March 9 - Australia: Hervey Bay, Queensland

The goal for today was to make it to Hervey Bay by this evening.  Hervey Bey is about 12 hours south of Airlie Beach, and is the jumping-point to Fraser Island "The Largest Sand Island In The World".  

This is why we bought the Toyota.  Especially for things like this. You can't get onto Fraser Island without a four-wheel drive.  It's a World Heritage site and we're very excited to spend a few days camping on the beach and not showering.  (Seriously).  We hope to get a little stove for our camp sites, but if not we're prepared to eat cold soup. 

Enough of the island, let's talk about today's drive.

We left the Whitsunday Apartments at 7:00AM and hit the road.  I drove first, with the overall plan to do the trip in four three-hour stints.  So I drove until 10:00 and then Jon drove.  We did get one exciting picture while we were on the road:

Australian Flatlands

Parts of Australia reminds me of Africa.  Especially the picture above.  Jon, however, thinks the picture above reminds him of "The Ponderosa".  Meaning from the TV show "Bonanza".  I can't say that I agree because I've never seen the show.  But this is what I get for marrying a TV fanatic.

Eleven hours and three tanks of diesel later, we arrived in Harvey Bay around 6:00ish.  The next stop was to find a place to spend the night.  We hopped around from hostel to motel, with air-conditioning and small kitchen being the main requirements.  We finally settled on a cute little motel called the Hervey Bay Motel.  It was a really cute little motel with a microwave (all we needed for our leftovers from last night), a TV, and a fridge.  We were in heaven.  Through the host, we made reservations for the 10:15 ferry to Fraser Island tomorrow, and then went to the grocery store to get soup, lunch meat, and plenty of water.  Then we settled in for dinner and the rest of the night.  I worked on the journals and Jon did island research for where we would go and how we would get there.