Spring Break

By: Sam Freedman, Foster Undergraduate

I’ve been planning on writing a bit about my spring break trip for the last few weeks now. I just finally got a break from schoolwork so I figured I’d give it a go. I went to Brisbane, Fraser Island, Hervey Bay, Airlie Beach, and the Whitsunday Islands with my buddy Sophie. It looks us about 11 days and it was pretty spectacular.

The Plan

• Fly north to Brisbane
• Drive even further north to Fraser Island
• Spend 3-4 days on the island
• Catch an overnight bus to the Whitsunday Islands
• 3 day sailing trip around the islands
• Fly back to Sydney

Fraser Island
Let’s see… the flight was pretty uneventful. I met Sophie at the airport and we got on a 1 hour flight to Brisbane. We were planning on traveling Fraser Island with Sophie’s family friends, the Bowmans, because they go every year and guided tours were well over $500. We spent the night at the Bowman’s house and for some ungodly reason woke up at 4 am to drive up to Fraser. We slept for most of the 4 hour drive up towards the island. We got on a ferry around 9 am and finally made it onto the island around 9:30 am. There were no roads on the island so the only way to get around was to drive SUV’s on the beach. So that’s what we did. It was another 2 hour drive from where we got off the ferry up to the campsite. It took us another 2 hours to set up camp once we got there. The Bowmans were planning on staying there 10 days so they had a pretty extravagant camp set-up. We set up a sink, a water heater thing, a HUGE tent with a tarp, their own porta-potty tent, and a shower. Definitely roughing it… The whole campsite was actually on the beach so we were about 20 feet from the ocean. Behind the campsite was a pretty big hill that you could climb and see down the beach for miles. Altogether, not a bad little spot.

The island itself was really awesome. It’s a 100 mile long sand dune island. It’s completely surrounded by ocean, but somehow the island has all these freshwater lakes in the middle. I have no idea how that works, but somehow it does. All these lakes feed into streams that go into the ocean at various points around the island. The first day, we went to one of these streams and lounged around in the water. That night, we climbed up the hill and shot some pictures of the sunset. The next day, we went to another creek and lounged around again. In retrospect, it seems like there was a bit of a pattern developing there. On the third day, we went to one of the lakes and lounged around by the water more. Honestly, about 80% of my waking hours on the Fraser Island trip were me lounging around on the beach or in front of a lake/stream. It was very relaxing journey. We also did a fair bit of whale watching because you were almost guaranteed to see a few if you looked out at the water for more than 15 minutes.

The Whitsundays
So we got a flight off of Fraser and took an overnight bus to Airlie Beach, which is right next to the Whitsundays. The bus ride sucked. I can’t sleep sitting down. Just can’t do it. So when we got to Airlie, I was exhausted. I also had not showered on Fraser because we were camping so I felt especially disgusting. We checked into the hostel and both immediately showered and napped.

We woke up at 8 am the next morning to catch the sailboat at 9am. There was a crew of three: Mel the captain, David the first mate, and Michelle who was in training. There were about 12 other people on the boat. They were all older couples around 28-34ish. Mel was awesome. David was a bit crazy and had a terrifying laugh. Michelle was very nice. The sailing trip was spectacular. The first day, we went scuba diving and snorkeling around the Great Barrier Reef. On the second day, we got up early and spent 4 hours checking out Whitehaven Beach. Good God, that beach was beautiful. Apparently, it’s always ranked as one of the top 10 beaches in the world and I can see why. When we got back to the boat, we got lunch then went for a snorkel before dinner. On the third day, we snorkeled in the morning and spent the day lounging on the boat. Honestly, I spent about 75% of this trip lounging around in the sun too. It was a good vacation.