Luke Vincent's 21st + Fraser Island

Week 14: 5/4 – 5/10

Okay, so a little more going on again this week. To start the week, I worked on a group assignment for my Quantitative Management class which involved developing linear programs in Microsoft Excel and writing a report discussing the results. More importantly however, this was the week of Luke Vincent’s 21st birthday, so needless to say, a lot partying and celebrating to report. It began Tuesday night with Tequila shots (something Luke despises, but we poked fun at him for not taking some earlier in the trip) and ended up with us at Scruffy Murphy’s where we counted down the hours to midnight; even though the drinking age is legally 18 here, people in AU still celebrate their twenty-first, and we would learn the reason why later in the week. It turns out that before Vietnam, the drinking age was 21 in Australia as well, but about the same time the United States temporarily changed it to 18, so did Australia, but they never went back. Anyway the time came, we cheered and I joined Luke in the drinking of his first ever ‘Jaggerbomb’ I was more than happy to supply; Luke doesn’t remember it, but it at least it will always be a special moment to me… The next night began and ended on a lot better terms for the official celebration of his birthday – we just went to Lansdowne across the street for convenience and we all bought Luke some shots. Despite the two nights of celebration, the best part of the week had yet to come.

We left early Friday morning for Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world off the eastern coast north of Brisbane. Ten of us (Me, Luke, Emily, Jenna, Lauren, Liz, Julia, Christina with her friend Kristin, and Luke’s friend Mike from Boston) boarded a plane with our carryon luggage and nothing more than a reservation at a hostel that Emily (who booked it) couldn’t initially remember the name for. When we arrived we discussed as a group our options – the thing that nearly everybody does in coming to Fraser Island is rent a 4-Wheel Drive Off-Road SUV full of camping equipment and rough it around the island at various campsites for a few days to a week. We only had Friday-Monday morning and renting these vehicles generally requires at least a week’s advanced notice, which we obviously hadn’t done. Before leaving the airport, we called every single company that offered 9+ sized SUVs, and somehow managed to find one available for use Saturday. Well, Emily remembered the hostel’s name so we grabbed the next available taxi van and went there. It was nice having our own room at a hostel, but it was really quiet while we were there, so it really wouldn’t have made much of a difference being separate. After grabbing some lunch at the beachside grill across the street, we went and got all of our groceries and supplies necessary for driving around Fraser Island the next two days. To make it clear, we weren’t actually on Fraser Island already, but along the coast. I got to know Mike better as we played some Frisbee on the beach and afterwards hung out at the pool while Luke and Emily got picked up and went in to the rental center to watch a video and take care of paperwork for our excursion.

A couple hours later Luke and Emily got back in disarray. It turned out the truck had a manual transmission, which Luke couldn’t drive so this, along with the video they were shown, scared Emily. At this point, it seemed like the trip wasn’t going to happen, because in the contract it required we have two licensed drivers’ names on it. Although I can drive a stick shift, I didn’t have my American driver’s license, so a new challenge arose. Nobody else was twenty one or able to drive. After some thinking, I realized I could get a copy of my ID because I knew exactly where in my room it was and could authorize my friend (Chuck), who ironically couldn’t come on the trip because of a project, to enter my room (fortunately it was still early enough in the night for the front desk to be open). He procured the ID and had the front desk at UniLodge fax it to the front desk of the hostel I was staying. After 20 minutes, it still hadn’t arrived, so Chuck ultimately had to take a picture and email it to the hostel. They finally received it and printed it off for me. Luke immediately called the company supplying the SUV, because they had until before it closed to let them know if we wanted to cancel or not. Of course it was closed, so Luke got the hold of a late night emergency line, and after explaining the situation was told that we should be able to replace Luke with me as the second driver. Early the next morning, Luke called first thing and found out our pickup to go and get the SUV was already on its way. Emily, Luke, and I went to the center, I gave them my license information, and I watched the video. It wasn’t bad and basically all common sense precautionary warnings along with some others unique to the island to be aware of. It discussed how to navigate the sand roads of the island, driving etiquette, and to never feed or touch Dingoes which inhabited the island – it can be a $1000 on-the-spot fine if you get caught doing it. I paid close attention to everything and learned a little bit, but most of it was self explanatory. We then had the truck pulled up front for us where we inspected it for any preexisting damage and got a quick rundown in the front seat before taking off. I was the first t drive and found the transition to the left side of the road much less difficult than I anticipated. Driving manually was the same except I was shifting with my left hand, which I preferred more actually because I could steer with my right. Our next major concern was that this van was a nine-person SUV which had been converted from initially being an eight-person – we also, told the company we had only nine people (which we didn’t :-/). This never gave us any problems because we just took the SUV off by ourselves with just the three of us and picked the rest up at the hostel. We packed up all of our gear, filled the tanks with Diesel, and set off to the barge that would be taking us across the channel to the island. Backing the big SUV into the barge was little awkward from the opposite side of the car at first, but my valet experience came into effect and helped me park it snug. After the thirty or so minute cruise, we got back into the van and started on to the island. Driving was actually a lot of fun through the bumpy, off-road paths.

Signs were all over the island and the company we rented from provided us with a huge map along with an entire itinerary of what we could do in our two days if we chose to follow it. We pretty much stuck to it the whole time: first stop was at little forest walk where we saw a crystal clear creek running (literally could see directly through to the sand basin); second was amazing Lake Mackenzie which was also crystal clear, it felt like I was swimming in drinking water, and where we had lunch; our third and final stop for the night was at our campsite, which were scattered all over the island.

At about 5pm we had to be off the beach with our SUV anyway, because it was dark and the tide was starting to creep in, and getting any excessive amount of salt water on the electrical wiring beneath the car would result in damages (not to mention getting the car bogged down on the beach). First things first, we set our tents and prepared everything before it got too dark and we were too uncoordinated to accomplish anything. We spent all night around the van with our little gas burner as the only source of light beside the moon that came out much later. Actually, it looked like a storm huge storm was going to clip us for a long time, but it eventually made its way north of us. A lot of drinking and playing along the beach ensued – it was hot dogs for dinner and a sandy salad, because getting sand in absolutely every crevice was unavoidable. Most went to bed before 10pm because we decided we wanted to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to watch the sun come up behind another infamous ship wreck that was on shore about 20 minutes further north.

The clouds made this rather disappointing, but the view out over the ocean in the morning was still just as beautiful as ever. We went to one more site before the tide came back in for the morning called The Pinnacles which are some tall stone formations that have been weathered by sand and wind to reveal a cool, streaky, layered pattern in the cliff face. We napped until the tide went back out and drove down to another crystal clear creek that we could swim in, but we decided we rather go to a lake to spend the last few hours before catching the barge ride back. The lake we initially planned to stop at turned out to not be very conveniently located, so we ended up back at Lake Mackenzie for an early morning swim. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the Dingo citing we made while packing our tents in the morning. As we were loading the SUV, a pack of four or five Dingos calmly trotted past the front and continued down the beach in the moon light. The reason I remember this is because I saw another lone Dingo in the parking lot as I was changing by myself back at Lake Mackenzie. Unfortunately, my camera had just run out of batteries, but he walked right past me and I was able to observe him up close, which was very cool – this was a great way for me to cap our time on the island. Emily drove us back to the barge and I had my first experience of riding in the very back of the cramped SUV and quickly understood why people were getting sick sitting back there after the long intervals of off-road driving. The barge returned to mainland some time before sundown, we dropped everybody back off at the hostel, and returned the SUV. Of course, when we brought it back in, the mechanic that first inspected it saw that it was still in four-wheel-drive which is apparently “very bad” to do for even short stretches on paved roads. He was “certain” that there would be damages when the lead mechanic came in the next morning for inspection and said we should just hope it’s low. We tried to not worry about the fact that we might get swindled, and enjoyed a long overdue hearty meal with everybody after we got brought back. To further distract ourselves, we brought the remainder of our goon (boxed-wine, remember?) down to the beach and engaged in some hilarious activities including burying all of our feet in sand and taking pictures of it. Another early morning brought us back to the airport and home to Sydney.