22 November 2015 - Australia Part I

We had scarcely moved into our house when the date finally arrived for our trip to Australia to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. This trip had been in the works for many months. My parents are serving as missionaries in the Brisbane mission, and are currently assigned to Gladstone, which is an industrial city about 7 hours driving north of Brisbane, adjacent to great barrier reef. We arrive on Sunday (left on Friday) and my mom had a proper Thanksgiving feast ready for us. We shared it with the young sister missionaries. This is all of us at my mom and dad's flat.

Sunday evening we went to an area near the beach to see kangaroos.

I took this picture of a sunset looking out over the Great Barrier Reef.

Monday morning we took a boat ride 2 hours east of Gladstone to Heron Island. This is one of the highest rated snorkel and dive spots in the world. It is a small island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds and surrounded by gorgeous white sand beaches and aqua blue water teeming with marine life. Here is my mom with Jessica.

And with Madeline. Somehow we didn't get this picture with Emily.

Here's all the girls when we arrived on Heron Island.

Before we even got off the boat, I saw a ray, a turtle and a shark (small, non-dangerous reef shark). This photo of a ray turned out very nice.

As did this one of a turtle.

I didn't get very many good photos of fish, though we saw thousands of them while snorkeling the warm, calm waters on all sides of the island.

The girls got in a little sea turtle ride.

This is Jessica with the boat we rode on in the background.