This was probably the worst night of my whole trip (including when I was mugged an ill in Kyoto). Initially we had planed to take a boat from Rainbow beach to “world famous” Fraser Island. Unfortunately, they didn´t have any seats left for a couple of days, but they got us something from Harvey Bay (some more hours north). We had decided to stay directly at the boat ramp so we don´t have to travel in the morning. There was a free parking lot nearby and we were already wondering why no other campervans would stay here. We would know soon.
When the evening turned to dust, the true inhabitants of this rocky shores appeared and started to hunt for their prey: Uncountable legions of sandflies.
I am not sure if I ever encountered these little monsters before. Of cause I had already had bad nights because of mosquitos, but this is different. These little creatures are as tiny as fruit flies so they are practically invisible in the dark, plus they don´t make any noise. They just land on you in masse and bite instantaneously. There bites hurt right away and if you hit, you will crush them certainly (they are pretty slow). In fact, you probably kill a couple of them, because more are on your skin. My mosquito repellent (from Vietnam) was of little use. Even wore, they completely invaded our campervan through the open doors. So keeping the windows closed didn´t make a difference anymore.
There was no sleep for any of us, every 30sec at least, there would be a painful bite somewhere on your body. After an hour we decided to drive back further into town, leave the doors open close to a traffic light to attract them out of the car. It didn´t work. Our car was invested. In the end we gave in and accepted our nightly fate.
As soon as we could (that was a couple of days later though) we bought the strongest insect repellent they would sell to us. Probably an overkill, but we never had problems with sandflies or mosquitos on our trip ever again :D
24.03.26
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