paper bags

Ever heard of someone who is described as not being able to find their way out of a paper bag? Well, I have always prided myself on being able to find my way around a place, if I was provided with a decent map. I mean, I've been in Manly for essentially less than 7 days total and when driving at night, I get less turned around than Ash. I can't really vocally tell people directions, but I can definitely follow them.

So, when faced with a self-guided tour of Fraser Island (All previous spellings of the island's name on this blog are incorrect. In case you care.), where each group is provided with a map, detailed itinerary and lots of enthusiasm, I figured our group would be fine. Day one of the island exploration went fairly smoothly, aside from various members of the group questioning the other members of the group on their directional skills...I mean, we did find ourselves a sweet camping spot, right on the beach and protected by a sand dune. Day two would be just fine.

We woke up with the dawn, after a fitful night's sleep and I began producing my one contribution to the group - a hot pancake breakfast. Cooking pancakes on a dirty griddle, on a sandy beach at 6:30 in the morning made for some pretty interesting tasting cakes. Luckily I had the foresight to get chocolate chips: chocolate covers all manner of sins, including the stray sand grains or 10,000. As I cooked, the rest of our group packed up camp and we were ready to start driving on the beach by 7:30. Using our map, and fabulous navigational skills, we drove north, right on the beach, towards a large shipwreck from the 1930's called the Maneho. The boat has been pummeled by the surf for over 80 years, and between the salt and the pounding waves, there isn't much left of the boat. From there we hit up the Painted Sands and a really beautiful freshwater creek that flows right into the ocean. Now, here's where the day goes a little awry. In my lack of caffeine fog, I didn't realize the group had decided to adapt our travel itinerary. Instead of driving back down the beach towards beautiful Lake MacKenzie, we drive straight into the island to take the "blue route" marked on our map. However, our map was good for about....toilet paper, and we never actually found the "blue route." Nor did we find any other the other "roads" that were supposedly marked on the map. After driving around for about an hour, and back-tracking several times, we soon realized that we were adventuring onto roads that hadn't seen a lot of use due to the number of times we all had to jump out of the car to push various trees and branches out of the way.

We soon realized how lost we were and happened upon a group of local fishermen whose comment to us was, "We haven't seen backpackers on this side of the island in years..." They told us to take the Northern Road south towards Central Station and that would put us right out at Lake MacKenzie. "Goodie," we thought, "we're well on our way to the Lake." Well, the Northern Road had seen even less use than these other little roads we'd been driving, and we were hopping out of the car every 5 minutes to move trees out of the way. We were growing more and more confident of our ability to get ourselves past any roadblock, until we came across a freaking FOREST in the road. None of our pulling, pushing and wacking with our miniature hatchet on these huge trees were going to move anything. The boys were quite determined to get us through this roadblock, as we were quickly realizing that we were not only going to miss the Lake, but we were in danger of missing our ferry back to Hervey Bay. And the tide was coming up on the east side of the island...we were actually, quite possibily going to be stranded on this island.

What's group of 20 somethings to do at this juncture? Curse profusely, continue wacking at the trees with the miniature hatchet and squint at the map some more. We've got no cell phones and are facing the reality of having to camp another night on the island....Right at this moment, a French couple show up in a miniature SUV, along with 4 BMX bikers, who drive themselves right over the fallen forest. The bikers advice to us is to yet again backtrack back towards Happy Valley, and figure out what to do there. The boys wack a few more times at the trees, while the girls officially decide that we're heading to Happy Valley, Damn it and we're going to get ourselves the hell off this island. By this point, everyone's nerves are a little shot, I'm sporting a rip-roaring headache, and we're all just wanting to make sure we get on our busses that night.

The long story short: we found ourselves another way off the island, hopped a commerical ferry back to Hervey Bay (We weren't supposed to be on that ferry. Oops. The first mate kept calling for the driver of the lost backpackers car to please come to the "bar" for a drink. Note: there is no bar on this ferry. Hilarious....)

Ash and I not only made it back into our hostel in time to catch our bus up to Airlie Beach, but we even had time to take a shower, and re-pack our bags. Again.