Magnetic island!

For the last five days our family has been at Magnetic Island! If you are wondering where the heck that is, it is in Queensland. Queensland is almost always warm, so it was basically a vacation. While we were there, we stayed at Bungalow Bay, Koala village. If you haven’t guessed already, we stayed in Bungalow’s! It is also called Koala Village, because there is a koala sanctuary right next to it. The first day we were there we went hiking over a mountain to a beach. The beach turned out to be a nude beach and it started raining, so we didn’t stay that long. Just as we were about to go back, a hiker that we had seen earlier ,walked up with a bloody face and knee. Her name was Virginia. We helped her back to Bungalow Bay (turned out she was staying there also) and made a new friend! Then we played Bingo at the bar. Kaleb won a jug of beer (Mom speaking here – for the record it was traded in for a pizza)! The next day we went to the Koala Sanctuary after a “Bush-tucker breakfast”. We got to hold everything they showed us, which included a saltwater croc, a black cockatoo (who we got to feed seeds to), a white cockatoo which we petted, we got to pet a Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat, hold a koala named Noah, see a koala that had just came out of it’s mom’s pouch, hold a lot of lizards and a large snake! It was so cool. Here comes the day that was most exiting! We went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef! We took a two hour boat trip to the reef, and Kaleb, Avi and I all got sick. We were supposed to be getting our wetsuits (which did not fit) on but we kept having to stop and sit back down so our stomachs from hurting. The wetsuits were not very comfortable but the trip was totally worth what we got in the end. We only went snorkeling but other people went diving. We couldn’t get any pictures because we didn’t have a underwater camera. When we first got in it was really cold but it got warmer when you started swimming. To get out to the reef you had to pull yourself along this line to this white buoy and you would be at the reef. The line was only about eight to ten yards but it took you about ten minutes to get to the reef. When you got there you swam about one more yard and then you would only be about a foot above the reef. The sun was shining so you could see everything perfectly. It was amazing. Some of the things we saw were a bright blue starfish that was about a foot in diameter, a black tipped reef shark (I wanted to follow it but my mom wouldn’t let me.) which was around four feet, a six foot long stingray, miniature blue neon fish, a giant clam that was four feet in diameter, beautiful coral and colors, a huge array of fish and some other cool things. When we went back for lunch, we had a little nature talk and found out that sand it mostly made of shell bits and fish poo. Then we went back out to the reef for another hour. The second time was low tide so we were even closer to the coral which was kind of bad because you your not supposed to touch the coral and coral gives you really bad cuts. Once we were back on the boat we took our wetsuits off, which by the way felt amazing. Then we went on top of the boat to dry off. The view from there was really cool because it had these patterns of bright gold blue and green and was really pretty. The boat ride back was quite enjoyable (Mom here again – we were really lucky on the way back and got to see two Humpback Whales breaching); and when we got back to port we rushed back the the camp to feed the Rainbow Lorakeets. This had become one of my favorite activities because it is really cool to have rainbow tropicalish birds eating out of your hands. There were a few problems due to this, including everything became covered in poo and their claws really hurt your skin. It was also nice because you could feel their tongues licking your hand and that felt like a massage. On the last day of our trip, we went with a local ranger on a kind of sea tour the island.  In my opinion the highlight of that was before we went swimming, we threw bread in the water and attracted six Bat fish which are like a foot and a half in width. We held bread in our hand and put it in the water and when they came to get it we could touch them. They were different types of brown and had stripes. After that we played coconut bowling at the bar and won two jugs of beer! The next day it was time to go and we were all sad. Tomorrow I start school at Birch grove.

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