I loved Australia. We stayed in Cairns, which was pretty close to the ocean and the Daintree. Roland and Wren had gone back to their mom’s house after Thailand, so this month it was just us. Since there were fewer of us, we housesat instead of renting an AirBnB. Our housesit had the cutest little dog ever, a miniature schnauzer named Bowser.

The house was small but nice. It was very clean and they let me do a whole lot of baking. I made a lot of cookies. It rained a lot there too- obviously. We had many instances of it pouring really hard. It was quite fun to play in though. The city close to us had this huge and beautiful free public pool that we went to a few times. It was oceanside- since you can’t swim in the ocean because saltwater crocodiles- and genuinely enormous.

I loved the Daintree. Australia was hot but it was very pleasant up there. The animals were so camouflaged that the rainforest seemed almost empty, unless you knew where to look. We took a train up and a cable car down, on our way down, there was a ranger giving a free lesson on the creatures. He pointed out these bugs that we couldn’t see even inches from the tree it was on.

We spent Christmas there and my big Christmas presents were a phone (I broke in Thailand) and a trip to scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef with my mom. Scuba diving was by far the most magical thing I have ever done. I was most definitely a little anxious going into it, especially being strapped to a heavy can of air. Once we got in the water, I was fine. We went down this long rope and had to adjust our ears to the water pressure every so often. Our dive instructor was the dive master, and his best friend is this Māori wrasse named Wally. Wally followed us around the whole time. He was huge and very very cuddly. Safe to say, we had the coolest dive instructor.

Salt water crocodiles are very intimidating, I know I keep describing how large everything is, but that’s because Australian gods thought it would be so funny to create crazy creatures and then just not tell the other gods. We went to a crocodile emporium called “Hartley’s” and it was actually really cool. My favorite part was when we went on a little river boat to see all the crocs. They had meat on a fishing pole to get them to jump out of the water- for pictures, but I was more focused on the size of those guys. I mean males typically reach a length of 17 feet or 5.2 meters long!

All and all, and aside from all the flipped cars on the sides of the roads, I really really enjoyed Australia. I also highly recommend scuba diving. It was by far my favorite experience. The creatures were so fascinating. I also really enjoyed the house we stayed in.