George? Michael? Tim? Tom? Nick? Matt? Charles?

The next morning Schnoo was sacked from any further dispensing liquid duties after he marinaded Betty in oil! We headed to Rainbow Beach in preparation for our Fraser Island tour, before our group meeting in the afternoon we visited the Sandblow - which turned out to be a runway made of sand for the hangliders. Some excellent views of the beach although we still couldn't figure out why it was called Rainbow Beach?!

A small amount of time for a table tennis tournament, which Martin lost since his ball spent most of the time on the ground or outside! Then we headed off to meet the gang...Babara - Babs the german legend who thought everything was funny, hated walking, hated hills and loved Harry Potter (Amy got a full rendition of the story on one of our long walks up a hill!), Arianne - another german who spoke amazing english bt maybe couldn't read/interpret it all that well - she is also the beetroot lover and silent Haika - her travelling partner although you would never know since they barely spoke to each other, and the competitive three - Alex, Jim and Mark from Newcastle. We had two safety videos to watch, which usefully informed us that if we were to be attacked by dingos you have to put your hands across your chest and back away slowly...looking forward to this already! Then we had to brainstorm a shopping list for the next three days, luckily everyone was of the same opinion that they didn't want to go hungry so we ended up spending $220 for the 10 of us for seven meals!

If you cross Big Brother with Supermarket Sweep - that's pretty much what our shopping trip looked like! We survived unscathed apart from a few unecessary provisions which we had to buy to keep everyone happy, namely sweetcorn, peas and beetroot...for sandwiches don't you know! It seemed we did better than another group who were also in the supermarket with a fairly empty trolley and were already arguing as to whether butter or mayonnaise was the way forward!? Oh, and don't forget biscuits for the biscuit king!! Back at the hostel we are told to store everything in the fridge to keep it all together...chilled toilet rolls, excellent :)

That evening we sat around for the last supper, played some pool and drank proper pints for the first time in ages...not sure how well that went down the next morning when we had to get up to meet everyone at 7:30am! We packed up the van and went for our checkup at Yo Merv's garage - we figured his routine is very well rehearsed by this point in time with his 'covering your nipples ain't gonna scare no dingo away' joke being one of his favourites...his useful advice was to hit it with a spade! Also his 'Momentum is your friend' advice turned out to be really useful along the way especially when we were taking the mick out of Yo Merv. Oh, then there was his horsefly dance which was our first warning about the inch long disgusting flies that hound you as soon as you get on the island.

With everyone and everything on board we headed down to the barge and and the beach and the 4x4 experience! As soon as we hit the sand we started bouncing around all over the place and that didn't really stop for the next three days!!