Merry Xmas !

We'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2009!

 
Arjan, Rocky, Hans, Milo
and our home-baked 'kerststol'

Fencing

We happened to have an unused flight to Melbourne, so we decided to give Aukje and the family another visit! Since they hadn't  had any good weather for a while, we packed some with us.

Arjan and Arthur making fences for the horses.	Cheers!
Hibiscus flower in our champagne	The girls anxiously waiting with their kinder-bubbles.
We cooked a Snapper in a salt-crust
Hans making pavlova for desert.	Tjits almost eating the pavlova before we could serve it.

Unfortunately only a very short weekend, but again very relaxing!

Sand !

Our first big trip with our Nissan Patrol... Fraser Island. Fraser is a top destination for 4WD'ers, its considered to be the largest sand island in the world at 1840 km². It is located 300km north of Brisbane and only accessible by 4WD. There are no sealed roads on the island and although the tides make it necessary for some roads to be inland, most of the driving happens on the beach. The speed-limit on the beach is 80km/hr, but only on the hard patches that is actually achievable.

We took a week leave before the big holiday season and drove up to Queensland. We had a stop in Taree, 2 nights in Byron Bay, then 4 nights on Fraser Island. On the way back we stopped over in Surfers Paradise and Port Macquarie.

The best way to experience the island is by camping, so we bought a tent and some gear, loaded everything in the Patrol and took off. Unfortunately we had 3 days of rain, but after that it was all sunshine.

 

Pitching the tent

The inland roads are hard to drive on	Driving on the beach
Wild Dingo	The wreck of the Maheno
Big monitor lizard (1m)	Ely Creek, the famous and most beautiful creek on the island.
Bogged !	Champagne pools
Hans cooking pineapple burgers on the Barbie
Whoo hoo
Back on the ferry to the mainland	Scrubbing all the salty dirt off and ready for the trip back.

 

The whole trip was 3000km and 300liters of Diesel.