I spent my first day in Brisbane bopping around town mostly. Jana got me at the airport at 7 am and she had coffee for me, which made me very relieved because it was about 4pm on Monday my time. Needless to say, I am an addict and had a withdrawal headache by this time. It quickly subsided and I was feeling awake, like normal the whole day. No sign of jet lag yet. I’m staying in a new house with four other girls, including Jana. The house is nice and clean and everything inside is new, there is no dryer because everything is hung outside on a line and it all dries surprisingly fast!
This weekend, Jana, Chris, Steve, Roxy, Jodi, Rachel and I all went camping at Fraser Island, just off the coast of Brisbane. It was AMAZING and beautiful. One is required to have a well running, four wheel drive vehicle because it’s 95% loose sand. There are little pockets of beautiful lakes and sand dunes at the interior of the island that we visited. For the most part, we traveled along the coast watching the surf crash in, it was really neat. There are sharks and a very strong under toe, so one can’t swim in the ocean. We hiked up to a giant sand dune and at the bottom of it there was a lake that we swam in and washed up in. This was the real deal camping, no toilets, no showers. I got used to it, and mastered the no-bathroom issue, thanks to my back-to-nature friend Jana. The first day we were there, there were tons of dingo warning signs, dingoes are wild dogs that are famed for the real-life baby eating debacle, that ended up being made into a film with Meryl Streep, called A Cry In The Dark- Evil Angels: http://www.flixster.com/movie/evil-angels-a-cry-in-the-dark I had seen this movie years ago, so I have a very irrational fear of dingoes. The danger signs posted instructed civilians to cross their arms, not look the dingo in the eyes, and back away facing them. The first night we were there, Roxy (an Aussie girl who is scared of them too), Jana and I all needed to go to the loo before bed. We all had our head lamps on and we wondered down to the beach, which was just down the hill from our site (it was really cool, we were literally on the beach camping). As soon as we got down there, we saw two eyes light up, the dingo started towards us, so we all crossed our arms and walked backwards, but the dog kept coming towards us, so we yelled for Steve and he ran down the hill and charged at the dingo. Apparently, we were doing the complete opposite of what you are supposed to do. It was really scary. We went for long walks on the beach at night and drove around the island during the day and stopped at all sorts of places. Enjoy the pictures!

written by  Clara Douglas on May 9, 2010 from Fraser Island, Australia
from the travel blog: Australian Adventure
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ah! authentic wildlife experience! sweet as!

written by  Sarah Smock on May 12, 2010

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