Underwater wonderlands

We have made it up to Cairns! Which feels like a big drive and a big trip except it is realistically about 1/8 the way around the vast country which should be renamed The kingdom of 'are we there yet.' And yet what we drove was the same distance as driving from the bottom of California to the top and then back down again, from Rome to Oslo, Istanbul to Cairo, from the bottom to the top of India... so not bad for a family who can't stand being in the car more than a few hours a day! We have spent so much time at beautiful beaches this year. And no matter what others say, Australia has the best beaches. Hundreds and hundred of kilometers of the best beaches. We owe a lot of it to the parrot fish who produce about 50% of Queensland sand. Each beautiful smiley iridescent fish is creating 90 kg of sand each year in the form of poo. Parrotfish poo is the secret of the pristine sand and beaches of the tropics. We not only got to frolic in their poo we got to swim in their pee. I took a few boat trips with different subsets of children to go snorkel. We had an island off shore snorkel adventure off of Yeppoon, a high speed journey to the reef off of Airlie and a catamaran to the far reef of Cairns. It was nice getting to visit the busy underwater world. Tova is so content in the water and now wants to learn to scuba dive so she can get even more immersed in that world. Zadie, who was too afraid to put her head underwater a few months ago happily let her mother drag her along in the choppy open ocean. Sophia, who is very afraid of spiders, was overjoyed at sighting a shark, and Aurora we learned fares well on boats that are fast or when medicated beforehand! 

We also spent a few days on Magnetic Island, which was surprisingly lovely: the first evening we climbed a short steep trail to these amazing boulders overlooking half of the island as the sun went down. The next evening, we walked down the long pier that sticks out into the Pacific, and Jakob struck up such a long conversation in French with a fishing chef from Nice that Tova and Sophia turned completely blue. We took scorchingly hot walks to WWII outposts and disturbed bats in bunkers. We found the local Scrabble club, where Jakob played the word 'apeshit' for 92 points against an elderly man who said 'Oh, my!' We swam furtively in the jellyfish-infested waters, and joyfully in the resort swimming pool. Queensland has turned out to be the perfect choice for three months of enjoying Australia's bounty...the only downside is, we're now going to be shivering in our sweaters no matter where we go.

Magnetic Island

A nice place to swim

Another nice place to swim

What a beautiful child!

A look of wonder

The oft spoken of Whitehaven Beach - I liked this one smudge of plant matter on the otherwise pristine white

Whitehaven from above at hight tide

Aurora's dream house

Blue children