sooner than I had thought, since there is literally nothing to do in Hervey Bay except go to Fraser Island. I'll write again in a few days to let you guys know how Fraser went in the mean time, I realised that for those not on face book, you wont have seen my photos, so I'll post the links here because I need some way to end this propperly

Miss you guys!
Amy

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27087&l=87462&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27519&l=c3fb9&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23967&l=46cb0&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25531&l=dae73&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20064&l=bc99d&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20060&l=d987c&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=18000&l=d8b87&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15810&l=981b7&id=618320647

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15806&l=7b104&id=618320647

there ya go

Hey guys, so not too much has happened since I last wrote. ... well ok thats a bit of a lie, but not much interesting has happened.

Since last writing, we moved hostels again! This time ... due to bed bugs! Grrrr. Turns out the hostel we were staying at in Surfers had them (my room was fine) and they decided to keep Erin and Erika company here in Brisbane. We thought maybe it was the hostel room that had them, so we got it fumegated, and all our stuff had to go into the wash before they would let us back in the room. Unfortunately, at this point it had been raining for like 16 hrs straight so the dryers were all in use as were the washing machines. I ended up doing my laundry at about 2am just so I could get it done! Sigh, oh well. Sadly, once we got everything done, Erika still kept getting bitten and she found bugs in her bed. so She freaked and decided to switch hostels to City Backpackers (where we are at now)

The plus side : Large kitchen, swimming pool, free internet ....
The down side : expensive bar, 30 man dorm (yup 30!!!), foul cheesy foot smell in the dorm, unfriendly night manager.

Oh well. I had a pretty shitty time moving over here. Sam and Erika jumped ship on cloud 9 on Thursday night, leaving Helen and I there until Friday with Michelle. Not such a big deal, but in the process my toothpaste went missing and my favorite necklace that I brought out here got shattered. I was not happy about that. Mostly because a) I still cant find my toothpaste, and b) no one would own up as to who smashed the necklace.

Being in the 30 man dorm isnt as bad as I thought it would be, except my bed is in the middle of the room ... as in no walls around me at all. Its kind of funny really. But Shawn the boy beneath me is really nice. I've just had to be extra vigilant with my things to make sure that nothing goes missing while I'm staying with that many people.

Aside from that lets see ... Oh I know Brisbane's CBD fairly well now, having travelled it nearly a hundred some odd times already, and I finally got to taking some scenery photos I also met a girl named Claire while I was at Cloud 9, and I helped her find some accomidation in Bundaberg to do some fruit picking, so at least I'll have a friend up there for when I finally arrive. That will be nice.

Claire is a blast, shes so funny! She's been hanging around with the girls and I since she is all alone here for now. She leaves for Bundy tomorrow though, which is too bad, but I should meet up with her again in July anyway, so no big deal.

Claire, Helen and I went to the Koala sanctuary yesterday. It turned out to be a blast! we were like a bunch of little kids when we got there, running around to see as much as humanly possible in the time that we had. We got there kind of early ... just before noon, and just in time to catch an educational show about Birds of Prey in Australia. We got to see a sea eagle (no not a sea gull) and a wedge tail eagle! Both were fantastic sights as they fly in over a small lake to land on perches. The wedge tail was especially cool since it was a windy day. He Soared and rolled and had a great time in the air before coming in to get his reward. After that we high tailed it to the Koala area to catch another information session there, but the slide projector was broken ... so the lady had to hold a Koala and just chat to us for a half an hour. We got to pet the koala too Except it had only 1 eye ... and it was named Monacle. ... yeah anyway. After that I decided I really really wanted to cuddle one. You can get your photo taken holding a Koala here for $15 and the proceeds support the habitats and trees they need to support the Koalas. there were also options to hold snakes, crocodiles and a bird of prey, but I didnt quite have the funding for those. Anyway, holding a Koala is cool. They are alot softer than I would have thought, and their fur is really dense! The information talk was really neat. And the official word is ... no Koalas do not get stoned / drunk / intoxicated off of Eucalyptus leaves. They are just sleepy. (heard that one before!)

While we were at the sanctuary we also got to hold baby chicks, feed kangaroos, get baahed at by a really loud sheep, almost got pecked by emus, were mesmerized by the Wombat (big and squishy!) and we saw bats, dingoes, kangaroos, joeys, and a some snakes. No Tazmanian Devils though they werent out. I was sad. Then we headed home.

Today I went out with Claire, Sam and Helen to a place called the South Bank. Its a little suburb not far from where we are located. Its right on the river and its got a little man made beach (not too impressive) but the grounds are gorgeous! I got some photos which I'll upload to facebook later. We also visited the markets, bought some badges (buttons) and wandered about. Since its a long weekend though, people start drinking here really really early, and Helen promised to go out with some of her friends from work, so we left before we had a chance to visit the galleries and museums. Claire and I are going to get up early though, and go tomorrow before she has to get on her bus to Bundy. Look for more photos and an update then! For now though, I need to go. I think we are doing dinner soon.

Ciao!
Love Amy

Ps. you may be happy to know for the past 2 days its been freezing here! it finally warmed up today, but it was only about 15 yesterday