29.04.2017 - 07.05.2017

Our journey north took us to Rainbow Beach, Harvey Bay and Bundaberg.

The plan was to take a trip to Fraser Island and Rainbow Beach, together with Harvey Bay, offers the only access to the island. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, its entire ecosystem is built on sand. What makes Fraser special are the over a hundred freshwater lakes and the rainforest. There are only two places in the world where rainforest grows directly on sand, so it is something very special 🙌. Reptiles, platypuses, dingoes, and kangaroos await on the island 😍. Of course, Fraser was on our to-do list, we couldn't miss that ☺️. The plan was to drive to Fraser from one of the two small towns. After consulting with the Lang family, who are as enthusiastic about Fraser as we are (check out some pictures on the internet, simply stunning!), we decided to explore Fraser with the Lang family in August 💪.

So we ended up in the small village of Rainbow Beach, where there isn't even a supermarket, on a huge sandy campground full of mosquitoes and sandflies 😱. You can imagine what Jana looked like after three nights 😨. We googled why some people get bitten by the bugs more than others. Scientists have many theories, sometimes it's the blood type, carbon dioxide, the bacterial culture on the skin, or sweat 😂. How disgusting they are!!! So much for them being attracted to sweet blood. And a mosquito can bite up to 40,000 times 😱😨😪. After three nights in the middle of nowhere, we finally arrived in Harvey Bay. After all the "struggles," a campground with a pool, tennis court, a lake, and a clean kitchen! Luxury 🙌😎. The special May offer allowed us to stay there for four nights and just chill. The weather was changeable, so it worked out well and we could cool down, play tennis, relax by the pool, and walk along the esplanade.

On our way to Bundaberg, we made a detour to Maryborough and visited the Fraser Coast Wildlife Sanctuary. It is a home for animals that were sick or injured and now live there. Kangaroos that eat from your hand, dingoes that can be petted. It was a really awesome experience in the small zoo 😍.

(Unfortunately, we didn't visit Steven Irwin's zoo, the crocodile hunter who used to be on TV on Sundays and was killed by a stingray during one of his adventures. The zoo is too expensive, no backpacker can afford it, but we drove past it and saw many pictures of Steven.)

Bundaberg is a really cool city. It is the rum capital of the continent. Since we were only here for one night, we didn't do much. We did some shopping and made delicious burgers 🍔 😅. It was cool that there were many backpackers at our campground and some of them were musically talented. They started singing and it was really nice to listen to ☺️.