We took a long flight from Thailand to Australia. Once we got there, we were very tired and only woke up for dinner. We stayed in Sydney for one night and then flew to Cairns. In Cairns, we stayed at a house with a really cute dog named Bowser. He was a mini schnauzer. The house was nice. Bowser was shy when we first got there, but he was very friendly and loved us after that. I miss him and hope we can go back to visit him.

We went to the Crystal Caves. It was cool because there were a lot of geodes there. I got to crack one open and keep it. It was full of silvery crystals. We had headlamps for exploring but in one room we had to turn them off to see glow in the dark rocks that had been carved into the planets. They were orbiting a really big yellow rock that was supposed to be the sun. It was very cool. There was an exhibit where we could pick up different rocks to see how heavy they were. Some were tiny but very heavy and some were big but very light.

My Christmas present from Mom was a train ride up into the mountains and we took a gondola back down. There were 15(I think) tunnels the train went through. It was completely dark in them and the air was cool. When we got to the top, we walked around the little town. We had lunch and went to an aviary. There was a cassowary there. My mom though they were scary but I thought they were awesome because they were huge and had unique colors. They look like dinosaurs mixed with a turkey, but the colors were different.

We went to a crocodile place that had lots of animals. I had my face painted like a kangaroo and got to pet a kangaroo too. We went on a boat tour where we got to watch the captain feed the crocodiles in the water. There were lots of other animals there. These tiny monkeys had apparently never seen a hand fan before. They were following her back and forth staring at her fan. There were snakes that took me a while to see because they were camouflaged.

The Great Barrier Reef is huge and colorful. We got to go snorkeling there. We saw a ginormous fish named Wally that came and rubbed up against me like a dog. They said that kind of fish has a 10 year photographic memory! Maybe if I go back, he will remember me. My brother and Mom got to go scuba diving. Wally loved their guide. I got to go in a semi-submersible. I saw thousands of jellyfish, a lot of fish, and my brothers saw a turtle.

In Cairns, there was a giant pool about fifteen minutes away from our house. It wasn’t like normal pools with a shallow end and a deep end, the sides were shallow and the middle was deep, like the ocean. The sides of the pool were sand, like a beach. It was supposed to be like the beach because you can’t swim in the ocean there because of crocodiles and jellyfish. There are special spots with nets where you can go in the water, but they were very crowded. The pool was so huge, it wasn’t crowded at all.

I want to go back to Australia. I liked the different animal crossing signs and all the animals. I’d like to see Bowser and his family again. We also only got to see one tiny part of Australia and I want to see more.