Our bus out of Brisbane was due to leave at 10am. Quite a reasonable time really. We could get up at a sensible time, pack, have breakfast, brush teeth and walk to the bus terminal in a leisurely fashion. Of course, that depends on someone setting the alarm correctly the night before. While we weren't exactly late and flustered, we weren't exactly leisurely either. In my defense, I did at least set the right time on the alarm clock, I just forgot to turn it on afterwards.

We reached our bus with a few minutes to spare and settled down for two hours of suburbs and countryside. The suburbs were nothing we hadn't seen before and, for the most part, neither was the scenery.

Noosa is a beachside town north of Brisbane and apparently one of the most desired postcodes in Australia. From what we saw during our first afternoon there, you can imagine why. It isn't too bad here. It's quite likely though that the beaches here are part of the attraction too. After a quick sandwich, we headed for the nearest beach for a few hours of relaxing in the sun. That was more how I imagined Australia should be.

The hostel we were in was a considerable improvement over the one in Brisbane. Verandahs, comfy chairs and no evidence of karaoke. They also offered a Sunday barbeque, how could we refuse?

One thing that has troubled me about hostels in New Zealand and Australia is the clientele. It feels a bit wrong when you're sharing facilities with someone considerably older than you. Don't get me wrong, I don't base my likes and dislikes on someone's age. It just feels weird that Claire and I are lugging our entire lives around in beaten up, dirty rucksacks and staying in the same often beaten up, sometimes dirty, budget accomodation as people who you could be forgiven for thinking were past all that. Maybe hostels should have a maximum age limit. Most people who stay in them are between 18 and 30 and the hostels target that age range with the facilities they provide. Maybe that's why it seems odd.

By the same token, hostels should have lower age limits too. As I mentioned, they are sometimes dirty and drinking, smoking, swearing etc are all normal for the inhabitants. Not exactly the ideal environment for a young, impressionable mind or worse still, an infant.

The reason I mention age limits was because in the hostel that night we had a toddler. Because of the thin wooden walls and doors, everyone was awake at 3am when it started howling. Not long after getting back to sleep, I was woken by the sound of a drunk Scottish woman proclaiming her sexiness at 4am in the morning. The toddler apparently wasn't impressed either and that ended my night's sleep. Grrrr.

We caught an early bus bound for Rainbow beach that morning. By 1pm, we had checked into our next hostel and booked a trip to Fraser Island for the following day. Rainbow Beach gets its name from the multi-coloured sands on the beach. We spent an hour and a half of the afternoon walking along the beach to see them. The beach is also a highway complete with speed limit signs. That makes walking along it interesting as the cars can drive on whichever side they want and they make much less noise than they do on tarmac. The coloured sands were fun to look at although it was a shame that some people have written their names into the cliffs.

Next, we spent another hour and a half climbing a hill by the beach to see the Carlo Sand Blow. The sand blow is a wide stretch of sand blown up from the beach that covers quite a large section of the hill. It's really impressive.

The bus to take us to Fraser Island picked us up the following morning just before 8am. Our driver seemed to be the driver / tour guide equivalent of Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter, who himself is based in nearby Australia Zoo) as his enthusiasm for the bus he was driving reminded me a lot of the crocodile-hunting maniac. However, I have to say that it was a pretty cool bus as far as buses go. Fraser Island is the world's largest sand island and it has no roads, just sand and trees. Four wheel drive is a necessity, as is experience.

Shortly after the bus had left the ferry and we were driving up 75 mile beach, we saw our first dingo. The dingoes on Fraser Island are purer than mainland ones as they have not mixed with domestic dogs at all. Unfortunately, the dingo we saw was obviously on a mission and going in the other direction, so I did not get a photo.

We stopped at the Eurong beach resort for morning tea before carrying on into the island. Our first stop was called Central Station. Back in the days before Fraser Island was a world heritage site, a significant amount of logging went on and Central Station was, well, the centre of it. Most of the huts and buildings were removed when the logging ceased but there are lots of displays to read and also we walked down to the invisible stream. Now this is all geography and I gave that up in favour of history at GCSE (Mr. Murray was friendlier than the geography teacher I thought). As a sand island, Fraser has a higher water table than a normal island and lots of that water seeps back up through the ground to form streams and creeks that feed into the ocean. Since sand is nature's best filter, some of the water is very, very clean. The invisible stream gets its name because the water is so clear and clean that you literally can't see it. Did I get all that geography stuff right? Does it sound plausible or rubbish?

Our next stop was Lake Birrabeen. Unfortunately there were a couple of clouds in the sky that dimished the photo opportunities a bit but take my word for it, this place was amazing. The sand in the area of Lake Birrabeen is either 90 or 97% silica and it looks white. The lake itself is actually formed solely from rain water and the whole place looks like it's the subject of a picture postcard. The wet sand is great for exfoliating but the water was cold so we got clean but freezing. The odd thing about our visit to the lake though was the rest of our group. Claire and I were the only ones to go in the water completely and so we had to change and dry off afterwards. Now, of the 200m of shoreline on the accessible side of the lake, where do you think the rest of our group decided to stop and chat? Yep, where we'd left our bags and clothes. And when we'd finished changing, then they left. Nevermind, after lunch we never saw them again.

No, they weren't eaten by dingoes or anything. Claire and I were doing a 2 day tour and they were just doing a single day so we switched buses after lunch. Speaking of lunch, crikey, I ate too much. It was a buffet lunch back at the Eurong resort and I discovered that I had a real urge for fish that day. We were also given our room key at lunchtime. When we booked the tour, we were told that we'd be in separate rooms (a girls' dorm and a men's dorm). But we were given only one key and guessed that perhaps we would be in the same room after all, maybe even on our own (sometimes sharing isn't that fun). We went to find our room just to see where it was only to find out that we weren't going to be on our own after all. The other occupants were two young Swiss girls, a considerable improvement over the usual hairy, grumpy (male) travellers we usually end up sharing with.

That afternoon we zoomed up and down 75 mile beach seeing some coloured sands, the wreck of the Maheno (that was cool) and Eli Creek. Eli Creek produces enough fresh water in one hour to supply the whole of Brisbane for one day. We waded up it and tried not to get knocked over. While there we also saw a hump back whale out in the ocean. Well, we saw the fountain of water it made and the small part of it that breached the surface as it came up to breathe a few hundred metres offshore.

That night we ate too much again and spent quite a while talking with our room mates. I think Claire was secretly envious of the fact that they both had hot water bottles. We lost ours in New Zealand and haven't got around to replacing it.

We were up and ready for the bus at 8.30 the next morning to continue our tour of Fraser Island. Our morning was spent walking for about 40 minutes across another sand blow to Lake Wabby. Lake Wabby was formed when the sand blow blocked the course of a stream. The sand blow moves by about 1m per year and it will eventually fill the lake in.

As we had 90 minutes to enjoy the lake before setting off back to the bus, we climbed up to a nearby lookout for a good view (see the photos pages). On the way up I found myself face to groin with a naturist, most unexpected. Anyway, the view from the lookout was amazing. Such a clear, blue sky. But, it was also hot and so we headed back down and went for a dip in the lake.

Once dry, we headed back to the bus (via a brilliant bush walk) and went back to the resort for lunch - more fish! We switched buses again and made our way back to Rainbow Beach. Once again we saw dingoes and once again I didn't have my camera ready. Doh!

Next, we're going to Airlie Beach via a long, long bus ride. Still, it'll give me a chance to catch up my sleep: the Israelis are playing noisy table tennis.