a day in the life: Northern Cooloola, Great Sandy National Park

Russ: "Did you do any body surfing when you grew up in Wisconsin?"
Me: "No, we don't get much of that there."
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Australia Day, January 26, 2009.

My friend Jason invited me camping over the holiday weekend: Seven men for three days of camping. I didn't really have to do anything before the trip other than figure out what to prepare for one meal and get my gear in order.

Before I go any further with this post, I am going to acknowledge that I have an amazing, giving and loving wife who let me go off on a boys weekend while I left her stuck at home with no air conditioning. I would have to watch chick flicks every weekend for the rest of the year to make it up to her.

Imagine 40 kilometres of gorgeous beach which can only be accessed by four wheel drive vehicles. You are allowed to camp along 15 kilometres of that beach with a permit, and when we drove along it on Saturday morning it was stacked up cheek by jowl with campers.

We were camping near at Freshwater Campground near Double Island Point. It is a serviced camp ground with 55 sites, showers and water set among scribbly gum woodland. We would be roughing it in semi-luxury.

Since the access was limited to people who owned four wheel drive vehicles and were also willing to get salt water sprayed on their undercarriage while driving on the beach there was an element of exclusivity to this park. We were camping on the busiest weekend of the year and I still felt like it was our private beach.

I could write for pages about how beautiful the scenery was, how clean and clear the water was, and how I spent most of my time in the water feeling like shark bait, but not caring. I don't think it would do any of it justice, so I will let the photos speak for me.