Due to a rediculous lack of money and anything better to do, Thei, Sef and I went to Stradbroke Island for the weekend. The original plan was to spend only $10 + food but we'd never tried this before so it was always going to be interesting. We left Brisbane city about 7am and I drove over to Raby Bay to catch the ferry across which we had worked out to be $10 per person return to walk onto the car barges. When we got there we stopped to get the times for the smaller faster passenger ferry and as it turns out that's $12 return for a student and takes 25 minutes instead of an hour. So we caught that instead and already blew out $10 budget. When we got to the other side our plans had been to hitchhike from Dunwich to Point Lookout (only about 20kms) but it was kind of quiet at 8:30am on a Saturday so we found out the bus was $5 return for a student bringing the total cost of travel to a modest $17 for the whole weekend.

From Point Lookout we walked around the small walking trail to take some photos seeing that's where we got off the bus which only took 30 minutes or so. The water looked so perfect that we decided to find a beach and go swimming. We walked down to Cylinder beach which had people so we went around to the next beach where there was only like half a dozen people on the whole beach and we went swimming for an hour or so. We had decided to 'camp' on Flinders beach (one of the longer ones) but this required a permit and seeing we didn't actually take any tents or anything we decided to just lie down when it got dark and if we fell asleep on the beach then that's where we stayed for the night. On the walk to Flinders beach I managed to get myself very horribly sunburnt which was hillarious for a little while but not so funny right now. After a short nap we played around in the sand for a few hours building little sand castles and digging channels until it got dark.

Setting up for the night you could tell the difference in what we had brought with us, Thei had a tarp, air mattress and sleeping bag (luxury!), Sef had a thin mat, sleeping bag and poncho to keep the water off, and I had a sleeping bag. By this time my sunburn was incredibly painful and trying to keep the mosquitos off I had to keep them in the sleeping bag where it felt like they were on fire all night so I got no sleep at all. I watched the sunrise in the morning (but I didn't have my camera with me and my feet were too sore to walk and get it) and unfortunately didn't get any photos of it but it was beautiful. At 6am Thei and Sef woke up where I informed them I was going home due to horrible pain and we all caught the bus and ferry back to Brisbane.
Do keep an eye out for new photos.
Maz