all7in7

I’m so tired. That is what happens when you’ve been on a 14 hour flight that has crossed both the international dateline and the equator, setting you back a day and two seasons. We have just flown halfway around the world from Australia to the USA. We ended our visit to Australia in Melbourne. Melbourne is very hip with lots of restaurants and cafés – almost all of which are super expensive (I’m a KID and I realized that, and that’s sayin’ a lot). For example: Five Aussie dollars for a coffee… PSHHH!☕️😕

One of the main sources of transportation in Melbourne is by tram. We took a lot of trams from St. Kilda, where we were staying, into the city center and around the city.

We visited some exhibits at the library and saw Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly’s homemade armor. Ned Kelly was a bushranger, and many people think he was a folk hero. During his time he was highly ‘WANTED’ by the police. He made body armor out of farm instruments to protect him in a shoutout with the police. It didn’t really work; He got captured by the police. We had read about him in our history book, The Story of the World, so it was cool to see the armor up close.

At the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) we learned about the first kinds of movies and how they developed into modern day films, television, and even video games. The museum featured a lot of Australian actors. We even saw an exhibit on movies about Ned Kelly. Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger both played Ned Kelly in different movies. We saw the movie version of the suit of armor that Ned Kelly’s character, performed Heath Ledger, wore.

Melbourne also has a lot of parks, so I got to play a tiny bit of soccer. There is also an amusement park called Luna Park, based on the one at Coney Island. I got to ride the bumper cars there.

Nearby, is the St. Kilda pier and at sunset people gather to see little penguins swim in from their day of fishing and hop on rocks.

Melbourne turned out to be great for gluten free food. I got a gluten free margherita pizza at Mr. Wolf and then a huge stack of gluten free pancakes at a place called Hide + Cheek. Check out my food section for photos.

Australia was full of excitement, wildlife, fun activities/things to do, and high prices. I really enjoyed camping, surfing, and just being in Australia. I hope that someday I can go back. BYE AUSTRALIA😉👋!

The Great Ocean Road is famous for many different things, such as koalas🐨!

We went on a koala bear sighting hunt. A guy at our campsite told us about a route that apparently has many koalas on it. We started at a cemetery. No koalas. Then we drove up to Timboon, a small village, and walked on a beautiful path lined with gum trees, the kind of trees koalas like to hang out in. Literally! Can you see a koala in this tree?

Neither could I! No koalas on that trip, except for this poster:

The next day, we decided to take the long way back toward Melbourne. We turned off near the Cape Otway lighthouse and almost immediately saw loads of tourists parked on the side of the road with their cameras. We hopped out of our car, too, and looked up. This is what we saw:

As we were driving along the road looking for more koalas, we came across this guy who was very sleepy, but also very close to us:

And then we saw this guy, who was much more awake. In fact, he was climbing a tree when we spotted him.

Here are a couple more koalas:

Unfortunately, koalas are losing their habitat due to dying gum trees. Here in Australia, we have learned a lot about the conservation of endangered species. I hope koalas will get the help they need. One thing is for sure, koalas are cute and cool.

Does anybody know what the capital of Australia is? You might guess Sydney or even Melbourne, but the fair dinkum (that’s Australian for truth) is that it is in Canberra.

We took a break from camping for a day and I got to visit the Parliament House in Canberra! It’s like going to the Capitol Building in D.C., but, of course, in Australia. It also reminded me of our visit to the State House in Boston.

We took the free tour for about a half-hour.

What was interesting was our guide was a middle-aged Danish dude! Apparently, there are two Parliament Houses, the old one which is now a museum, and the new one!

I also got to touch examples of Italian and Danish rocks that were used to construct the new Parliament House and learned about the architecture of the building. In fact, the building’s appearance is sort of strange.

In this picture, you can see the two official animals of Australia — the kangaroo and the emu. This is symbolic because these are the only two animals that can’t walk backwards (at least that is what our tour guide told us). Apparently, according to some kids that I met, Australia is the only country that lets people eat its national animal!!!

One of the best parts was seeing one of four original Magna Cartas! That was probably one of the highlights of my trip. The other original Magna Cartas are in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Does anybody know why the Magna Carta is so important?

Once our tour was finished, we walked into the Senate where there was was a woman giving a speech. Nobody in the whole room was paying any attention to her, but while we were in our car, driving away from the Parliament House, we heard her speech on the radio! So that meant that everybody listening to that radio station was listening to her!

Before we left, we headed up to the roof (luckily there wasn’t some guard dog attacking us on the ‘roof’) of the Parliament House! From up there we could see Chinese people protesting for freedom to practice their religion in China (some were. Why? The Chinese President was visiting the Parliament House that day!

I am glad that I had this introduction to Australian government because a few days later, while we were camping, we met a group of tenth graders and had an interesting conversation about politics with them. They really seemed to know what was going on!

Hey mates! How ya goin’? You may think that all Aussies say “g’day mate”, and they do! But more often, they say “How ya goin’?” (which is not grammatically correct at all!) as a greeting.

For the past week I’ve been camping, which means no Wi-Fi, which, of course, means I couldn’t publish blog posts. Instead I swam at the beach, boogie boarded, played soccer, and sighted wildlife. While camping I encountered kangaroos, cockatoos, parrots, wallabies, blue bottles (jellyfish), ravens, sea rays, sting rays, seagulls, wombats, kookaburras, and all kinds of other crazy stuff that I can’t name (unfortunately not one quokka)!

The campsites here have grills, so we have been cooking out every night. Most of my diet has been sausages, burgers, and grilled veggies. Plus hot chocolate for breakfast!

I even made a couple friends along the way. One let me borrow his surfboard so I could try out surfing, others drew with charcoal with me, and some even played Minecraft with me!

I got to see a blowhole called the Kiama Blowhole! Now I’m not talking whales here, even though I would like to see a couple, but rather rocks. Check this out!

We camped at Booderee National Park, a place called Mallacoota, and Wilsons Promontory, which is the southernmost point of the Australian mainland.

Plus we got to roast marshmallows!