Back on the mainland

We’re relaxing in a motel in Gympie, reflecting on our awesome day on Fraser Island. It started out at just after 5am local QLD time and Graeme and I were literally the only people on the beach. It was just beautiful. We felt like we had the whole island to ourselves. It was really cloudy out there today and actually started to rain as we were heading back to the barge pick up point. Here’s a picture of the beautiful stormy sky…

The tide started to come in again as we were driving along so I drove off the beach and onto a track that led us into a rain forest setting.It was an awesome little 4WD track and the scenery was absolutely beautiful. It led us to one of the inland, freshwater lakes on the island (lake Garawongera). I threw the keys to Graeme – I guess I had to give him a chance to drive too! – and we set off to continue up the down the track back to the beach. We came to the one wet, soggy patch on the track and promptly sunk like a stone! Totally bogged in sludgy quicksand. I was so worried to begin with because I had noticed that no cars seemed to be driving the same way that we were, everyone was heading towards the other end of the island. I had these silly, unfounded thoughts of us being the only ones at the north end of the island and having to hoof it to the other end to get help. Anyways, drama queen moment over, we got out our whole arsenal of recovery equipment and set to work. Thanks Jay and Corley for the exhaust jack – that was one of the first things we tried! Unfortunately, either the car was too low (it was beach as!) and we couldn’t dig out enough ground to get the bag under the car enough, or we’re totally crap at using the exhaust jack, because it didn’t help us in this instance. Graeme is pretty sure our exhaust leaks, so we were not sure we were building the required pressure. So we tried the Max Trax, then ended up rigging up a winch with the high lift jack. Just as we were doing that, I heard a car coming down the track towards us to ran along the track before they had a chance to turn off. Just as the tourist in a huge Ford F250 came round the bend, Graeme had winched the car onto the max trax and drove out! That’s my man! Anyways, the other guy decided (With plenty of persuasion from Graeme) to see if he could get through the boggy section while we were still there, and yes, he sunk like a stone too. Luckily we stuck around and were able to pull the car out of the bog. All good fun. Here’s a pic of us totally stuck… We’ll be putting together all of our videos when we get home in a few days. As a bit of a teaser, we have video of us going in, and pulling the F250 back out.

Here are some more photos:

Some guy couldn’t wait for the tide to go down a bit more
Our barge to take us home… absolutely sideways on approach but hooked it right at the last moment.

There are more photos, but this fail laptop just can’t take any more for tonight.