Fraser Island!

Hey everyone!

I'm back in Hervey bay after Fraser Island. Wow! What an adventure!

My tour guides name was Worm. Yup, Worm. He was really cool. He gives tours and he is a sky dive instructor on the side. To really picture him, imagine a guy that wears a smilie face bandana, has one wooden leg, and would make a sailor blush by his language. Those three days with him were very intense :)

The tour was very primative. There were no showers, now bathrooms (you dug a hole) and you slept on the ground on a sleeping bag. What an experience! At night, there were dingos everywhere, so you had to carry a stick when you went to the bathroom at night to whack the dingos if they came too close. A couple people had dingos being really aggressive towards them. I didn't have any issues. But when you woke in the morning there were paw prints EVERYWHERE! It was really cool but sort of scary to think that they probably were sniffing me while I slept. They look just like a large dog at home. They look friendly, but apparently they're not.

The first day there we did a lot of hiking. It was really neat. We climbed up sand dunes, found hidden lakes, saw HUGE spiders, and saw fish half the size of me :) The second day was the most amazing. Philip drove the jeep (on the backwards roads and all) for 70 km! We're now completely used to driving on the left side of the road. Some of the roads were not really road though. We had to drive on the beach, up sand dunes, and through the rainforest. What a cool experience for Philip! I could not drive though because I'm not 21 and you must be 21 to rent a car here. Plus I don't know how to drive stick shift!

The second day we woke up really early and ate breakfast on the edge of a cliff and watched whales. it was the most amazing experience I have ever had. The whales have their babies right on Platapus Bay on Fraser island, so each Humpback whale had a baby that was about 1000 lbs, but still white because it was just born a few hours ago. The mommy whale would swim in very shallow water to protect the baby whale, so we could see the whales perfectly. They did the jumps and tail spashes and everything. And when the mommy jumped, the baby tried to as well. So amazing!

After that we went to Champane pools. You can't swim in the ocean on Fraser Island because it's also a breeding ground for tiger sharks. If you went past your kness, chances are you will get eaten according to Worm.

Champane Pools is the only part of the ocean you can swim in. It's surrounded by large rocks so the sharks would have a hard time getting in. But the waves here were huge and you kept getting sucked away into the rocks! It was really fun trying to swim back and do it all over again. It was probably 90 degrees this day, so I got some serious sun.

Afterwards, I climbed a cliff! It's called Indian Head. On top of the cliff I saw schools of fish, a few sharks, stingrays, baby eagle rays, more whales and baby whales, and sea turtles! Man oh man are whales huge. There are very few of them left in the world, and I saw a large percentage of them! I think that this is so neat!!! :)

The third day (today) we went to Lake Mackenzie and drove the Jeep back to the barge to get back to Hervey bay. This sounds like such a boring day, but it was not. Lake Mackenzie is so beautiful and you can see the bottom of the lake, even though it's 20meters! It was crystal clear. And the sand is really strange. I wish I could type more but I'm running out of minutes on the computer.

This probably has so many spelling errors, so I'm sorry. But I will try to get on again soon!

I love you and miss you all. I'm so glad you're getting better mommy :) Take care of her daddy :) (and sisters!)