Scary lightning on Fraser Island

3rd December 2019

While waiting for Geoffrey's parents to arrive in one week, we sail up the Burnett River to anchor in front of the city.

A bit scary as the first place we dropped anchor, local 'vessel-residents' quickly came to tell us to lift it as we would get entangled around ruins of an old building and sunken vessel!

We tucked in closer to the Burnett Bridge and appeared to have found a very nice spot where we could swing along with the tides. We're here to wait for the weather to be better to move South where we wanted to pick up Geoff's parents. 

As we're very well sheltered so far inland it's burning hot and dusty out here. And no possibility to swim! However enough distractions on land 😊 (I'm writing this post while being on the Gold Coast and we're looking with nostalgia back on the kindness of this place...).

Anyway, for starters there's a nice zoo (Alexandria Park Zoo). It's free and right along the water.

We got to see how they feed the snakes 😮

 This Emu seemed to have special interest in Louise. She was following her everywhere 😎

Bonus: a pretty playground just next to it 😍

Secondly, a walk into town where the shops are quite good and definitely correctly priced. So time to give Geoffrey some new hiking boots!

A small fashion show while dad tries on boots 😛

Thirdly, you can cruise up the river with your dinghy to get some air!

Ok it's still a small town, so that's about it as we already did the botanical gardens a few weeks ago and we don't have to go to the turtle centre (Mon Repos) since we saw them very up close on Lady Musgrave 😍
So as the winds tend to the North, we head down a bit, but have to stop at Burrum Head (Hervey Bay) to hide from the 40 knots of wind = 75 km/h (again nothing like predictions...).

The way down the river is ... special 😏 ... remote ... very remote!

Also the wind doesn't turn quite as much as we hoped so this is the only place we would find protection...

It's a very tricky entrance and I'm not sure we would do it a second time. We got in right on high tide and decided to quickly try and move to Walkers Point as it would give us better protection from waves. Very shallow!

Quite calm and time for homework 😉

It's the very first time our Spade Anchor didn't hold well. As soon as the tide turned we flipped over our anchor and the mud is so thin and sticky that the Spade couldn't burry in quickly enough. So needless to say that after an exhausting night we decided to move on anyway.

So we're tucking in behind Moon Point on Fraser Island. We managed to find an entrance into a lagoon in front of the beach and are actually very well protected 😎 

Beautiful beach, endless walks possible and you could swim if there weren't blue stinger jellyfish everywhere ...

The girls are just so happy to finally be able to play on a beach again!

Searching for some driftwood to make a Christmas present 😋

 These pelican's are so elegant when they fly! I just love how they go into "stealth" mode.

Already the 9th of December. We still have time to explore this sandbank behind our boat.

It appears to be full full full of these tiny crabs. 

They quickly burry themselves in as we arrive, ...

 ... but we still have to be careful where we walk. The girls do not venture further then mommy's footsteps 😂

 Can you see there holes EVERYWHERE ?! iiiiiiiihhhhhh

So finally we prefer to walk in the water 😳

 And finally we make a shopping list for the next two weeks under another beautiful sunset!

10 Decmeber 2019. It's time to collect our new guests. We find a spot at the bizarre Great Sandy Strait marina. Bizarre as in a harbour that seems quite far from tourists attractions, yet there are hotels, charter boats, ... but no longterm travellers like us. It is a very friendly family owned business and we even got a car for 20$ to get our shopping done.

Mamy and Papy got here fine after a very exhausting 3 days trip. After a good night sleep we head straight out to try and go to Kingfisher Bay.

It's the only place you can anchor to get on land and visit Fraser Island. However you really have to have perfect conditions as it is a very exposed anchorage. Clearly we're not lucky today so we hide under Big Woody Island. Quite interesting place, but not easy to go on land. Only big rocks to walk on, but beautiful shells to collect!

And we decide to make an advents calendar. Better late than never 😌

13th of December 2019. We try again to anchor in front of the Kingfisher Bay Resort. We're just flying over there with only the gennaker.

A thunderstorm warning is given by the VHF and you can see the huge black clouds coming, but Geoffrey thinks there's enough time to check out the beach and the resort. While they head off the weather completely deteriorates in 10 minutes time! Waves are getting bigger, wind increases, the big nasty clouds come bigger and you can see the showers coming our way.

I stayed on board and quickly closed up everything and prepared to lift anchor. 

They arrived back on LouiseAnna 10 minutes later and had the hardest time trying to get back. Our 15 hp on Bob was barely enough and now LouiseAnna was dancing so high on the waves they could hardly get back on the boat.

Louise and Anna were crying for the very first time since we left and Mamy couldn't get on without a bit of bloodshed.
We quickly lifted anchor and a big lightning smashed into the sea right next to the boat. Adrenaline was already shooting through the roof tops when we saw lighting big as trees hitting Fraser Island.

(sorry focus is wrong, but you get the picture, no? 😲)

Just time enough to fix Bob. 

Then enormous hailstones dropped on us. We were slowly advancing in circles away from the beach and couldn't see a thing! Luckily we knew no other boats were around and unlikely to come this way. 

We just had to ride this one out. A very high scare moment was when the boat started healing over and the windmeter registered 73 knots (135km/h)!
Instead of trying to outrun the storm we went against it, which seemed a good  tactic as the storm blew over more quickly. Needless to say we didn't try and anchor back in the same place... we sailed further down in the dribbling rain to hide south of Yankee Jack Creek.

 Result is a beautiful rainbow...

... wrecked courtesy flag ...

 ... wet clothes and some pillows as we didn't close the rear quickly enough ...

 ... and a beautiful sunset!

14th December 2019.
We tried to find a hike along this creek, but it was too difficult to get on land and to leave Bob somewhere. We did see many rays disappearing while checking out this creek! And some funny crabs hiding under the mangrove trees.

In the hope to find a place we could go on land, we went further down to Mickey's creek in the afternoon. Time for some school work and to chill!

15th of December 2019
As an afternoon stroll there seem to be a few hiking options, however the woods were still smoking from the thunderstorm the day before... Besides the smoke, we're overly excited to get on land 😏😅

 Pretty place though!

We choose an open path towards the north in order to be able to quickly run back if there would be a fire flaming up... Not an ideal relaxing holiday 😏

 Our sticks ready as we hear the dingoes howling! We never saw them and think it's maybe because of the smoke ...

 

The sun starts to set and we realise we don't want to be here in the dark, so we hurry back...

 

And now we have to check if there are no crocodile tracks 😳😱

Louise and Anna were fishing at the back when Louise suddenly screams: "Shark, I caught a shark"!!! Too stunned by what we heard and how she was pulling on the line, we quickly went to help her and saw a cute 1 m shark before it bit himself off! She was very proud and we were very happy not to have take the hook out of his mouth 😜

Besides fishing, reading and blog writing we played games and caught up with news from home.

The girls get to show the many drawings they made explaining all their adventures on this trip 😍

16th of December 2019. After all this excitement, we moved back North and tried another time to anchor in front of Kingfisher Bay and this time conditions were absolutely perfect.

 Treasures along the way, that were hidden in the rain when we came down ...

17th of December 2019
In the morning we discovered some squid came to "rest" on the boat.

We rented a car for one day and finally got to explore this special island. The largest sand island in the world!!!
The driving is ... well not very comfortable! You're bumping over dunes for hours!!! But the landscape is beautiful. A very special rainforest with giant trees still stand proudly on this island. Everybody is driving on the beaches, which we think is just crazy!!!
But I think you have enough for one post. Let's keep these pictures for the next one 😊