Start of Fraser

Noosa is a beautiful tourist destination. I personally found it to be a more fancy area. Yet we were only there roughly 12 hours, so my opinion may be slightly skewed. We drove around Noosa to see the beach and the lay of the land. It was our first night in the van and we debated on what to do. We could obviously sleep in the van, but theres all kinds of laws against people sleeping in their cars in Australia. They try keep backpackers, like us, from just posting up anywhere and trashing the place. Next best option to possibly risking the fine was to drive to a nearby caravan park. We arrived as the sun was setting and situated ourselves for evening. We left Brisbane with a bag of essietianls such as peanut butter, noodles, bread, a few random cans of veggies, goon (cheap wine), 3 bags of popcorn, and 4 boxes of doughnuts. But we planned ahead for that nights dinner and bought some chicken and made a stir-fry. Our first dinner of the road trip was easliy our best dinner of the road trip.


First night...sleeping in the camper van:

With the three of us, we had so much luggage, just to get the bed ready for the night involved a choreographed dance of shuffling around everything. I know I said it was an old mini van looking thing, but when I say mini van I don't mean Americas version of 'mini'. This thing was MINI. Roughtly arm widths wide and 10 feet long. Here's three grown adults sandwiched together...and I had the honor of middle on the first night. About 2 hours in, I thought to myself how this was not how I pictured things would be...haha this was tourcher. Don't get me wrong, I love Katelyn and Andree...but it was hot, there were mosquito's everywhere, sweat was dripping off me like rain, and trying to get comfortable wasn't a task that can be done secretly. Every turn and twitch was felt throughout the whole van. I even found myself getting out of the van at night just to take a break from the close quarters.

When you sleep in the van, its already blazing from the scorching hot metal panels and steaming engine that's beneath you. So when the sun rises at 5am...so do you. It instantly gets 20 degree's hotter when the sun comes out, and boy you can feel it. So we woke early the next day, took a dip in the caravan park's pool and hit the road.

The drive was very enjoyable. The landscape was brilliantly painted with mountains in the background, the sea to our right, and wildlife running about. We drove all day with a few pit stops along the way (to help break up the monotony of doughnuts for every meal) until we reached Rainbow Beach. Here was the destination for our famous Fraser Island trip.

We arrived a hostel named Pippies, where our self-drive safari began and ended. When you do one of these trips, they make you arrive the night before you leave to get a safety briefing and rules check so everyone understands what to expect. I'm sitting around the table watching a video on 'rules of beach driving' with 10 others who are joining me on the trip. The three of us, a Spaniard, Canadian, 2 Dutch, 2 German, and 2 Scottish girls. We all starting becoming good friends over our shopping trip for meals over the next three days. When we began to pack up the 2 food esky's (coolers) with our supplies, I noticed that we all unspokenly filled up a whole esky full of alcohol and decided to just carry the rest of our food in bags. The sacrifice the crew was making to ensure cold refreshments sent a message right then; this trip was going to be out of control...