Hope you all had a great holidays! I have been completely unaffected by the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. I'm currently in Brisbane, which will be my last stop in Queensland, before heading to New South Wales. I leave tomorrow.
Fraser Island was awesome. I met was grouped with some awesome folks at the hostel; in alphabetical order: Anna (Germany), Anne (Germany), Anna (Sweden), Johanna (Sweden), Dwayne (Canada), Grant (New Zealand), Malin (Sweden), and Vicki (UK). There was nine of us in a Toyota Landcruiser. It was a diesel model, with a air intake/exhaust off the right side of the windshield. The back had two rows of benches along the length of the vehicle like a troop transport vehicle. We did some awesome driving along the beach. It was tricky in some places, but our two drivers (I opted to stay in the back) kicked ass and got us through the soft stuff.
Fraser Island is covered with sand and jungles and has lots of small freshwater lakes; these lakes are amazing. The photos will blow you away when I get them uploaded (maybe next week...) We camped on the beach, swam in the surf (with the sharks), chased dingos (Fraser Island is the only place with purebreed wild dingos), ate like royalty, drank loads, and shared two tents. It was funny to go bodysurfing, keeping one eye for any sharks. One time we were driving along the beach, we had to stop to watch a shark feeding frenzy. There were a bunch of seagulls flocked over some baitfish, but in all the splashing, you could definitely see about 10 shark fins flopping around, going crazy. This was about 70 yards off the beach. It was awesome. Later in that day, we were bodysurfing at our campsite, we all jumped out when someone sighted a dorsal fin about 70 yards off. I didn't have my glasses, so I just took their words for it.
The Swedes celebrate Christmas on December 24, so we had two Christmases! We had party whistles and candy and fruit cake. It was great tooting away under the stars on the beach. It was a very cool vibe. Lake Mackenzie has powder white sand that goes into a aquamarine blue freshwater lake. The temperature is perfect. We had great fun swimming, slinging sand balls at each other, and racing and diving into the water. Lake Wabby is next to an enormous mini desert. It is about a mile of sandy desert that comes to a 45 degree slope which leads 70 meters down into the lake. It was fun racing down that hill and jumping into perfect water. And then, racing back up. (ouch, my thighs!) Indian Head was rock outcropping about 100 meters up. You could see giant manta rays and huge sharks patrolling the waters below. No swimming there. We had a blast for the three days and two nights on the island and all gathered back for lots of drinking the third night in Rainbow Beach. Dwayne and Vicki were kind enough to give my hungover-almost-puking-ass a ride to Brisbane the next day. Thanks, guys!
Brisbane has been mostly closed for the past couple of days. I guess Australians have the 25th to the 28th off. It has a nice lagoon at the site of Expo '88 where we hung out for most of the afternoon. Today I went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and played with koalas and kangaroos. It's a cool place where they have a huge grassy pen where lots of kangroos are lazying around or hopping away from annoying kids. They're tame, so you can come right up to them and pet them and feed them. They also have about 130 koalas so you can pet them too. Did you know...koalas sleep about 20 hours a day (which sort of makes them like ferrets). This is because they spend so much of their energy detoxifying the eucalyptus tree leaves they eat.
Tomorrow I am headed to...I don't know where. But I am going to meet up with Fineberg in Sydney for some partying and no sleep during New Years Eve. I don't have any accommodations booked, so we'll see if I can get lucky!
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