EAST COAST PART 2 (MY WORST POST YET!)

Hey, guys, welcome back to my channel! Today I’m gonna be talking about something that a lot of you have been requesting. And by a lot of you I mean absolutely not any of you. And that something is… the next segment of my East Coast Adventure!!! But before we can get into that, just a quick update on where I am now: I moved to Melbourne a few days ago to look for more work. I’m staying at a hostel in St Kilda, which is (I think) a hip/happening/trendy little suburb? It’s cute. We’ve been to some cool bars. I found a burrito place owned by a guy from San Francisco. Damn good burritos. According to their website, they import their tortillas from California. I believe it. You don’t find tortillas like that in Australia, I’ll tell you that for free. I’m probably gonna get one for dinner. Definitely. 

We went to see the fairy penguins by the St Kilda Pier. It’s one of only two penguin colonies in the world on a manmade structure. Fun facts are fun! When the sun goes down, the penguins return from their daily penguin activities and they hop around the rocks and do nightly penguin activities and make penguin noises. Sometimes they mate. Sometimes they square up and have little penguin tiffs. Then they leave before the sun comes back up. Not every penguin comes back every night, because apparently sometimes they have little penguin quests? I’m not a penguin expert please don’t ask me any more questions that is all the information I have regarding the penguins. If you go, please don’t crowd the penguins and don’t use flash on your photos. Basically just don’t be a dick. They’re so little and it’s probably really scary to look up and see crowds of giants with phones and cameras pointed at you. I’m actually getting sad about these penguins now. I am a little penguin and life is an overwhelming crowd of shitty tourists. Is that a metaphor or an analogy? What’s the difference? Is it a square/rectangle situation? Fuck. I’m a little penguin and literary devices are an overwhelming crowd of shitty tourists. There’s a meta-metaphor for you guys. Ha. Fuck or would it be meta-analogy? What even is an analogy? WHATEVER I’M OVER IT. 

I flew down here with my friend British Katie. She’s from Doncaster, which also happens to be where Tan France (of Queer Eye fame) is from. She’s nothing like Tan, though. She’s very northern. If you don’t know what that means, it basically means she’s from the garbage half of England. Poor Katie. 😦 She already has a job here. Took her a day of applying. The little bitch. It’s just a shitty call center job, but I guess it’s better than destitution. For everyone worried about Canadian Sarah- don’t worry! She’s finishing up in Sydney and she’ll be down here soon enough. This 2-week separation is tough but we’ll all be stronger for it.

Anyway. This post isn’t about Melbourne. It’s about the East Coast!!! So hop on that Greyhound and come along!!! Beep beep!

NOOSA? MORE LIKE LITERAL HEAVEN ON EARTH

If you don’t know what Noosa is… that’s okay I didn’t know anything about it before I got there either. Except I’d seen the yogurt company called Noosa but I wasn’t sure if there was any connection to Australia or some yogurt executives were just trying to put some cute sounds together to make a cute name for their edgy new yogurt. I googled it- just for you guys, you’re welcome- and I learned that the yogurt is indeed named after the Australian town! The co-founder is from there and maybe the style of yogurt is also from there? I didn’t dig too deep ok please don’t heckle me. 

Long story short… we loved Noosa. It’s a little resort town on the Sunshine Coast. It’s what I wanted Byron Bay to be. It has Martha’s Vineyard vibes, if that makes sense. It’s a little upscale, it’s got cute boutiques and nice restaurants. There’s even a Ben & Jerry’s! We stayed at the YHA Halse Lodge. (I know it sounds a little upscale but I promise it’s just a hostel.) It’s cute, as far as hostels go. There’s a nice little bar/restaurant downstairs with backpacker meal deals. It’s not like most bar/restaurants attached to hostels, though. Real families on holiday come to eat, drink, and be merry under the fairy lights on the patio. It’s a wholesome bar/restaurant, not a trashy “club” bar/restaurant. Like there isn’t a dance floor. Y’know? It was nice to not be staying at the party hostel for once. Don’t worry, though, we still partied. At the party hostel down the road. We managed to get very drunk 2 of our 3 nights in Noosa. Calm, quiet, chill little Noosa. There are some problems with getting very drunk in Noosa, of all places, though. Let me paint a picture for you: you’re out having a good time with your girls. You drank some wine with dinner. And then you smuggled some wine into your room to pregame. You’re out at the bar dancing, singing, chatting. You’re buying a lot of drinks because it seems so cheap after living in Sydney for 5 months! And then the bar closes. So you try the one across the street. But it’s also closed. So you try to find food. No late-night food. Even 7-11 is closed. Then it starts to absolutely piss down rain. That means you can’t go hang out on the beach like angsty teens. All there is to do is run back to your hostel in the pouring rain and go to bed. With a lot of alcohol just coursing through your body. Now, I’m no scientist, but I believe, and please don’t correct me if I’m wrong, that it’s bad to go to bed really drunk. Something about sleep cycles? Metabolizing alcohol? We woke up with hellish hangovers is what I’m trying to say.

There are a few key things to see in Noosa. There’s a beach. Probably a few beaches, but we just laid on the obvious one right by all the shops and restaurants. It was so beautiful. There were a lot of families with little kids running around but they weren’t annoying somehow? Even though I was really hungover? Just cute. I guess that’s Noosa, baby.

There’s also coastal walk that goes into Noosa National Park and passes through some nice coves and lookouts. This coastal walk is how most backpackers get to the fairy pools. The fairy pools are some rock pools that, when the tide is right, you can swim in and, more importantly, get a cheeky instagram picture. We didn’t actually make it on the coastal walk, so we definitely didn’t make it to the fairy pools. We were too hungover both days we planned on going. I cannot express to you guys how bad all three of us were hanging. It was ungodly. Debilitating. That’s showbiz, baby! I regret nothing! 

The third key thing to see in Noosa are the Everglades. I know what you’re thinking: “But, Sophie, aren’t the Everglades in Florida?” Guess what? There are actually two Everglades! Just two! In the entire world! And the second Everglades are in Noosa. In Queensland. In Australia. The best part, though? These Everglades aren’t infested with alligators! They’re not even infested with crocodiles! It’s safe to do fun water activities, such as kayaking! Which is what we did. We spent like eight hours doing a self-guided kayak tour of the Everglades, and we didn’t even get lost once. It was so cool and beautiful and peaceful and inspiring. Canadian Mary and Canadian Sarah were together in a kayak, and I was paired up with a stranger, British Rebecca. She was a chiller and we had a grand old time. We all became one with the ‘glades. Just us and the ‘glades. Found ourselves in the ‘glades. Rebecca was also making her way up the coast so we ran into her a lot on our journey. That’s one of the best (and worst) parts about traveling the coast: you keep seeing the same people at every stop. It’s great when you see your pals again and again. But it’s not great when you keep running into people you decided you all hate. Anyway, Canadian Mary and Canadian Sarah didn’t wear sunscreen at all for our kayaking adventure. Y’know, like fucking idiots. And I forgot to reapply. Y’know, like a fucking idiot. So we all got absolutely roasted.  

We invested in some Bondi Sands aloe vera spray and WOW is that a product I recommend. It saved our asses from peeling our way up the coast. And it smells so good… whenever we desperately needed to shower or do laundry, we’d just have a cheeky full-body spritz and feel fresh as a daisy. Are we disgusting? Yes of course! Should we have just taken the shower and done the laundry? Definitely- no arguments here! Sponsor us, Bondi Sands!

I bought a camouflage bucket hat from a souvenir shop in Noosa. My face needed all the protection it could get from that hot hot Aussie sun. Canadian Mary and Canadian Sarah pretended to hate it but really they loved it. I wore it literally every day for the rest of the trip. It’s a big part of my personality now. We also got matching Noosa t-shirts. We didn’t walk into the store thinking, “Hey! We should get matching shirts!” We’re not that annoying… on purpose. It just so happens that we all liked the same shirt. I think they’re also a part of our personalities now. Noosa was a really good bonding place for the three of us, I think. Like, we weren’t not getting along before. But I was really sick, Sarah was trying to fight off whatever I had, and Mary was getting over jet-lag. And then in Noosa we were finally able to get ridiculously drunk together, get ridiculously hungover together, and make some memories. It was truly the start of something new. ❤

One more thing before I sign off on Noosa… just a quick honorable mention to the can of spaghetti I bought from 7-11 to drunk eat one night (semper paratus, y’know?) that I didn’t end up eating and just carried with me up the rest of the coast and then ended up gifting to an Irish girl in our hostel in Cairns the night before we left for Sydney. Canadian Mary and Canadian Sarah thought it was disgusting but I was excited to give it a try. Never let the haters keep you from doing you. And another quick honorable mention to the fork I stole from our hostel in Noosa so I could eat the canned spaghetti after the kitchen closed. I still have that fork in my bag. 🙂

That’s Noosa, baby! 

THIS IS FRASER ISLAND, BABY!

Much like with Noosa, I didn’t know anything about Fraser Island. I knew we booked a 3-day, 2-night camping tour. And I knew I had never been camping before in my entire goddamn life. And that’s about it. Canadian Mary didn’t even know we had booked a camping tour until the night before when we were packing our little bags. Here’s what I know about Fraser now: it’s the world’s largest sand island in the world. It’s also home to the most dangerous beach in the world. We’re talking sharks. We’re talking stingrays, killer jellies, riptides, probably other things I don’t even know about. You’re just not supposed to go in the water, okay? But also somehow there’s a whole-ass rainforest growing on this sand island? So that means you’ve got snakes, spiders, and other creepy crawlies to worry about. And I haven’t even gotten to the dingoes yet. Fraser Island is home to one of the last populations of pure dingoes in Australia. I think there are like 200 of them? Don’t quote me on that, though. You should all know by now not to quote me on anything. Dingoes are basically dogs, but wild and mean? Like they can attack humans sometimes. They’re super protected on Fraser. You’re basically not supposed to interact with them at all, because then they won’t be scared of humans and they’ll attack us more… I think is the gist. There are signs everywhere telling you it’s illegal to feed a dingo, how to act if you encounter one, don’t go anywhere alone, etc. We went over Easter weekend, which is apparently during mating season for dingoes. So the guides told us to be extra careful because the dingoes were in heat and therefore more aggressive. Be wary of horny dingoes. Oh, and also there’s basically no cell service on the island. 

After reading all that, aren’t you just itching to go camping (for the first time ever) on Fraser Island?? Me too! I wasn’t regretting every life decision that led me to that point at all! 

So we did the Dingoes tour. I think most of them are structured kind of the same, unless you’re doing a day tour or something. Then you might be in a 4WD bus. Good luck with that. Anyway, we stayed in the Dingoes hostel in Rainbow Beach, which is the mainland “home base” for a lot of these tours. Don’t ask me anything about Rainbow Beach- we didn’t do any sightseeing there. Guess why. Guess. No, it’s not because we were hungover!! For once! It’s because our bus got to the hostel at 8PM and we left for Fraser at 8AM the next day. Moving on. 

Eight people fit in a car, so we were split into groups of eight. And then each guide had five cars in his “caravan.” Did I mention that we, shitty little backpackers, are responsible for driving all over this deathtrap of an island? We are. Well, not me. I can’t drive manual. And even if I could, I absolutely would not. Theoretically, there’s supposed to be two or three drivers in each group. The company messed up and split me and my Canadians up, so we had to beg some random people to please swap groups with us so we could all be together. So our group of eight ended up being us, four Germans, and a Danish girl. The Germans weren’t all together. They just happened to all be German. There are a lot of Germans in Australia. With tours like this, your experience really all depends on the people in your group. Are we going to be friends or just exist near each other? Are we a party car or a wholesome car? What’s the vibe, what’s the mood, what’re the next three days going to be like??? Having a majority of Germans made us nervous that they would ignore us and just, like, be German. 

We got so lucky, though. Our car was awesome. And we adopted another German girl we’d met back in Brisbane. She was in our tour group (what are the odds!), just in a different car. But her car had whack vibes, so she hung out with us the whole time. And we got lucky with our guide. We had Brendo and he is the fucking man. We love Brendo. It was one of the best weekends of my life. The most unexpected highlight of the trip. Insane. If you’re a young adult and you do Fraser any other way, you’re doing it wrong.

We stayed in a dingo-proof campsite, so at least we didn’t have to worry about dingoes at night. It’s on Aboriginal land, so if you whistle at night you’ll get cursed. No whistling! There was a “kitchen” area with picnic tables and a lot of crusty camping cooking gear. There was a path that led to a “club” hut for dancing. Further down the path there were toilets and showers. But you had to pay $2 for 5 minutes of shower water. So… yeah we didn’t shower. I swear more boys used those showers than girls. All the tents were set up under big sections of tarp so it was all rain-proof, too. We hired sleeping bags from Dingoes for $10… without them we would’ve been sleeping on the literal actual ground. The whole tour is BYOB, so everyone brings an obscene amount of goon and cheap cans of beer/cider. 

All of our meals were included and we ate with our cars. For breakfast, there was stuff like bread and muesli. For lunch, we made wraps every day. Sometimes the meat was a little sus and I just had cheese and veggies. Dinner was always way too complicated. On the first night, we had to make a chicken noodle stir fry dish. We had to chop what seemed like an entire garden’s worth of veggies and an entire coop’s worth of chicken. It was so much food. And the three guys didn’t help at all. Shocker. Canadian Sarah and the German and Danish girls ended up doing most of the cooking because I was drinking and Canadian Mary was drunk. Classic us! The second night we had to cook “steak” and potatoes. It definitely wasn’t steak but I don’t know what else to call it. Somewhere between steak and burger meat? I was even less help than on the first night. On night one I chopped a few carrots, I asked around for lighters to get some burners going. I pretended to be involved. Night two I literally just watched and drank. Here’s a fun picture from the kitchen on night one, feat. matching Noosa shirts and matching cups of goon! Girls who go camping!

I was so worried about camping but I think it’s my vibe. Getting drunk in a t-shirt and athletic shorts? Not wearing makeup? No one wearing makeup?? Dancing on picnic tables??? I was born for this. Some of the Germans were better at English than others, but it was fine because drinking is universal. Namaste. There was a lot of this song, subbing in everyone’s names: IIIIII like to drink with Sophie, ‘cause Sophie is my mate, and when we drink with Sophie, she gets it down in 8, 7, 6… and then you have to skull your drink by the time the countdown reaches one, obviously. We taught them to say “to you and yours” when cheers-ing. And we learned “PROST!” We all yelled that song Hey Baby probably an annoying amount. Randomly. Over other music. HEYYYYY, HEY BABY. OOH. AHH. I WANNA KNOWWWW IF YOU’LL BE MY GIRL 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and then it starts again. Just over and over. No one knows when that started. We thought it was night two of Fraser, but then there’s video of us signing it on night one. Canadian Mary found a video of us doing it in Noosa, but no one remembers. One of life’s greatest mysteries. I was having so much fun I didn’t remember to be scared about snakes and spiders. I didn’t even notice I didn’t have cell service. We went out to the beach on the first night, which you aren’t really supposed to do. It’s an “at your own risk” kind of situation. We just sat in a circle and drank and did all the dickhead things mentioned above and looked at stars. Just camping shit, y’know? We brought a dingo stick with us to ward off any dingoes. We actually did see one, but it didn’t want anything to do with us. 

I promise we didn’t just drink on Fraser! Even though it seems that way! On the first day we hopped on the ferry from Rainbow Beach to Fraser Island and then drove a few hours down the beach to the campsite to have lunch and get settled. Then we backtracked to a place called Eli Creek, which is like a freshwater lazy river right by the beach. We had inner tubes and floated down. It was nice but kind of short. And shallow. The water came up my calf, maybe? We visited the SS Maheno shipwreck. It was a commercial ship that had been sold for scrap to some shipyard in Japan. It was being towed to Osaka when a cyclone hit and the SS Maheno ran aground on Fraser in 1935. They couldn’t get it back to sea and tried to sell it but no one else wanted to buy it so they just left it there and now it’s a sight to see on Fraser Island, baby!

On the second day we went to the Champagne Pools. They’re these big rock pools that look all bubbly when the ocean waves crash in… like champagne… get it??? It was a really pretty spot, but none of us brought our phones so I have absolutely no photos. As is tradition. Next, we went to Indian Head, which is the most easterly point on the island (according to wikipedia) and also a stunning lookout point. You’re basically standing on a cliff over the ocean- there’s no barrier or anything. We saw some giant rays in the water below. It was sick. Brendo said there’s apparently a ton of iPhones, GoPros, selfie sticks, etc. just sitting on the rocks on the way down because it’s a windy spot and people drop their shit all the time. But there’s no way to get to it all because you’d have to scale the rocks above the shark-infested waters and it’s too dangerous. Classic Fraser Island! Sounds like the perfect job for Tom Cruise.

Our last stop of the day was a freshwater tea tree lake. The water looks super murky from all the tea trees, so it’s a little spooky because this is Australia and you never know what’s lurking. But I trust Brendo with all my heart, and he said it’s safe and fun. So I went for a swim. I highly recommend a dip in a tea tree lake. I felt so fresh and clean and smelled so good. Who needs $2 showers when you can take a natural tea tree bath?

We had to wake up at 5:30AM on our last day so we could spend some time at Lake McKenzie before heading back to Rainbow Beach. It wasn’t as rough as it sounds… because we were all 100% still drunk from the night before. (Except for the drivers, who were sober the night before and therefore also sober in the morning. Safety first!) Brendo made it very clear to everyone that if you weren’t in the car and ready to go at 6AM, we would leave you behind. So of course we were missing someone in the morning. Some Irish kid named Cole. Classic fuckin’ Cole. We made it out to the beach when Brendo comes on over the car radio- “So I called my boss… and it turns out we actually can’t leave without him.” So we went back to the campsite and got out of our cars and everyone started yelling for Cole. We were all kind of cracking jokes but also thinking, “He could be dead on the beach. He could be dead in the dunes. He could be dead anywhere. This is Fraser Island. He could be dead anywhere.” After two minutes, he staggers out of a random tent, nowhere near any of our group’s tent clusters. Like?? Okay, Cole, I guess??

With Cole back safe and sound in his car, we continued on to Lake McKenzie. It was the longest drive on the bumpiest “road” through the forest. Canadian Mary almost threw up, but she was sitting in the middle seat, which isn’t ideal for car puking. We had to switch seats, mid-drive, so she could stick her head out the half-open back window. We were just getting tossed around that fucking car. It was a mess and I thought it would never end. But Lake McKenzie was worth it. It’s this beautiful lake that’s entirely filled with rainwater and not a lot of wildlife. My ideal lake setup. The sand is pure silica so it’s super smooth and good for your skin and hair for some reason? Science? I definitely rubbed sand all over my hair and body so I hope it did something rejuvenating. I don’t have any photos of Lake McKenzie because I was living in the moment. You guys just have to take my word for it when I say… it’s got some sick views. Anyway here’s a video, courtesy of Canadian Sarah, of the car ride back to Rainbow. Dead homies, every last one of us.

When we got back to Rainbow, we had an afterparty at the hostel bar. Brendo bought some jugs of beer and cider since we all got through that early morning. Except for Cole, of course. Brendo performed live music. He had one of those loop machine things so he was playing guitar, percussion, and singing. Like some kind of triple threat. It was amazing. We love you, Brendo.

On the first day we took a group photo in front of our car, as one does. It’s so awkward. We took another group photo at the afterparty back at the hostel. The vibes are so different. It’s amazing what getting drunk on a remote island with no phone service for three days can do.

Honorable mention to me, for saying “Happy birthday, Jesus!” a lot on Easter. At first everyone was horrified that I didn’t understand Easter. Then they realized it was a joke and absolutely hated it. Then I said it enough that they started laughing. And then, eventually, they started saying it too. Happy birthday, Jesus! Today and every day!

And honorable mention to our Germans, for showing us that Germans can be cool. 🙂 

And one last honorable mention to Brendo, for being Brendo. Thanks, Brendo. 

That’s Fraser, baby!

Jesus, that was a lot. I don’t know if it’s even remotely interesting to read if you’re not me or my Canadians, reminiscing on the good times. Probably not. I still have to cover Airlie Beach/the Whitsundays, Magnetic Island, and Cairns. At this point I should really just invest in a journal and stop trying to publish my shitty content, but here we are. Send tweet.