When we arrived in Australia we rented a car and drove to the beach house we were staying at. The beach house had two rooms, one for my brother and I and the other for my mom and dad. Since my parents haven’t cooked for months because we’ve been staying in hotels, we were excited to finally be able to cook our own meals because we had a full kitchen.

From our beach house we had an incredible view of the ocean. We also had a large green yard for water gun fights! On the beach there was lots of washed-up jelly fish. Once I saw a jellyfish that had a thin brown layer on top of it because it was burnt from the sun.

The town we were staying at was called Lennox Head. Lennox Head is a small town with a beach that is very good for surfing (that’s why people call it a surfing town). It also has a really cool lake called Lake Ainsworth. The lake is surrounded by teatree trees and the leaves from the trees in the water make the water a brown colour.

Surfer’s Paradise

After two weeks in Lennox Head we stayed 4 days in a condo in Surfer’s Paradise.  Our condo was very nice and had a gorgeous view of the beach. We also had an awesome outdoor pool that was filled with sand and looked like a mini beach.

While in Surfer’s Paradise there was a cool sand sculpting contest happening. It was basically sculptures made of sand. Some were as large at 15 feet. The sand they used is mixed with a little bit of clay, it’s a little bit damp and not as fine as beach sand. Normal beach sand is not good for sculpturing because it’s weathered by water and wind that polishes each grain of sand to be round. Making a sculpture from beach sand is like trying to stack marbles. The sand they use for sculptures is from a quarry and can stick together like a puzzle because each piece is irregular.

Noosa Heads

Noosa Heads was really awesome because it was the first time I saw kangaroos in the wild. When we arrived at our RV park we saw green balls everywhere. At first we thought it was dingo poop, so we got a little scarred. The next day we saw kangaroos and I saw it poop out a little green ball and that’s when we realized it was kangaroo poop!

The kangaroos came every day in the early morning and in the evening, because that’s the coolest part of the day. The kangaroos weren’t scarred of us at all and once I got to feed one.

One time when swimming on the deserted beach in Noosa, we got caught in a riptide. It was very scary and it was also very deep and I couldn’t touch the bottom. I was with my mom and my brother was with my dad. Luckily my brother and I had boogie boards so it was easy for us to float but still difficult to get to shore. All of a sudden I realized we were being pulled from shore and couldn’t touch the ground. When I looked back to shore, I noticed that I was so much further from shore than I was before. That’s when I started getting really scared. Eventually I caught a wave back to shore and everything was ok.

About a riptide

A riptide is current that pulls you away from shore. It happens when a wave goes over sandbars and escapes back in the ocean between them and pulls everything with it. How to escape a riptide is to swim parallel to shore until you no longer feel the current. After that you need to swim or ride the wave back to shore. The thing you absolutely shouldn’t do is to swim against the rip. By swimming against the rip you’re just tiring yourself out and not getting anywhere. Another thing to do is to not panic and stay calm.

Whitsundays

We took a three-day sailing trip to the Whitsundays. The Whitsundays is a group of 70 volcanic islands off the coast of Australia. Our sailing trip was very fun with our captain named Thierry and our hostess named Olivia. They helped us have an awesome sail along the Whitsundays.

When we first got on the boat, Olivia showed us around and explained where everything was. Our boat had a kitchen, four rooms, four bathrooms and one table that transformed into two beds at night.

When we started sailing Thierry told us it would take 2 hours to get to our snorkeling spot. We spent the 2 hours viewing the beautiful scenery from the boat. I also got to steer the boat a couple of times.

Once we arrived to the snorkeling spot, Olivia handed everyone their stinger suit. A stinger suit is basically a wetsuit but made of thinner material. We had to wear them because there may be deadly jellyfish floating in the water. They also double up as sunscreen. Oh and I forgot to tell you, Australians call jellyfish ‘stingers’, so that’s why I’m using that word. After the stinger suits we got our masks on. Usually your googles fog up all the time, so we had to spray them with baby shampoo to keep the mask clear. After all that, we jumped into the water and had fun snorkeling. The reef was amazing. I’m pretty sure that was my first time snorkeling and I had a blast. There was so many colourful fish with beautiful patterns. Some people even saw turtles. The singer suits kept us warm so we can stay longer in the water. After snorkeling we took off our suits off and hung them up to dry.

The next day we went snorkeling and sailed to Whitehaven Beach. Whitehaven Beach is ranked as one of the prettiest beaches in the world. To get to the beach we had a little hike up a mountain. While we were visiting the beach, it rained the entire time, but even in the rain I had a great time. When we arrived I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. The sand was as soft and white as flour and the water was so unbelievably pretty. It was raining so no one brought their suits to the beach, but once we saw how beautiful it was we (my dad!) immediately ran back to get them. When we put our suits on it got really cold because they were damp, but once we got in the water it was so much warmer. At the beach we saw two really cool sea creators. The first was a large group of stingrays. They were splashing around everywhere. The second creature we saw was a shark, but don’t worry it was a Lemon Shark and they’re reef sharks and can’t hurt us.

About Sharks

Sharks live in all of the five earths oceans. Not only do they live in salty water, they also live in fresh water lakes and rivers. A type of shark that lives in rivers is the bull shark. The bull shark is known to travel great distances up the Amazon River. A normal shark diet is small fish and invertebrates. A bigger sharks diet would be larger animas such as seals, sea lions and other marine animals. Most people think that sharks eat humans, but that’s not true. Sharks only attack humans when they’re confused or curious. If a shark sees a human splashing in the water it might go to investigate and that might lead to a shark attack. After all, sharks are more afraid of us than we are of them. Are sharks getting extinct? Yes and it’s because of humans. Humans hunt sharks for their meat, internal organs and much more. They’re also getting extinct because of climate change and getting stuck in fisherman gear. All of this causes 100 million sharks to day every year to die from humans.

Fraser Island

Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world! We could not bring our RV on the island because the island is made of sand and only 4×4’s can drive on it. We rented a 4×4 and took an hour ferry to the island. When we got to the island, initially the road was paved but then it turned into sand and got really bumpy! On the first day we planned to visit Lake McKenzie (which is supposed to be a very, very pretty lake) and then go to our campsite.

Once we got to Lake McKenzie, I was so amazed at how beautiful the water was!!! The sand was perfectly white and the water was turquoise!  At Lake McKenzie there was a little sand island so we decided to swim to it! After that we swim back to the beach. We stayed at the beach for three hours and then we left .

After that we drove to the our campsite on the beach. Once we got there we put up our tent and had dinner–which was Kraft dinner because we only had a really small stove and one extra bottle of gas. To wash our pots and dishes we went to the ocean, which you can’t swim in because of sharks and deadly jellyfish. At our campsite there were lot of really annoying flies. They were like normal flies but three times larger! They got really annoying and they started landing on our car so my brother and I got our flip flops and started whacking them 🙂 There were at least 1,000 of them and we probably lowered their population by 10%.

Before we got on the island we had a huge talk about dingos and that you shouldn’t feed them because they’re wild animals! Since there are lots of dingos on the island, people told us that while you are at Fraser Island you’ll come across a dingo at least once. When we came across a dingo it was in the morning. Once I saw it I thought it was a dog but when I realized it was a dingo I immediately jumped into the car for shelter. Luckily we already ate our breakfast so the dingos didn’t stay around long because there was no food to eat! While we were on Fraser Island we went to a place called Eli Creek. It’s kind of like the lazy river at Great Wolf Lodge but longer and on Fraser Island. First you have a really relaxing ride along the creek and then you have to fight the current to get back. At one spot in the creek the current is very strong so when you swim you just stay in one spot and it is really fun!!!!!

Mission Beach

We stayed in Mission Beach for two days and good thing because it was very hot! We couldn’t swim in the ocean because they were jellyfish, but luckily the site we are staying at has stinger nets to protect us from the jellyfish. Our RV park also had a pool that we would swim in at least five times a day because it was so uncomfortably hot.

When we first arrived at our campsite we saw a cassowary (which is a big bird that looks like an ostrich) wandering around the campsite so we got really excited and started taking lots of pictures! Later in the day we saw cassowaries at least three more times. One evening while we were eating dinner we saw a cassowary approach us – and mama and baby. Suddenly they started running out of us and I’m pretty sure they wanted our food. My brother and I took our food and hid behind one of the camp stoves. I had no idea what my mom and dad were doing, although my mom was probably taking photos.

Agnes Waters

We stayed in Agnes Waters for five days. During our stay my two highlights were surf lessons and making a new friend.

While in Agnes Waters, I took surf lessons twice but wish I had taken them more often because it was so, so, so fun. I loved riding the waves and it felt so awesome!  I met a new friend, named Maddie, at surf lessons because she was taking them too. We surfed together and then found out we were both staying at the same RV park. So we started to play together.

One night Maddie taught my brother and I a game that she made up with her friends. It’s called spotlight and it’s basically like tag. At night the person that is it runs around with a flashlight. If they see anyone, they point the flashlight at them and they’re it. Maddie, my brother and I and sometimes her little sister would play spotlight almost every night and it was so fun!!!

Daintree

One of the last places we visited in Australia was Daintree Forest. Daintree is one of the most northern parts of Australia and we wanted to visit it because it’s the oldest rain forest in the world. It is almost 180,000,000 years old which is tens of millions years older than the Amazon rain forest!

We stayed in Daintree for only one or two days because it was so hot, humid and uncomfortable. At Daintree you couldn’t swim because they were crocodiles and there are only two swimming holes in the entire park and we went to one of them. If you swim in the ocean or the creeks you would probably be eaten by a crocodile. While we were at change really took a crocodile tour. We found the tour online and then found out that our tour was the only tour that was able to have tours on D3 river. The tour guide had been doing these tours for a long time so the crocodiles were used to his boat and you are more likely to see one. There weren’t many crocodiles out in the river because it was the hot season and most of them were hiding in the shade and hard to see. On our tour we saw only one crocodile but it was still really cool!

Australia was one of the longer stays on our trip and it was filled with beauty and adventure. I had an awesome time RVing up to the east coast of Australia, snorkelling on the great barrier reef and meeting a fish the size of me!