Hervey Bay

As I mentioned earlier, we had waited until the evening in order for it to be cooler to drive the van. Howevever the roads going to Hervey were a nightmare and it was like driving through a mountain range. Needless to say we got about two thirds of the way there when the temperature soared. One of the big hills had killed the van and we had to pull in at the side and wait for the van to cool down. As it was pitch black and at the side of the highway we couldn't get out to see what was wrong, we just had to wait on the engine cooling. After almost an hour the engine cooled and we were able to fill it with water. Luckily there was a campsite about 4 kilometres up the road and we just managed to struggle to that. Here we could have a look at the van and discovered that it was water leak number 6! What had happened was that the pressure in the water must have been so intense that it had blew the hosepipe off. Luckily it was still attached at the other side and we hadn't lost the part. The campsite office was closed so we decided that we would have a look in the morning.

In the morning Gemma sneaked away in for a shower whilst I had a look. Luckily it was only a simple problem, but as we didn't have any tools I had to use the spare key to the van to reattach and tighten up the hose. After this I filled it up with water and everything seemed fine. I then managed to sneak in for a shower and we were able to drive off without having paid to stay in the campsite and use their facilities which was a bonus.

Eventually we got going and we managed to get to Hervey Bay.

Hervey Bay was one of the main places that the both of us had wanted to go to since we first "borrowed" John and Lu's Lonely Planet Book. It is again another small town on the coast but it has a great range of activities on offer. Firstly the town itself has a 10 kilometre beach that runs the full length of town. It is also the closest access point to Fraser Island (more on here later). In addition to this, the towns sheltered bay is also home to thousands of humpback whales that migrate North every year from Antartica. (Again more on this later).

As soon as we arrived in Hervey we knew that we wanted to do both of the above, but had to look at costs first. We got back in touch with Chris and Nichola and it turned out that they had also just arrived in Hervey Bay. This was good for us as they had already sussed out the tourist info and got talking to the English woman behind the desk. She had some great info about Fraser and recommended to us the best way to go about seeing the island and the best company to do it with. All we had to do was agree to go.

Chris and Nichola had previously met another couple from Dorset whilst in New Zealand (Zara and Tim). They were also just arriving in Hervey Bay that day which was ideal as the package that we had went for was suited for 6 people. So we went to meet up with Chris and Nic and were introduced to Zara and Tim. We decided to jump right in and booked up to go to Fraser Island the next day. All that was left was for us to get our supplies and we were ready!