Fraser/Whitsundays & onward travels

Well as usual I haven't updated this for a while, however to be fair haven't had much to tell as I stayed in Childers for 10 weeks. After that I've been to Fraser Island, the Whitsunday Islands and am now back in Childers saving for my trip home. so this should be a bumper update:-

Fraser Island
Fraser turned out to be one of the highlights of my trip, its a 22km long sand island (biggest in the world. We hired a self drive 4x4 with a total of 11 people for 3 days 2 nights. Started at about 6:00 first morning packing tents camping gear, food & beer. We drove to the ferry for a short crossing of about 45 mins. Once there the island is yours, you can drive almost anywhere although its quite hard going on some of the sand roads - quite a lot of people actually end up rolling there 4x4's!
The island is full of fresh water lakes so we spent most of our time visiting these & sunbathing, particularly liked lake waabi (pictured above).

At night we set up camp on the beach, we travelled with 2 4x4's so we had about 22 of us camping.
The first night after eating we encountered our first dingo - everyone was Sh****** themselves and we proceeded to bang saucepans and make as much noise to scare it off - all to no avail! After that we had to go to the toilet in pairs - so a lookout was was available!

A few hours later after a few beers all worries were gone, we were sat in a circle - no one noticed the dingo's walking around us! And everyone started to actually try and get photos.

The whole 3 days were really good fun luckily we had a really good group with a good mix of countries (1xnorway, 4x english, 2x canada, 2x irish, 2x german). Everyone got on really well and had a blast. At the end of the trip we were all saying a week would have been better! After Fraser i travelled up to Airlie beach with the irish and canadian girls before getting on my boat for the Whitsundays islands (see below).




Whitsunday Islands
After Fraser it was a bit depressing leaving everybody - but I'd booked myself on a nice sailing boat to visit the whitsunday islands so not to bad after all.
A choice of boats were on offer - i chose one where they actually did sail the boat not just use the boat motor.
The boat was a 26M (85 foot) racing boat which had a capacity of 30 people, however on our trip there was 17 people so it was quite spacious and i got my own room - result! We set off 8AM Friday morning with me worrying about been travel sick - i got some pills but they were only herbal. Anyway was fine with the sickness, only felt ill for about 10 Min's on the first day and after that was fine.
The trip consisted of sailing round various islands, swimming, snorkeling & sunbathing (it's a hard life!). On the first night we moored outside South Molle island where there is a resort, we transferred across by dingy to the island and had dinner. I met up with some of the people I'd been on Fraser with as they were actually staying on the island instead of sleeping on the boat (as we were). The night ended up been quite rowdy and me singing karaoke to Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' - not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination!
On the second day we went snorkeling again and met 'George' one of the biggest fishes I've ever seen. In the evening we stayed on the boat and had a barbecue complete with some fish we had caught of the back of the boat earlier.
The third day we had to start sailing back but stopped for a couple of snorkels on the way back. After Fraser & Whitsundays i was in need of cash so took an overnight bus (12 hours) back to Childers - i arrived at 5:45am and was picking tomatoes by 9:00am!

The Trip Home
On the way home I've decided to take in a few countries so am leaving Australia to Hong Kong for 1 week then Japan for 1 week then Beijing.
From Beijing I'm taking the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian trains through Mongolia and ending up in St.Petersberg. My Itinerary can be seen by clicking www.timgarbutt.co.uk/weblog/2006/10/siberia.pdf


Well that's it for now, not sure if I'll be able to update while travelling home but will have a go!