Visiting Dingo Island

 

Today, well it was today then, it was Sunday 22nd September. I woke up at 4.15am and edit, name and post 345 photos to Flickr, I'm back up to date. 

Drew wakes up at 6.00am and I make tea for the both of us. English Breakfast for me and Lemon and Ginger for Drew. 

We do our ablutions and head down to breakfast at 7am - this hotel has a lovely selection of food, but it is already crowded at 7am.

They keep changing the names 

While at breakfast Drew over hears the following conversation about our destination for today:

Husband: Why is Fraser Island called K'gai now, they keep changing the names of places, it's confusing

Wife: Yes, they do the same in Wales too - they've called Mount Snowdon something strange.  

Little did we know that Eryri and Bannau Brycheiniog were making an impact worldwide! [Co-pilot's note: Yikes, dear reader, yikes - now he's at it 🤣] But it was interesting to think that the trends towards original names are happening at both ends of the world!

Breakfast

The breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express Sunshine Coast was like that in other Holiday Inn Expresses, an excellent selection of fruit.

Haydn's first plate

Drew's first plate

Haydn's main

No sausages here, but otherwise a nice selection, we seem to have missed Drew's main in the photos, but it was not dissimilar to mine. [Co-pilot's note: it was, dear readers, just a smidge smaller 😉]

On the Road

We left the hotel at 08:30am and followed this route:

Our first stop was less than 2 kilometres from the hotel at the Shell Petrol Station to fill up for the journey. A friendly bird was in the grass around the station.

And, having bought petrol I took the opportunity to wash the windscreen, which had got somewhat dirty over the last few days driving.

The route along the M1 took us passed Mount Cooroora, a mountain that looks more like a pyramid than a natural occuring feature,

Soon after the M1 ran out and we were diverted on to the A1 - the next stage of the M1 seems to be in plan, as we saw lots of heavy digging equipment alongside the road. It being Sunday, none of it was in use. 

On the A1 we passed the intriguingly named town of Gimpie [Co-pilot's note: We, dear readers, had not seen much roadkill on the side of the road on the last few days of the journey, but once we got to Gympie is became very different. Dead kangaroos and wallabies were along the side of the road in great numbers]

after an hour and a half and 121km we stopped at a BP Petrol Station which served coffee in a place called Greenwood. I'm sure you can guess what we had.

 

Twenty minutes later we were back on the road past Tiaro

and Maryborough

before coming to the turn off for River Heads

As we turned onto the River Heads road, so we got detailed instructions on what was and was not allowed on K'gari.

On the way to K'gari

We arrived at the Kingfisher Bay Resort Mainland Reception at River Heads at 12.10pm,

well in advance of our 1pm deadline. We check in, move the car to long term parking and hand our luggage over, all bar our hand luggage will be delivered to our rooms on the isalnd. 

At 12.45pm we board the bus to the ferry which was pulling into port when we arrived.

The Ferry leaves dead on time at 1pm, this ferry is called the Kingfisher Bay and is a specialist provision for the Kingfisher Bay Resort. There is a regular ferry for those staying elsewhere on the island.

It was a pretty, but uneventful journey until a mother whale and her calf began to swim behind us. Sadly I had the camera not Drew, so the photos aren't as good as they might have been!  

Arrival at K'gari

The courtesy vehicle that was at the jetty to take us up to the resort was a bus train. 

Ranger Allan greeted us at the dock and directed us to the 'train' when ranger Ellen drove us up to the resort with its wide open Atrium.

We are given directions to room 244 and walk through the lush green surrounds to get there. 

We arrived at the room at 2.20pm and settled in, the room has a lovely balcony which gives the impression that we are in a tree house.

At 2.30pm the luggage arrives and we unpack. While it had been a lovely journey across to the island I felt really tired and lethargic, with a sore throat and muggy head which had started a day or two ago, but was no in full force.

I rested on the bed and slept for an hour, before getting up and posting the photos from the journey. 

Drew did some exploring and found the K'gari Gallery, where the works of photographer Peter Meyer are displayed and sold.

Sounds

As it got dark we went back out onto the balcony. The noise of the insects and other creatures in the trees around us was phenomenal. Drew commented about the fact we come to somewhere quiet and it is noisier than a city centre. I'll let you judge, here is a small piece of recording Drew made on his iPad to capture some of the noises.

Dinner

Feeling a little revived after my snooze, we decided to go to dinner early, ready for our busy day tomorrow.

We had booked the main restaurant on the site for Monday evening, so decided to eat tonight at the other venue, a short walk away called the Sand Bar Bistro. It had all the feelings of a bar, but little of the bistro.

The Sand Bar doesn't have table service, so having selected your menu you queue up and place your order, or to be more specific, I queue up and place our order. You pay on ordering and then get a flasher to alert you to pick up your food when it is ready.

Meanwhile you do to the bar and order your drinks which you carry back to the table and wait for the flasher to flash. 

For starters Drew ordered Seasoned Potato Wedges, these were potato wedges served with lemon myrtle (seems to turn up everywhere) and spring onion sour cream

I opted for the Karaage Chicken Bites, it was crispy fried Japanese flavoured chicken with wasabi, and lemon aioli, perfectly tasty, if not very inspiring.

After the starters I went back and rejoined the queue, only 8 people in front of me this time, not the 12 like earlier. It would be possible to order all the food at once, but then it would be cold by the time we had got to our mains.

Drew treated himself to the El Supremo Pizza, a pizza with minced beef, bacon, salami, red onion, mushrooms, and capsicum (what the Australians, like the Americans, call what we call red pepper). Drew really enjoyed his pizza and savoured every bit of it. With an especially savour becuase he knew he'd get some comment about it from my sister.

I had been hoping to order a rack of ribs, which would have been my first ribs of the holiday. However, by the time I got to place my order they were out of rips, so, given the limited options I went with Chicken Parmigiana. Imagine, chicken for starter and chicken for main - what a scandal, how will I ever live it down. The parmigiana was a chicken breast schnitzel topped with Napoli sauce, ham and mozzarella served with salad and chips. It was perfectly palatable.

Dinner over, we walked back to our room and went to bed by 9pm. Ready for the excitements of tomorrow, but that is for another blog post.