Luck of the Irish

The next morning Paddy and I woke up early and went for a run on the beach before getting on the road again. Weeks before the trip I had images in my head of Paddy and I in a fast jog along the beach, possibly just running in our bathing suits, strutting our golden tans with all the other fit Aussies (think Baywatch).  Instead, I was hyperventilating after just a few minutes of slowly jogging in the roasting sun and was barely able to lift my feet in the soft sand. Just a short 20 minutes later with my face as red as a tomato, I decided I had had enough. Not exactly how I had imagined it to be. I'm now convinced that the beach is strictly for lying on. 

After recovering from our light jog, we got back on the one lane highway and headed for Hervey Bay. The scenery was not much different that the day before but this time lasted even longer. We were on the road for hours. After a while, its interesting to see how your perception of the things around you change. We became increasingly aware of all the bush fires and it was strange to see how beautiful the bush was after the fire. The trunks were a dark charcoal black color and the trees still had leaves, fire red leaves. It was as if they still resembled the blaze even after the fire was out. It was beautiful and incredible to see how quickly the trees in this area recovered from fire. Australia is a constant reminder to me that nature is stronger that we think. 

Hervey Bay is a small town right on the east coast which is home to my lovely old neighbor and dear friend Elle MacPherson (Hi Elle, thanks for reading the blog!). Just off the coast is an island called Fraser which is the largest sand island in the world. We were hoping to book a tour of Fraser Island for the next day. But as the day would have it, we were arriving very late into Hervey Bay and most places were shutting down for the evening. We made our way to the campervan park along the beach to get a spot for the night and much to our surprise they were shutting down as well (everything seems to close around 6 in Australia, its like employers want to go home or something). I jumped out of Tulula to catch the woman shutting the office and asked her if they had any availability. She was very sweet and said yes and asked if we were able to pay by cash. Then Paddy came strolling in and started talking to me, much to our surprise this woman was delighted that he was Northern Irish. She quickly called her husband in, who in fact was Northern Irish as well, and they immediately starting bonding over Belfast (even though they had hardly anything in common as the man had left 40 years ago).

2 hours of bonding later, the couple sorted us out completely. They got us on a tour to Fraser Island the next morning, a place to stay that night, a night for free to leave Tulula on the campervan site while we were on the island, and they weren't even going to charge us for power. As if this wasn't enough already, we didn't have to pay for any of it that night.  I told the woman we didn't have any cash on us and she gave me a warm smile and said not to worry about it, we can pay for it all later. This was a very fruitful bond already!