c-e-d.net:Ced's blog

We should have checked out at 10am but were quite tired and decided to stay another night in order to enjoy peacefully the day in this artistic hippy town which attracted more tourists than I thought, even though most of the inhabitants looked truly hippy, a bit in another dimension. Indeed, at Nimbin's museum it really smelled pot and people were smoking inside the bar. The bar tender forgot our coffees twice (there were just 6 customers) and later on the cloth seller, waiting to get back to his friends outside the store, was very confused and did not know how to give Nozomi's change back. The people were very warm and friendly in this town, it has to be noted. We also went to a candle factory were they explained their process to make non toxic candles – Nozomi bought quite a lot of them. Then, back to the camp site we met few people, spoke with an old painter travelling / camping since 3 years.

Candle factory

That's the spirit

Packed up everything straight after waking up at 7am, left at 7.30am and went to the port to approach the dolphins very near. We took a shower in the public amenities, cleaned the car and hit the road for the glass house, which is a set of lava residues alike mountains. The formation of those mountains peaking in a champaign is due to the total erosion of the volcano leaving the dried lava from its chimney intact because of a different composition. Then we drove to Brisbane to eat in a fine Australian restaurant called Tukka: it was a bit expensive but it was overall very good. We ate mainly emu, kangaroo, possum and many types of berries (tukkas). Then we went back to Ryoko's place. The girls were chatting up to 3am, I was bored and just read, wrote and spoke a bit with Ryoko's house mates.

Glass house moutain

bush tukkas

We woke up at 6.30am and arrived just on time at the appointment at 7.45am. We arrived at Fraser island at 9am. The island is listed as a world heritage because it is totally composed of sand, there is no soil anywhere on the island. Then we went to the central station, in the middle of it, which was the initial village of loggers. Here we had a walk in the rainforest, following the Wanggoolla creek, composed of pure water that we filled in a bottle. Then we went to the resort close to the beach for a 45mn lunch and headed off to Eli creek for a swim in a clear water with a white sandy bottom. After that we drove to the Maheno shipwreck, which was a ship towed by the Japanese wanting to sell the pieces in Japan. Then we drove along the 75 miles beach (a sandy national highway) to the coloured sands, which is a canyon made of 14 different colours of sands. The final destination of the day was Indian Head, called like this by Captain Cook discovering Australia at this place and thinking that aborigines were Indians. The place was a prominent rock with a good view over the beaches and just above the place where the sharks were breading. We saw some enormous stingrays and few sharks. It has to be noted that the island comprises 6 out of the most dangerous snakes in the world (including the taipan), as well as many deadly sharks on the east coast and small blue jelly boxes, also deadly. We came back at the resort at 5pm, saw a dingo on the beach and went to the convenience store to get bait. We went fishing just a bit before dawn – I got good bites even though it was surf fishing. The tide was coming in very quickly, the bag and cameras got wet. In the meantime Nozomi walked on a dead blue jelly fish, which made ma a bit panicking, the body reacting 6 hours later, I.e. in the middle of the night. After 30mn, at dusk, a dingo appeared behind us and stared at us for a moment, actually until I cut my line with the squid on it. It tried to eat it but hurt itself on the hook. Then it decided to go to the bag of bait and to check my bag at the same time. We had to wait that he finishes to eat before getting the bags back, otherwise we would have been more likely to be bitten by it. The dingos already killed few people on the island, even though they are originally vegetarian. Indeed, people feeding them make them aggressive when they meet other people who do not have any food. We had two other problems: the night was falling and we did not have any torch to see the dingo, plus the tide was still hitting in very fast. Finally I decided to come closer to it, turning around it without losing its sight. It paced a bit back to the ocean to digest, we took advantage and got the bags back. Nozomi was so terrified at the time. We ate at the resort and went to bed early.

Humm...

Drinking water

Cold

Sharks

We checked out at 10am, took a shower and ate lunch. We went for a 5 kms walk in the national park, departing from the camp site. We parked on the track leading to the camp and started walking in the sand under a heavy sun; the walk was hard and long. After 30mn we wondered about the distance remaining to the camp site. Fortunately we met a 4WD Ute which brought us there in its back, in the middle of tools. We realised that it was a fair distance and wondered if we should not ask the driver for another drive back. Finally we stayed to check the beach, deserted, beautiful. We cooled down, naked, in the ocean – we wanted to swim to the coral but it seemed farer than we expected. Then we took a fresh shower before starting a long and exhausting walk back in the heavy sand for 2hrs. Once arrived, around 5pm, we departed for the Wongi State Forest for a free camping before going to Hervey Bay. It was a 10kms drive in the forest to reach the camp where surprisingly three other campers were already settled down. We went to bed the latest, at 11pm.

 Wild turkey

 On the back of 4WD ute

After a second night in the camping surrounded by skyscrapers we checked out at 10am, we went for a swim in the swimming pool of the camp site, and went to Safeway in order to get ice and food for lunch. As we cooked we met some Australians who advised us to go have a look at Nimbin, a hippy town in NSW. Finally we headed off late and arrived at the caravan park at Woodgate (350kms over Brisbane) at 11pm. We chose the caravan park because the camp site in the national park was only 4WD accessible and Nozomi was exhausted after our 400kms journey. We were lucky that the manager in the caravan park was awake (usually Australians go to bed before 10pm!) in order to give us a good cabin for only $50.

Cairns, our final destination...