You like sand? Fraser is the island for you!

Rainbow Beach and Fraser Island

I grabbed a backpackers' bus out of Brisbane right after my midsemester and sped through astring of coastal towns 200km north to Rainbow Beach. The driver had a thing for Adam Sandlerand he got in Mr. Deeds and the Wedding Singer in the 5-hour trip; it's a pity I wasn't continuingup to Cairns - I could've seen the whole anthology. The township of Rainbow Beach consists of a pub, a gas station and several massive backpacker holding tanks – each accommodating several hundred. There was a sharp division between those who were going to the island and would be waking up before 7 and those who weren't and would be rolling out of bed just in time for happy hour. I shared a room with a bunch of Irishmen who came in around 2am rambling on in a dialect that was theoretically English-based; one of them crawled into bed with one of the sleeping girls, apparently believing it to be his own – I would later hear him mumbling “and I thinks to meself: why is this wee shaved man in my bed?"

In the morning, I grabbed my free pancake feast and set out on what appeared to be a quick hike down the beach. I measured how long it took me to pass a certain feature on the map and then extrapolated to get an estimate of the full trip – I guessed it would take around 15 minutes. Two hours later, I began to suspect that my tourist map was not entirely to scale (perhaps I should have guessed this earlier from the fact that the cove's sea monster was depicted as being longer than the entire beach). The path was lined with high sand cliffs with an amazing array of colors. 4WDs frequently zipped by at 80 kph along the sand (in retrospect, this would've been a much better approach to the trip). After 11K, I went through a pass to the neighboring TeeWah beach; this lacked any scenery but was stained blue with the carcasses of thousands of man o' wars (these made cool popping sounds when you stepped on them – kind of like bubble wrap). There was an old wreck which didn't resemble much of anything; it was apparently full of asbestos so I had to resist the urge to play on the rusty pile of scrap. 7K on this stretch and the beach was replaced by a subtropical rainforest. Here it would rain just long enough for me to pull out my poncho and stop for just the right interval for me to get hot and pack it away. On this trail I would come across my very first leeches – these nasty little critters crawl inside your socks and suck your feet dry – this really wasn't conducive to walking the remaining 15K.

I returned to the hostel just in time for the mandatory pre-trip briefing; here they showed us safety tapes that warned not to feed babies to dingoes or sleep in the middle of the beach/highway. We got to sign a series of forms explaining that despite the $550 we had collectively put into a deductible-reducer, nothing was actually covered, and if any one of the group's 11 members so much as nicked the paint, we'd all be losing our shirts. At the same time, my group filled out an order to the bottle shop for six cases of beer and several boxes of wine – the chances of getting that $200 deposit back weren't looking too great. After the meeting, a hostel worker drove us to the town's giant sand drift and abandoned us there; the promised sunset was behind a cloud, so we snapped a few photos of the sand (can never get enough sand photos!) and hitchhiked home. Strangely, the best deal on food was from our hostel - $4 for all-you-can-eat burritos – in no way did these resemble burritos but after no food for 12 hours and a 35km walk, dogfood would've been a thrill.

In the morning we grabbed a few more pancakes, assembled our gear, got our food ration, and packed everything on top of our 4WD. After an hour of preparation, we all piled into the truck and triumphantly turned the key; the ignition made just a clicking sound and so we watched forlornly as the five other groups drove off to the island without us. We waited another two hours while a mechanic threw in a new starter motor, then we were off (though the speedometer was broken and one of the doors didn't open). We had been given bad directions and got a bit lost on the way to the barge, but we put our heads together and managed to get to the launch 20 seconds before the last boat of the day departed.

Ours was quite the multicultural group with me being the only native English speaker; the tally was 2 French Canadians, 1 Frenchie, 1 German, 1 Finn, 3 Swedes, 1 Denmarkian, and an Austrian. One of the Quebecians had done this trip before so we let him drive as to avoid the death and dismemberment that had befallen so many backpackers before us and would inevitably result if I got behind the wheel. We cruised down the beach making several stops, the first at Rainbow Gorge which turned out to be a canyon between two massive sand dunes made up of a “rainbow of colored sands" – namely brown and white. We walked down the freezing Eli Creek, circled the decaying Mahone Wreck and gazed upon the Pinnacles rock formation. We set up camp along the beach because the inner camp sites had a noise ban beginning at 9:30PM, and some of the less experienced campers in our group naively supposed we would be up past that. The tents we had been given were missing a few important parts, but using the car as a support, we were able to get them all sanding. Ok, so who's still festering about the Dane thing? I was just screwing with you, but I really have no idea what you call a person from Quebec.

Our food ration had been accompanied by detailed instructions on how to divide and prepare it, and at lunch we had meticulously counted the cheese, bread and cookies and allotted each his/her fair share. On the menu for that night was steak and potato salad – fortunately there were members of the group that had some notion of how to cook, and I could stick to my area of expertise – the eating. There was a total fire ban so we all huddled around the glowing ember of the mosquito coil and conversed in half a dozen languages. The night passed smoothly with no dingo attacks on our food or those going to the toilet.

Since we had no one from the commonwealth in our party, we were a bit confused by the breakfast menu of “eggs and spaghetti" but backpackers are not terribly picky people, so each gratefully devoured his/her 3 eggs and 1/11th can of tomato-stained noodles. We drove to the northern end of the beach road and walked to the top of the Indian Head bluff. Here we could see a school of rays and a good chunk of the island. There was considerable debate as to whether to walk up the beach to “Champagne Pools." Three rounds of voting ended in a 5-5 tie (we couldn't seem to convince the alcoholics in the group that these were actually filled with champagne), and so we sat upon the sun-scorched rock until it was unanimously agreed to give up and go to lunch.

Two hotdogs and an apple later, we walked inland to Lake Wobby; here a high sand dune dropped slowly into a pristine green lake. We all raced down the dune by running, rolling and doing cartwheels. At one point it was decided that we would form a chain of ten by grabbing the ankles of the person before us and simultaneously rolling down; it eludes me how we escaped serious injury with that one.

We set up camp along the beach again and cooked up a delicious spread of chicken stir fry and fruitcake. One of the more intoxicated members of the group came up with an ingenious game where a bag of potato chips was placed in the middle and a team lined up on either side. Each member of the team would be assigned a number and when that number was called, one from each side would race to the middle to grab the chips; if you didn't get the chips, you simply had to beat the crap out of the other person and steal them – sometimes the rest of the team could rush forward and join in the carnage. A play was over as soon as someone sustained a serious injury (such that they were unable, due to unconsciousness or broken limbs, to move back to their goal). A chipped tooth signalled the end of the first half. We then went to a neighboring campsite where an Irishman was entertaining a sizeable crowd with a delightful, thoroughly unintelligible jig.

Another semi-bearable night passed and in the morning we headed south to a rainforest-walk. There was some dissension in the ranks on the issue of walking anywhere, but we tricked them into going down a 4km path; we were forced to turn around when I made the mistake of mentioning a garden snake I had spotted – fortunately, I got out of having to carry anyone. We then went to a picnic area and made lunch from whatever happened to be left over – this resulted in the delicious concoction of tomato, cheese, spaghetti, and peanut butter sandwiches, and afterwards passed out on the beach of the picturesque though heavily overcrowded Machpherson Lake.

We sped back along the beach toward the ferry and along the way saw two dingoes (up to this point, I thought they were a myth made to scare the tourists into cleaning up their rubbish. We made the 5PM boat, got back to the hostel, ripped up our hefty deposit slips, and I was soon on my way to the Whitsundays. The night's movie was Spiderman 2 and our meals breaks were in the midsized beach town of Mackay and two highly memorable truck stops (one had a toilet with signs that read only “Oranges" and “No oranges").