Hervey bay and Fraiser island

The next stop after noosa was hervey bay for a self drive island tour. I was a little worried about the whole 'self' drive thing but they assured me that you only needed 2 drivers and I didn't have to be one. Thank god!! Showed up at the hostel and was told we had a meeting at 7 to go over all the details for the trip with our groups. Basically they put 9 people in a big 4x4 truck van thing and send you onto Fraiser island for a camping trip. From what I understand its the biggest sand island in to world. It turned out that only people over 21 were allowed to drive. Leaving only me and this english guy. :o. To top it off it was a standard (which I don't know how to drive), on the wrong side of the road, and most importantly the wrong side of the car (including the stick shift). To make it worse there were like 900 things you could do to lose the $1000 'bond' on the vehicle, including driving in any kind of salt water. Great! Well I felt bad for the english guy so I told him I'd give it a try but was not guaranting anything. We left the next morning at 10 to go to the market to get some stuff to eat. We decided to just get a bunch of stuff and share it. Our group ended up being two girls from denmark (who were not very friendly), one guy from norway and 5 english guys. Next stop was the beer store. Well it turned out that the 4 english guys that came together only wanted to drink!! We had decided to split the beer too and it ended up being 3x more expensive than the food. I wasn't too happy because I knew I wouldn't drink anywhere near as much as them. We headed over to the ferry and backed the truck on (luckily the english guy was driving!). I ended up getting nicknamed team america. Which was eventually shortened to america or replaced with yankee doodle do or yank. Lol. When we got to the island we went over to the central station and then headed for the coast. The ride was ridiculously bumpy and if we slowed down we got stuck in the sand!! Drove up the east coast for a while looking for some creek we were supposed to camp at. Couldn't find it so we just picked a spot. Cooked up some burgers, played some cards and had some beers. The sky that night was absolutely beautiful. You could see a ridiculous amount of stars from the beach. The next day we couldn't be on the beach until 11 because of the tide. We hung out until 10 and then decided to try to go up to the camp grounds to cook some lunch and shower. We couldn't swim in the ocean because of jellyfish and absolutely everything was covered in sand!! The english driver, dave, had went for a walk so it was decided that I would drive and pick him up on the way. Hahahaha. I got the truck started and into 1st and then stalled it shifting into 2nd. (Apparently you're supposed to do that a lot faster than 1st but they forgot to tell me). I did it again and then immediately got stuck in the sand. Dave ended up driving for the rest of the trip!! We checked out a shipwreck on the way and then went up to a place called indian head. it was a huge cliff that overlooked the ocean! Really beautiful. Ended up finding the creek we had missed the day before and floated down that. After that we went on a search to get beer (the english guys demolished the beer we had bought). On the way we made a detour to a lake for a swim. It turned out to be the most disgusting lake ever! Most of us didn't swim. Got beer and headed to the campsite for the night. Ended up drinking some boxed wine or what they call goon here. Spent the night listening to all the sweet music on one of the guys' ipod. The next morning we went to lake Mckensie. It is an absolutely beautiful lake with crystal clear water and white sand beaches. Hung out there for a bit throwing the frisbee around and then headed for some food and the ferry. Got back to the hostel with enough time for a beer and a shower before I needed to catch the bus up to airlie beach for a tour in the whitsundays.