As soon as we hit Queensland, the state where our main planned stops where beaches, the weather took a turn for the worse and it rained at least once on almost all of the 12 days we spent in Queensland. Queensland was also the scene of our second road accident when a bus in Brisbane city centre decided to pull out on us without checking his mirror first. An accident which we are still waiting to hear whether we will be charged over. All in all this led to us hating Queensland from the off, however we persevered and eventually managed to find some true gems during our time in this state.
Most of our time on the Gold coast was spent either in traffic, avoid surfing competitions, transferring details because of the accident, avoiding the rain or on the long drives between campsites. Needless to say we weren't able to take as many photos as we would've liked. Thankfully during the accident there was only minor damage to the bus and none to our vehicle and so we could continue on with our trip.
Despite the weather so far we persevered and went on to explore the sunshine coast today. We started off the day with a stop at Point Arkwright, a place where the cold current from the south meets the hot current from the north. This leads to dual ecosystems living in harmony here. Afterwards we stopped at Coolum Beach, Peregian Beach and Sunrise Beach before reaching Noosa Heads. We reached Noosa Heads at around lunch time and found it to be an overcrowded tourist town with nowhere really suitable for us to park. Unfortunately this and the weather led us to end up having to not really explore the majority of Noosa Heads and after a short stop at the main beach and Lagoon lookout we headed onto camp.
The next morning we headed towards a little town not really known about called Rainbow Beach. This was a quiet seaside town with hardly any
residents and we found it to be peaceful given how busy it had been at all the beaches so far in Queensland. The weather had also improved
significantly which was promising news given our thoughts on doing Fraser Island the next day. After exploring the beach we booked on a tour
of Fraser Island for the next day and then headed over to a beach campsite in a place called Inskip Point. The campsite had a stunning deserted
beach from which one could view Fraser Island from and the sand here was white and black with the latter being volcanic ash from active volcanoes
outside of Australia like Indonesia and Japan.
The next morning we departed on our tour of Fraser Island on a specially made 4x4 bus. The day began with us catching the ferry to Fraser Island
after a short drive. After reaching the island we drove up the inland mining road towards Lake McKenzie. At Lake McKenzie the sand is 98% silica
and therefore does not get hot in the sun and is also fine enough to clean your jewellery, or so we were told. The lake is formed on sand since
Fraser Island is consists of only sand and the reason that the water does not run out is because of dead animal and plant matter which forms a
lining between the sand and the bottom of the lake. While at the lake we also saw a python, a rare sight at this time of year due to the cold
weather and the fact they would usually hibernate.
Our next stop on the island was Central Station. Central Station was in the island rainforest and was the place which the old island logging men
used to live. During our time here we went on a rainforest walk and saw many spiders. After a large buffet lunch we headed on to The Pinnacles.
These are multi-coloured sand dunes formed by the wind. After this we made a brief stop at the Macheno, an old ship which the Japanese tried to
tow back to Japan but which got caught in a storm and the tow rope snapped and the ship laid to rest on the banks of Fraser Island. Next we made
a short stop at the freshwater creek named Eli Creek before we headed back to the mainland and onto our camp at Inskip Point again. On route we
spotted two dingo's (a species of Australian wild dog originally kept by the aboriginals). Now they are generally seen as a nuisance and have
largely been culled, so we were very lucky to see not one, but two during our time here.
The next morning we headed onto to Hervey Bay and while there performed a circuit of all the town had to offer. For all of Byron Bay's hype we much
preferred Hervey Bay. It was quiet, had nice sand and was a place you could actually park and relax in. That night Kat managed to jump into my elbow
while trying to sneak to the sink in order to avoid having to wait for me to sit down first. Unfortunately for her the impact was between my elbow
and her nose and we heard a loud crack upon impact. It would appear that Kat had managed to break her own nose by moving into a stationary object,
a marvellous feat in its self.
The weather was just about staying dry at this point and we continued our road trip through Queensland by visiting the Whitsundays. During our time
in this region we visited Conway Beach and Wilsons Beach. Both of these towns were beaches well off the tourist trail, but only a heartbeat from a
popular tourist town. This made for extremely peaceful spots and we enjoyed long leisurely walks here.
Our next stop in the Whitsundays was Airlie Beach a popular tourist town with actually no good beach. The town was nice even if it was a little too
busy and we were able to enjoy ice cream here for the first time during our road trip. That night we headed to a campsite in the town of Prosperine
where we had lots of forester kangaroos come out of the forest as the sun set in order to graze on the fresh grass of the campsite. This led for a
unique experience and chance to get up close with a mother who had one in the pouch.
The next morning we headed out on a former life raft headed towards a couple of reef snorkelling spots, Hill Inlet lookout and Whitehaven Beach. We
saw many many fish during our snorkelling and the reef was incredibly healthy. Some of the fish we saw were over 5 feet long by 2 feet high. The
snorkelling spots were considered to be on the outer Great Barrier Reef. Next we headed towards Hill Inlet lookout where we had fantastic views over
the Whitsunday Isles and Whitehaven Beach. After this we headed on to Whitehaven Beach and since we were the only company allowed to go right up the
Inlet we bagged ourselves a section of pristine beach just to ourselves. Next we headed back to the mainland and after arriving windswept and soaked
in salt water we drove back to our campsite for the night.
The next day we headed to Bowen to see the 7 top rated beaches. We only stopped at 4 of these but were glad we did as most tourists miss these stops.
The first few of these, Rose Bay and Murray Beach were deserted and in order to reach the latter we had to hike over rocks and down into the cove.
After this we headed onto Gray's Beach and Horseshoe Bay both were nice in a bit too popular. While at Horseshoe Bay we hiked up to the top of Rotary
Lookout, a lookout over Horseshoe Bay.
The next day we started out on our journey towards the outskirts of Cairns as our road trip was drawing to an end and we needed to drop the car off by 3pm the next day. On route we made a detour circuit through Bagal, South Mission, Wongaling and Mission Beach. We hadn't expected much of these but were pleasantly surprised to find at least South Mission and Wongaling were beautiful and quiet stops with views of Dunk Island out in the sea. Mission beach however was much worse and a lot busier; as we had expected. That evening we headed onto Babinda Park, our campsite for the night. We ended up staying here with over 50 other people and yet we only had 2 toilets. Thankfully we had conveniently located forest area behind our van. ;)
That morning instead of heading straight into Cairns and dropping the car off we headed out west away from Cairns on a circuit through the Atherton Tablelands stopping at Lake Barrine, Lake Eacham, Malanda Falls, Curtin Fig and Lake Tinnaroo. After this we continued on North of Cairns to the nearby beach of Trinity. This was a very nice and quiet beach, given that we had arrived in Cairns for the start of the public Cairns holiday weekend. After a brief stop here we headed into Cairns and dropped our car off and walked back to our hostel. Hereby ending our Australian road trip.
Having ended our road trip and reached our final destination in Australia we spent most of our time in Cairns relaxing, shopping or on the Great Barrier Reef. We found Cairns to be very quiet with about half the population being Aboriginals and the rest being tourists or people transiting through. We found Cairns on the whole to be a place that just seemed to zap your will to do anything and be a bit of a downer. Nonetheless we enjoyed the Lagoon and a walk around the entire city during our time here. While here we joined a dive boat out to the Great Barrier Reef in order to snorkel here. All in all the Reef in and around the Whitsundays was much better, both in terms of the reef and the fish we saw. We still did find the trip here worthwhile though and we rented an underwater camera which we used to get several good underwater photos of the reef, fish and us.
Having smashed through the eastern coast of Australia in 23 days, having driven 6650km, been involved in two traffic accidents and Kat having managed to gain two long term injuries we had finally reached the end of our journey through Australia. From here we left on a flight to Fiji and onto country number 14.
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