Exploring Noosa and “Share, it's more fun” – Fraser Island trip (19. – 25.06.2006)

On Monday morning we started the inland drive to Maleny that Shawn had adviced us to do. He had drawn the way in our map. We had breakie at the Mary Cairncross Park with a close by lookout point. Afterwards we saw some nice houses and landscapes up in the “mountains” (let¥s better name them hills;-)!).
In the afternoon we arrived in Noosa and did a stroll on the finally sunny beach. We walked a little bit towards and in the National Park and saw some dolphins playing in the water. We found a nice sleeping spot near the Dolphins Hostel where Silke had stayed in 2000. We cooked dinner near the beach and went to bed early as usually.
The next morning we started walking for about two to three hours in the National Park to do some exercise and to spot some wildlife. But except an interesting bird we did not spot anything!
In the evening we watched the movie “Cars” and afterwards the German soccer match in an Irish pub. There were heaps of people in the pub – such a busy bar we had not seen for a long time…
The next day we bought Dirk¥s first sleeping bag in his life and a new lens for Silke¥s camera to shot some close-ups of wildlife – both for our coming trips.
We also booked a tour package: three days and two nights four wheel self-drive on Fraser Island, a dolphin kayaking tour in Rainbow Beach that we got as a freebie, two days and two nights sailing on the British Defender at the Whitsunday Islands, one day white water rafting in the Tully River and a three day 4 WD guided tour in the Kakadu National Park. As some more freebies we got two nights in Cairns, some free drinks and free food at some different locations. We booked all this at Peterpans in Noosa for a quite reasonable price and we are very much looking forward to these trips.
From Noosa we were driving directly to Rainbow Beach. After arriving in our first hostel on the trip so far (we just stayed in the hostel because we got three nights for free with booking all our tours in Noosa) we were sorting our stuff, reading, writing and talking to two crazy German girls in our room. The two German girls left to Fraser Island the next day and they managed to need more than three hours to pack their things for the trip. They were discussing about every single item, also how many underwear they were going to take with them. And because they were talking in German you were not able to not hear them:-(! The next morning they packed for another hour from 6 – 7 am. So we decided to get up, too and enjoy the free pancakes at the hostel.
This day it was raining tons so we nearly stayed in our room the whole day: reading, writing diary, doing stuff on the ibook etc. In the afternoon we had our briefing for Fraser and meet our group (three Canadian girls, a Swiss couple and one guy, a Dutch guy and another German guy). We had some drinks with them in the evening and enjoyed some pasta together.
The next day same start: free pancakes, then checkout from the hostel and packing the jeep for Fraser Island. Around 9.30 am our trip started. First we drove to the Champagne pools at the Northern end of the island. We had a bath in these saltwater pools. Afterwards we took a look at the wildlife in the water at Indian Heads and we spotted some turtles, sharks and dolphins. Silke was only missing a whale;-)!
After walking a lot we found a nice camping spot right on the beach. We built up our camp and started cooking dinner and drinking beer and wine. During doing the dishes in the ocean there was a huge wave coming surprisingly so that we all got soaked and one Canadian girl lost one of her thongs (luckily she found it the next afternoon on the beach when the tide has gone). We had some great laughs and later in the evening it started raining really heavily and we had to hold the tent cover above our heads to stay kind of dry. When this trick did not work anymore we moved inside the jeep where Dirk did a lightshow with a CD so that we could dance there;-)
The problem on the trip was we only had two CDs (Jack Johnson “Curious George” and Donovan Frankenreiter who sounds like the twin brother of Jack Johnson). All other music that we have is in MP3 format and this didn¥t work in the jeep. After listening a thousand times to Jack Johnson¥s “Sharing Song” we got crazy and the sentence “Share, it¥s more fun” started being our running gag of the trip.
The next morning it was still raining but we were lucky because as soon as we left the jeep the rain stopped and the sun was showing up for a while. We had a look at the Maheno shipwreck and then had a run or roll down the steep sand dunes at Lake Wabby. Back at our old camp (we left it at the same spot because the tents were soaked) we prepared dinner and had another funny night.

The last morning we got up really early to try to see the sunrise at the beach but it was too cloudy to see it. Silke tried spotting a whale instead but wasn¥t lucky. We left the camp spot quite early to spend some time at Lake McKenzie. The water there was still beautiful blue and tasted as good as six years ago;-)!
After having a lunch pick-nick on Rainbow Beach, cleaning the jeep and the camping equipment back at the hostel we spent some time with the other people of the group on the beach and at the hostel bar (still making jokes about Jack Johnson).