French Island!

Last Sunday, my friend Systke and I went got up early to head out to French Island. We hopped on a tram and headed to Flinder’s Street Station to catch a train to catch another train. We were waiting in the station for our train to arrive and a fight broke out. Apparently, a group of black men from another country walked by a lady and sniffed her, and a random stranger decided to avenge her. I understand saying something in a situation like that, but this guy went into a coked up rage. He had to be on something; he was pissed and yelling out obscenities and following the group of guys down the station. Then he got the one that sniffed the lady cornered and started beating the hell out of him. Systke and I basically walked all the way to the other end of the platform to stay away from them. It took security almost 10 minutes to come over. It was one guy in a yellow vest and he didn’t do anything but stand there and watch. It was really odd. Finally the train came and we hopped on.We took our seats and these two boys sat across from me and started talking. They were still drunk from last night and they had slept at the train station. I guess it was time to go home, and they hopped on our train. They weren’t even sure they were going the right direction. They started talking to me and they were so funny. They gave me and impromptu tour via train car. Then they got off and two hours and a train switch later we arrived at the ferry to take us to French Island.

We grabbed our tickets and waited on the dock to load up. While we waited I watched some people fish off the dock. I saw some guy catch something! It was something big, but then the line was snapped and he lost it. But then we boarded a janky boat. It looked decent but when we got on certain parts of the floors were bending. It was scary. I just knew we were going to end up at the bottom of the Bass Strait getting eaten by great whites. Great Whites frequent the Bass Strait because of all of the seals. Well, we made it and we went a walked 3 km up a road and had a muffin while we waited for our bikes to arrive. We rented our bikes and planned a route before we headed off. It was pretty hilly and they had had a lot of rain lately so some parts were really flooded and muddy. We got all of the way to the Saltmine Creek Road and planned to take it to the coast line before turning on another road to head back inland. When we got to the road it was closed off with a sign that said, “No Thru Road,” which I thought was odd because there was clearly a road on the other side of the fence. So we decided to hop the fence and continue anyways. We lifted out bike over and took off. On the other side of the very first hill, Styske’s bike slipped and she fell into the mud. Great start.We picked up and continued and after a while the road started to become taken over by the bush on either side of it. Eventually was had to walk our bikes, THEN we had to push our bikes ahead of up so we could get through, THHHEEENNN we had to carry our bikes. This whole time I am getting eaten UP by mosquitoes, and I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but the mosquitoes here have SUPER VENOM. I felt them biting me, but I never felt their bites until a few days later and they itched for a whole week! So we stopped, reevaluated our map and then forged ahead. In for a penny, in for a pound I always say. After a while we came to a field and we could see the sea off in the distance. So we just headed towards it. Eventually, we came to the beach-which was all rocks. While trekking down the beach we came across some kangaroos bones (I think).We ended up dragging our bikes down the beach for a good 45 minutes until we came to a dock. When we saw the dock we stopped, ate, looked for creatures, and then got on the road and headed back towards the ferry. We ended up on the other side of the island and we had to hurry to make it back on timeOn the way back we passed some cows and a grade school. The cows must see like 3 cars a day on this tiny island. They all watched us intently as we passed by. One even turned all the way around to continue watching us. The school was super small and they had the outside painted and they wrote the kids names that attended on it. There were only about 15 names.Next we stopped at the town general store/post office and played with some dogs and took a short rest, then kept going. Finally, we made it back to ferry with time to spare, so we headed down the road to a field and took a short nap. Then we woke up and went to the ferry and turned our bikes back in and then walked on the beach until it was time to leave.

Something I have found really odd in Australia is that they are so trusting! They didn’t take a down payment or take our names or anything for the bikes. We just paid our twenty dollars and went off.

But, we hopped on the ferry and headed back to the main land then caught our trains and went home. All in all it was an adventurous day. I got a terrible sunburn and my head got sunburned, too. My arms are still peeling.

I’m trying to catch up on my blogs, so I have been a writing fiend lately. Bye! <3