Round The World

We left Rockhampton the next morning but still had a 6 hour drive ahead of us. As part of our Whit Sundays trip, we had booked a self-drive trip to Fraser Island. This consisted of two nights and three days on the island, driving a 4X4 with 8 other people, camping out at night and driving round the island during the day.

The trip included 2 nights accommodation with Fraser ESCAPE backpackers, so that was where we headed. Hervey Bay was absolutely over crowded with shops, shopping centres, and so I was expecting it to be a pretty lively town when we arrived. However, that wasn't really the case and there was onlya couple of pubs, which closed early and one night club which reminded me of a bad version of Good Time Charlies, and that really says something.

The hostel was probably one of the strangest we had seen. It was a converted caravan park, so a lot of the rooms were actual caravans, and the others were like mobile homes you would see down in Wexford and that. There was only 4 beds in the room, and we had our own bathroom and kitchen unit so that seemed ok. There was an aussie guy living in the room when we got there, and he was the skinniest guy I have ever met. He had been travelling around for a long time living off the dole, and basically eating nothing.

The first night that we were there, we headed down the beach front to find a bar for a couple of drinks. There was two bars but they closed at 10:30 and the only other place was a nightclub that opened at that time and went until 3. When we got to the nightclub, it smelled really bad so we weren'too keen on staying there. We bumped into a Scottish girl that we knew from travelling around so we stayed for a couple and then headed home for a fairly early night.

I have to add this bit here so that the story makes sense a little furhter on. In our room, there was a ocked door. We just put this down to being a closet or something, but the next day we found out that it was actually a double room, within our room but there was nobody staying in there.

The next day we had our meeting for Fraser Island. This was where we met everyone who was going to be on our trip. There was 3 couples (one lesbian, which of course we only found out while on the island)myself and Jason, and one other girl and guy. They all seemed really nice on first impressions so we were looking forward to a good trip. We all put money into a kitty so that we could bulk buy the food for the trip. We were setting off at 8 the next morning so everyone, except myself an J of course, headed to bed for an early night.

After packing our bags for the next day, we went into the bar of the hostel and had a few drinks. The bar girl in there was getting drunk herself and seemed to be a little bit crazy. She was letting everyone smoke inside the bar (which is not normal for Queensland) and she was drinking shots while she worked. She even came out to play pool against us at one point. While we were talking to some of the people in the bar, about our sky dives, they asked could they see the dvd's. We asked the bar girl if that would be ok and she agreed so I went and got the discs, and went in behind the bar to put them on. There was a mass of equipment in there and I spent ages trying to figure out how to get it working but I failed miserably. However, I was already in behind the bar at that point, so I stayed.

I had the bar girl show me how to pour proper drinks, and make cocktails. J went to bed at this point but another Irish guy stayed in the bar with me. I was making lots of different cocktails, and any one I didn't like, I just threw straight down the sink and started again. The bar girl didnt seem to care how much alcahol was getting wasted so myself and the other Irish guy were having Baby Guiness shots in between each pint.
I fell back to bed at some point in the night, not even managing to get my jeans off.

I was woken up by Jason asking me what I had done with our bags that we packed for the trip. I was so hungover, I just told him to stop messing and I rolled over and tried to go back asleep. There was a Japanese guy in our room that night too and he was part of our Fraser Trip. His bag was gone and he was really concerned. Jason suggested that maybe the people had put the bags on the truck for us, and we were all happy with that idea for a minute until the whole thing hit home.

Nobody was going to come and load the bags for us, the bags were no longer in the room, my head was absolutely pounding and thats why this all took so long to process but........

WE HAD BEEN ROBBED!!!

I got a sick feeling in my stomach then as I remembered everything I had packed for the trip. iPod, digital camera, all of my toiletries, most of my underwear, my favourite t-shirts, my brand new sandals, my medication, pretty much everything I had.

Jason ran outside, when he came back, he had his bag in his hand. I was so relieved, I then thought that they had been playing a trick on me, and that nothing had really been stolen. That just wasn't the case. Jason's bag wasn't locked so they were able to open it and see what was inside. Realising that it was just clothes, they scattered them around the caravan park and threw the bag aside. My bag, and the poor japanese guys bag, were not so lucky. The zips on our bags had been locked, and so the dirty scumbag thieves, had to take the bags away somewhere else to find out what goodies were inside.

I ran out to the reception wearing just my jeans to tell them that we had been robbed. What I was expecting was a shocked face and an Oh My God, I can't believe it moment, but what I got was......You should have locked your door, thats what we say here....Lock it or Lose it. So I demanded that they call the police. It seems they already had so I went back to the room to wait for them.

While we were waiting on the police, we started to piece together what had happened. The door to the room was locked that night so we didnt understand how we had been robbed. The secret double room that was there had to be the answer. It turned out that while we were at our meeting the day before, two guys had checked in there. Bit strange for two guys to take the double room we thought. They then checked out at 5am while the rest of us were sleeping, and on their way out, they picked up our bags and took them with them. The hostel was really crap for security and they only ever took peoples first names at the desk when they checked in and never even asked for passports.

When the police arrived, they spoke to each one of us and took down the details of what was stolen. I knew they couldnt really do anything but at the same time it still gutted me when they said, enjoy the rest of your trip, im afraid there's nothing we can do. They took our mobile phone numbers and said they would contact us if anything came up, but alas, we've not heard anything yet.

With all of this going on, there was still a major problem for me, I had no clothes.....and I had to leave for Fraser in 30 mins.