Hervey Bay

The concept of giving 11 complete strangers a three tonne 4wd vehicle and sending them off to drive at breakneck speeds along the beach and to hurtle down tracks that would even give a mountain goat the willies on a large island with no direct medical facilities is something that I am still trying to work out the sanity of, but of course it was huge fun and despite our best efforts, we didn't crash. I left the driving to the others, as 30 hours with a driving instructor and 1 hour with an Examiner on German streets in a left hand drive Golf is not exactly good preparation for driving a moving shed down 2 meter wide tracks with potholes large enough to swallow a Elephant (African).

3 days and 2 nights on Fraser Island and I saw spiders large enough to block the sun, a couple of dingos, which incidentally look like the product of a fox - greyhound marriage and some funky lizards. Not to mention beaches, fresh water lakes and rainforests.

Got up at 5am on the second day to go shark watching. The f**kers never turned up - not a single one. We nearly voted on throwing one of the group in as bait, but the guy got away before we could lay hands on him.

Off to Airlie Beach tonight.