Dingo Ate My Cookies!

In the first 21 years of my life, I never experienced the joy of camping. One day while hanging out with friends in Australia, the topic of camping came up. I mentioned that I had never been camping. None of my friends from Australia or from America believed me. I got my mom on Skype to ask her why we never had been camping. She exclaimed in her especially thick long island accent “Well… where would we shower?!!”

My camping virginity was taken when 5 friends and I traveled up the coast to Frasier Island in northern Queensland. There were no roads on the island so we had to rent a truck with 4 wheel drive to be able to cruise on the sand. Within the first 10 minutes of our arrival, our Land Rover got stuck on the narrow sand path. We got out to try and push our truck along when we spotted a gigantic tour bus magically making its way towards us from the opposite direction. We all gazed at this huge bus squeezing down the sand path and wondered what would happen next. The door of the bug busted open and a line of men jogged out with buckets of water running toward our truck which was blocking the sand road. They started speaking another language we could not understand and throwing the water on the ground near our car. Then they yelled at us to try to drive (in English) and we jumped in the truck and were on our way. We found out later that Frasier Island had been having a dry spell and if your truck gets stuck in the sand, you have to dampen the sand to drive. The path we were blocking was the one to the ferry and the tour bus was in a hurry to catch the last ferry. A similar scenario occurred 2 days later when we blew a tire out on the same road from all of our reckless driving. (5 of the 6 of us attempted to learn to drive stick shift for the first time on Frasier Island, and our truck took the abuse.) European men from a truck coming from the opposite direction jumped out and changed our tire without much explanation. If only AAA was that quick in New York when you need some roadside assistance!

European Men fixing our flat tire 

Narrow sand road 

 Frasier Island is known for its huge dingo population. There were signs posted all over the island warning people not to feed the dingoes. As Americans we all had famously heard legends how dingoes eat children, “Dingo ate my baby!!”  We were sure to be extra careful to dispose of food when we were finished. As the sun was setting we saw a pack of Dingoes trot past our beach campsite and they were terrifying. Later that night we sat around a fire roasting up some dinner, drinking goon (boxed wine), singing and having a blast. We heard some rustling over by our truck and started kidding that dingoes were coming to get us. A few of us went to go check it out because the noise continued. As we walked over we saw two dingoes in the back of our Land Rover! “AHHHHHH DINGOES ARE AFTER US!!!!” We screamed and thankfully scared the dingoes. They jumped out of our truck knocking the cookies they were eating to the ground. With all of our screaming we drew attention from other campers nearby and they came to see what was going on. We ended up talking and hanging out with our new camper friends and decided to invite them over to our camp fire. As we walked over to the fire, we spotted 2 dingoes by our fire eating our dinner! THEY WERE FOLLOWING US! We obviously were not doing a good job of keeping our food away from the dingoes. We had to drink enough “goon” to forget about the dingoes and fall asleep. We woke up to an amazing sunrise on the beach and were extra careful to lock the car and eat all of our food before going anywhere.

Our Campsite where the Dingoes jumped in our truck

The bumpy terrain on the beach made for a wild ride

My first camping trip was defiantly one to remember. I’ve only been camping two more times since then: once with an ex-boyfriend in Virginia, where it was sweltering by day and thunder storming by night; and in Munich, Germany. It was the only available place to stay during Oktoberfest and was the worst 3 nights of my life. I still want to continue on with my camping experiences. If anyone needs a camping buddy, let me know!!

Fraser Island sunrise 

A plane landed right in front of us while driving on the beach