Sun, Sand and Vaginese...

Afternoon, its been a while and we have done so much since the last post that I’m going to have to whizz through a lot of the less interesting stuff to keep it short and not boring; so here goes.

(please note that this is a bit TLDR then there is a summary video at the bottom)

So after Byron Bay we headed to Surfer’s Paradise, didn’t see a single person surfing. Need to rename it I reckon. Surfer’s is like an aging European holiday town – Benidormesque; it was super busy though due to some 7’s tourney that was on so all the hostels and hotels were booked, and we hadn’t. We found a hotel for one night at an extortionate rate. We were tired and fancied making our own food for once so we went to the supermarket and returned with plastic cutlery, delicious precooked roast chicken and noodles to boil in mugs.  We ate it and fell asleep at 9pm watching Castaway like a right couple of LADS.

After that we headed to Noosa, same sort of story; key highlight was walking into the rainforest on mushrooms acquired in Nimbin. Lovely scenery and colourful, however after the sunsets it’s the most terrifying situation I have ever been in, I have never ran so fast away from a frog. Here’s a couple pictures of times when I got spooked by the forest:

Next came Rainbow Beach, nothing much there but the stop off before we headed to Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island – apparently. At Rainbow we had a lengthy safety demo on how not to die as somehow the trip to Fraser Island involves allowing, essentially kids, to drive 4x4s unsupervised (in a convoy) around the beach and through the rainforest.

The next morning we headed off in our Toyota Land Cruisers, I opted to go first as I had expected to be hungover the next day and could therefore say “I’ve driven already, so…”. I was the first to get the car stuck, but it wasn’t my fault, it fell out of gear and dug in, not my fault as I said, ok, not my fault.

We had 4 cars heading off to the island and we had 8 in our car, Jack and I, 3 loud welsh girls who enjoyed singing and playing lots of Ja Rule songs on the iPod dock (ONLY FOR THE ROOLE BABY), a barrister, and a German couple. The German man was head to toe Crocodile Dundee; he had the hat, a knife, green and khaki gear and a digital camera belt clip. His name was Kevin… Kevin Koostner! He didn’t seem to find that funny, or even interesting in any way. One of the Welshies said that that sounded like it should be an actor’s name, her friends pointed out that it already was!

After getting on the island and eating some shit beef sandwiches we swapped drivers, saw a Dingo and headed into the jungle for 2 hours to visit Lake McKenzie.

After that it was time to head to our camp for 2 nights, N’gari or something, can’t remember. It is an ancient Aborigine site I was told, my question was if it’s so ancient they have had loads of time to make it not a shit hole but I guess it would do.

The camp had 2 very strict rules laid out by the natives, and this isn’t a joke:

1. No spitting in fires.

Why? That is just stupid. Prior to hearing that I hadn’t even thought about spitting in a fire but afterwards it was all I wanted to do.

2. No Whistling.

Why? At least it meant that I could a have couple days without anyone mocking me for not being able to whistle, result.

We made dinner as a group which was mash, soggiest salad and steaks, I still can’t identify what cut they were, but probably the gooch, and I under cooked them. All the groups got together after around a campfire, played drinking games and headed over to a makeshift dance floor for general outrageousness.

The next morning was horrendous, woken up at 7am, shit scrambled eggs and the grimiest shower, like prehistoric, apparently the toilets were worse but upon hearing that I made a pact with myself that I just wouldn’t shit for the whole trip. I had decided it was just best to rough it going on, so I didn’t wear footwear again.

So we headed off again, this time to Eli Creek, a spring stream that you can float down and was actually proper refreshing.

We heard there was a 4 month dead whale up the beach so we checked that out, mega disgusting!

Further down the beach was the 70 year wreck of the Maheno, rusty ruined ships are better than lakes imo but that’s just me.

At this stage the German girl took over driving, got it stuck as she tried to drive up a sandy hill in 3^rd like a spazlord and we had to get out and push, unacceptable. When we were getting back in the car she decided to reverse and try to run my foot over. Who starts driving when half the people aren’t in the car and doors are open and someone’s hanging out of it? Germans, that’s who!

And on to the Champagne Pools, this is a rock pool where when water splashes over the rocks in looks like champagne… if you’re Stevie Wonder! Still nice though. Here a girl asked me if she picked up a crab, would it bite her, I said it was unlikely… but be careful of the pincers. Some people.

Finally we drove over to Indian Head, a lookout spot for sea life.

Everybody was on the edge of their rocks, were we going to see them? Were we going the view that one thing everyone wanted to see?

The answer is yes we did!

That is a whale by the way. We also saw turtles, jellyfish and Stingwrays (correct spelling).

Back to camp for more of the same as the night before, only difference was I had drunk all my Vodka on the first night, as in all of it (nearly a liter) so in the day I had to buy Goon. Goon is what poor backpackers drink as booze in Oz is rinse as. It’s a box of wine, taken out of the box so it’s a silvery bag with a tap. It’s basically syrup and equates to £1.50 a bottle in UK. So I though 4 liters would do.

The drinking games began and people started getting nicknames. Jack’s was Jasper because someone thought his name was Jasper. I got a mix of Ben Affleck (just because I have a beard) and Briefcase from Inbetweeners meets Snape from Harry Potter (just because I pronounce my T’s I think).

We also played Chinese Whispers. One round had started with “Playing Chinese Whispers with strangers”; someone must have included the word vagina in there somewhere because the end result was “something something Vaginese” The game is now known as Vaginese.

The next morning was hell. We had a 40 minute hike through the rainforest on sand to get to a lush lake whilst on a Goon hangover, we saw a massive lizard called a Goanna; this is essentially a cucumber dragon. At the lake there was a vast sand mass with steep slope to the water.

The instructions before we left were “do not jump in the water, its shallower than you think”.

As I was running to the water to jump in I encouraged the Canadian girl to do it also. After she fucked her ankle, I and few of the other lads tried our best to avoid helping whilst at the lake. This included looking the other way and allowing the wind to blow our floating bodies further and further away from the action. When it was time to leave and piggyback the girl out of through the rainforest; Jack and I walked ahead at quite a pace, abnormally fast for the weather and terrain until an Irish girl shouted that we were trying to avoid helping at which stage we turned around and said “let us know when you want us to take over, we immediately took over. This took an age and although we kept taking turns; with the sweat she kept sliding off, just awful. (NB. this is not an innuendo)

Anyway I’ve dragged on a bit, we left the island and the last thing I saw was a dolphin jump out of the water and do a flip

A truly awesome trip, great sights, people and jokes along the way. Amazing stuff

Here's the vid.

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