Australia was so fun. We got to go to the Daintree Rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, and see a lot of animals I had never seen before. We house-sat and got to hang out with Bowser, a mini schnauzer dog that lived in the house we stayed in.

The Daintree Rainforest is older than the Amazon by ten million years. That’s a long time! There were even dinosaurs that lived there. When we went to visit the Daintree, we saw cicadas, stick bugs, and katydids. They had amazing camouflage. The cicadas were so loud, I had to cover my ears! The ferns were humongous, even bigger than Terrell.

Jack’s Christmas present was to go on a train ride. We saw some waterfalls at one stop. The train went through many tunnels and it was completely black in them. Even though it was hot, I would like to travel by train more.  At the end of the train ride, we looked around at some shops and went to a bird place. Some of the birds could even talk. Then, we took a gondola all the way back to the bottom. I got a little koala keychain at the gift shop.

My Christmas present was getting to see and even pet a koala. Koalas are my favorite animal. I wish I could have gone to Izzy’s Koala World. That is my favorite show. At Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures, I got my face painted like a koala. I also got to pet some kangaroos. They were bigger than I thought they would be, but still adorable. The crocodiles build big nests out of the water. The baby crocodiles make a high pitch sound after they hatch to signal to their mothers that they are ready to come out so she will dig them up.

There were a lot of other things we did in Australia. Some of my favorites were the Crystal Caves, the aquarium, and swimming. I thought it was going to be dangerous, but I didn’t even see a single dangerous thing.