Australia Day Holiday

For the Australia Day weekend, we (Naoka, her father Walter, her stepmother Nerida and I) went on a three-day trip up north to the Great Barrier Reef, where we went snorkeling at Lady Musgrave Island (an island located just out of the coast of 1770). The next day we celebrated Australia Day.

The road trip.
Friday morning we stepped into the car to go on a road trip to a town called '1770' (near Rockhampton, and named after the year when the English explorer Cook landed there in 1770). During the road trip we did (and espacially ate) some typycal Australian things. For example, I ate a meatpie for the first time in my life. It was actually quite good, eventhough it doesn't sound all that delicious.
The landscape here is incredibly beautiful! Unlike Holland, where you can mostly see buidlings and grass fields when you drive up the highway, here you can see Australian nature. It isn't all the same either. Every once in a while, the scenery changes and you can see a great variety of Australian landscapes. Sometimes it looked as if we were driving through Norway, and another time it looked just like northern France or as if we were driving through the Alps.
Along the highway, there were a couple of typical Australian towns, where we had small pitstops. They all looked so different from Dutch towns. Houses are more colorful and they are all different. Also, the people act very differently. It was a friday evening so everyone had just finished their work week. They all sat together, had a drink and catched up with each other. It felt like a very friendly environment.

Lady Musgrave Island.
The next morning we took off to the marina, where the day cruise would start. A dingy took us the the main ship (if the main ship would pick us up, it would disturb the breeding fish in the creek where the marina was). It took us one and a half hours to get to Lady Musgrave Island, our final destination. Lady Musgrave Island is an island in the Great Barrier Reef, with a coral foundation. It also has an enormous lagoon of over 1200 acres where it is alowed to go swimming and snorkeling.
It was so beautiful out there! You could see the sun shimmering on the suface of the turquoise sea, and at the horizon you could see the tropical island with its white beach and green trees.
We immediately put on our snorkeling gear, and went in the water. It was so pretty underneath the surface of the sea. The corals and fish were all different and they had the most beautiful colours.
After two hours of snorkeling, Nerida and I first went on a boat through part of the lagoon. Below deck, there was a space with glass walls so you were able to see the reef and its fish. It was very special because the boat could get incredibly close to the coral.
When we got back to the main boat, the both of us went for a 45-minute tour around the island while Naoka and her dad went snorkeling again. The guide told us so many things about the island and the reef. For example, that the fastest growing corals are often the weakest because then, even when it grows fast, it still breaks off and creates space for other types of corals to grow. He also told us that the trees on the island live off dead birds and that the birds live off the leaves of the trees. And, while we were walking along the beach of the island, he said that we wouldn't get to see hatching turtle eggs because they would probably hatch in three weeks.
After the tour, we got back to the main boat and we left Lady Musgrave Island and its lagoon.

Australia Day.
Sunday the 26th of January it was Australia Day. We were going to head back to Murwillumbah (the place where Naoka lives). First, we stopped in a small town, where there was a typical Australia Day Festival going on. We had coffee and a typical Australian sausage sizzle (its just a hotdog but then on a slice of bread instead of on a bun). Afterwards, we went back to the car and continued our long way back to the Gold Coast. We stopped in a couple of other towns as well, but our last stop was for dinner in Brisbane. When we got there, there were fireworks at 7:30 pm to celebrate Australia Day, and it was very beautiful. In the centre of the city, there was also a huge swimming pool which was really nice. The changing rooms, on the other hand, were horrific. Someone had actually pooped in the shower! After we had gone swimming, we had a great dinner. And, besides that little incident, I had a great time in Brisbane.

My holidays were great and i can't wait to go to school!

Loulotte