Here's the final post about our trip to Australia!! After the farm stay, we drove up to Coolum Beach in the Sunshine Coast. Our good friends from Singapore have a home there and we stayed with them. This part of the holiday was amazing. The Sunshine Coast is gorgeous! The weather was perfect and we all enjoyed the special time with our amazing friends.
This holiday was all about sticks and rocks. Everywhere we went, the kids were collecting all sizes of sticks and rocks and pretending they were all different sorts of things. The girls thought these rocks were just the right size to be their mobile phones. When we got home, we got out the scrap-booking supplies and added screens and keyboards. The irocks were carried around all week, just in case that important call came in!
Jumping off the sand cliff at the beach was the most fun! It's great exercise for the kids too! They climbed up and jumped down about 500 times. It was excellent!
Gorgeous Coolum Beach!
A trip to Australia wouldn't be complete if we didn't try surfing! We signed up the girls (Wyatt was too young) and Scott for surfing lessons on Noosa Beach. They had a ball!
Here's my sweetie riding the waves!
Madeline got up! She loved it! Now we can call her our little surfer girl!
Lily lost another tooth! It's amazing to me that this girl has lost teeth in nearly every country we have visited over these last 2 years. As it turns out, the tooth fairy brings money to all of these countries! She even knows what country it is and brings a coin that is valid for that country. She must be one smart cookie!
After a few days in Coolum, we headed off for a camping adventure with our friends. We hired 4 wheel drive cars, because where we were going, there were no roads! We drove up the coast and caught this ferry over to Fraser Island.
We saw a few dingoes! This one was on the beach. We were in the car when I took this picture. I can't believe how close we were. He didn't seem bothered by us at all. The dingoes are allowed to roam free on the island. There were signs everywhere warning to leave them alone and to clean up after yourself, so you don't attract them. They can be aggressive. The park ranger at our camp ground warned us that it was mating season, so the males were a little agitated and we may hear them fighting each other at night.
This was our high way. It was magical. I loved how the sky and the water blended together. The beach went on for as far as I could see. There was hardly anybody there. I really felt like I was some place special.
Sometimes we had to drive over some rocks! The kids thought that was AWESOME and they just laughed and giggled the entire time.
We camped at a camp ground where the tents are already set up and there are spring mattresses inside! It made camping so much simpler for travelers like us! Of course, we had a camp fire!
Scott made us some pancakes in the morning! Feeding 7 kids is no joke!
Best Friends!
There is a beautiful ship wreak on the beach!
This is looking up inside of a vine fig tree. There was a big gum tree there and the vine fig grew around the outside. Eventually, the gum tree died and the vine fig was left. It's huge and so beautiful! We climbed up inside it.
Our first time to make damper!
Here's a recipe for it!
A spooky tree we found on a hike!
On Fraser Island, you live and die by the tide times. When the tide is out, the beach is big and you can drive without any problem. When the tide is in, there is no beach and you will get caught in the water. The rule is, you may only drive on the beach within 2 hours of low tide. The tide times change significantly every day, so we had to check. For us, low tide was about 6 am and 5 pm each day. We woke early, and got out before 8 am and then we hiked and camped and drove around the interior of the island until about 3 or 4 PM.
There are beautiful fresh water lake in the interior of Fraser Island. It's breathtakingly beautiful!
We stayed on Fraser for 2 nights. We all had a ball but we were very tired and ready to get back to town. When we were waiting for the ferry to cross back, there was a pod of dolphins! We saw them jumping and playing very close to the beach! I wasn't able to get a picture, but it was awesome!
Back to Coolum... We went up to the Eumundi Markets. We found the didgeridoo guy and bought a small one for our musical instrument collection. Scott headed back to Singapore to work and the kids and I stayed on in Australia for another week.
We were planning to go to a medieval fair, but it was cancelled due to too much rain. Instead we got dressed up in our costumes and went to
Bli Bli Castle. It was fun to have someplace to go wearing our costumes!
Over the next few days, we went to the beach, played with the puppy Murry, did puzzles, played Catan (we introduced it to the kids for the first time!) and just enjoyed the beautiful Australia lifestyle.
On our way down to the Gold Coast to catch our plane back to Singapore, we stopped at Alma Park Zoo. Here, Lily was able to hold a Koala! The rule at the park is that you must be 8 years old to hold the Koala (they are heavy!). That was great for me, we didn't have any arguments. We were all able to pet the koala.
We watched the sun go down at the beach near our hotel (near the airport).
It was an amazing trip! Beautiful country, amazing wildlife and great friends!
