Survivor: Fraser Island

I'm happy to report I survived the 3-day excursion on Fraser Island. I won't be able to do the adventure justice through this post. It was simply incredible, like nothing I've ever done before. In a broad sense, it was like a combination of the major themes from "Survivor," "The Amazing Race," "Lost," and Lord of the Flies. I'm not exaggerating. It was 8 strangers in a suped up Land Rover, left to fend for ourselves with minimal supplies (Survivor). We were given an itinerary telling us where we had to go on the island and at what time we should arrive (The Amazing Race). And within our group, there was drama, power struggles, arguing over certain decisions, and constant changes in leadership (Lost, Lord of the Flies). Let's take it from the top...

On Sunday night when we had our meeting to discuss the 3-day trip, I quickly realized I was the only native English-speaker in our group of 8. Usually not a big deal, but when they are going over very specific details on the itinerary, places not to go on the island, how to drive the car & car maintenance, and the logistics of setting up camp, it would be nice to have even 1 other person in my group understand what's going on. It looked like I was getting forced into the "Aaron Role," where I'd be the most knowledgeable about all the logistics, especially with the car. It is NEVER a good thing when I'm the most knowledgeable car person in a group.

On Monday morning at 7:30 we finally got our vehicles:

Beautiful color all around. After a quick stop at the grocery store & bottle shop for all of our food/drink needs, we were off to catch our boat over to the island, with me attempting to drive on the left side of the road for the first time ever.

But then in a nearly trip-altering twist, the transport authority inspectors grounded our pink vehicle due to a non-working emergency brake.

I say nearly trip-altering because had we missed the 10:15 ferry a huge chunk of our 1st day would have been lost. Luckily the company we signed up with was able to get a working pink truck to us just in time.

After a 40-minute ferry ride over to the island...

we were off to our first 2 destinations. I was driving first on the island since I might have been the only one to understand instructions such as "make sure the wheels and transmission are in 4WD mode before you get to the island," and "take the tire pressure down to 25psi before you start driving on the sand." First stop was just to fill up our 22-liter jug of water, and then 10km of extremely tough sand driving later, we were at Lake McKenzie for some hours of relaxation.

During lunch at the lake, I realized there were only 2 words I could understand from the Italian guys: "spaghetti" and "dingoes." They were obsessed with finding dingoes on this island. The rest of day 1 was a bit uneventful as we just had to make our way through the island, up a small stretch of beach to our camp site for the night.

This next picture is a bit hard to see, but I think it's worth showing.

It is indeed a package of toilet paper on top of a shovel. This is because if we ever needed to go to the bathroom we had to dig a 50cm deep hole, do our business, and then cover the hole with sand. Apparently there aren't many bathrooms on the island and everything needs to be buried so the dingoes don't get after it.

The next morning we were up at 6am for 2 reasons: 1) Our itinerary suggested we be driving by 7am, and 2) As soon as the sun rises the temperature in our tent hits about 150 degrees...impossible to sleep through. Day 2 was all beach driving, no inland tracks. The beach driving was much easier...

...except for the occasional plane that would land right where we were driving.

Against our better judgment we finally let the girls do some driving on Day 2. This one almost hit a tree within 4 seconds of starting the car:

We checked out 3 very cool areas of the island on day 2. First was Eli Creek, a small body of water running through a natural rain forest area into the ocean.

Next was the Maheno shipwreck. I know nothing about the history of this ship or how it got on Fraser Island, but it was fun to look at and walk around near it. It is apparently deteriorating more & more each year.

Did I mention the size of the jellyfish that were washing up on shore yet? Friggen huge.

Speaking of jellyfish, the reason you can't go swimming in the ocean on Fraser Island is because of some deadly jellyfish and thousands of tiger sharks that hang out near the coast.

Our final destination for the day was the Champagne Pools. This is the only saltwater swimming area on the island, where waves from the ocean slam against rocks and spray water into these pools.

It was during this time near the Champagne Pools that we had the mini-crisis of running out of water. It was extremely hot and there was no place to get fresh water anywhere near us. Some members of the group nearly started to panic. There would have been more heated arguments on what to do if anyone actually spoke the same language. Instead everyone just stood around in silence waiting for someone to come up with a brilliant plan. Our brilliant plan was to drink water from a tap that specifically said not to drink the water.

There is so much more to share about the rest of this adventure but time is running short and I'm sure your attention span is too. We did see dingoes throughout our trip, but they never seemed interested in us. Not once did we feel threatened. As a matter of fact, on night 2 you could make the case that I was the aggressor in humans vs. dingoes. I was walking back to my tent alone and saw 2 dingoes in the woods. One was limping badly, so I started chasing after him with my flashlight & knife. I'm not sure why I thought this was a good idea, but needless to say I didn't get very far in my pursuit.

Back on the main land last night, everyone was pretty beat so we just had a low key night of beers, playing pool, and exchanging contact info. So I will leave you with some pictures of me & my teammates:

And for those of you who were able to make it to the end of this post, 1 bonus picture for you. This was from a "freaks & geeks" party at my hostel in Sydney, 2 weeks ago. I don't think I shared this with anyone yet. Enjoy.