Hi everyone!!We, Charlotte and Justine, are two 17-aged-girls from Belgium. We would like to tell you something about our dream-journey in Australia this summer. Creating a blog was the perfect solution to tell the world about it. This blog is a summary of the destinations we did. We hope that these tips can convince you to go there because the country is so much better than you can even imagine.
Planning a journey is a lot of work. We are two girls with the same interest, so our choice was quickly made. We had planned to travel along the coast of Australia. Our destinations were based on that choice. The last destination was Central-Australia because the outback is completely different than the coast. We have travelled a lot during our journey because Australia is a big country. That explains why we have travelled for 11 days.
After our depart in the airport of Brussel and 22 hours of flying, we arrived in Queensland. The rest of the journey, you can in this blog!
Enjoy reading!!!
Great Barrier reef
Like we said before, we started our journey with the Great Barrier reef which is located in the Coral Sea in front of the coast of Queensland. It contains 2900 individual reefs and 900 islands. The reef is the largest reef in the world which explains why it can be seen from outer space. It is one of the most visited places by tourists which is logic because it's one of the 7 natural wonders of the sea. The reef is mostly visited for scuba diving and that is what we did. It was very beautiful to see all those fishes and turtles near you. Also boat tours and cruises are a common thing to do but that was nothing for us.
-> This is a picture we took while the activity.
The reef has a very large diversity of organisms including many endangered species and organisms who only appear there. If you visit it, you will see a lot of species of dolphins or whales. Charlotte saw a clown fish (like Nemo) and wanted a picture with it, but the fish swum away... There are 1500 kinds of other fishes. Also sea turtles, crocodiles and very special birds are a common thing to find there. If you see them in real life they look way cooler than on a photograph.
Unfortunately, the reef is threatened by the environment. Our leader said us the climate change is seen as the biggest threat for the reef. The sea temperature is warming up which causes the coral to bleach. The coral will do this to protect themselves from the heat but if the temperature stays this high, it's impossible to recover and they die.
Also the pollution causes the water quality to decline. This is especially when there are tropical floods who bring the pollution of the land into the sea.
The Great barrier Reef is something we really recommend to visit. It's really beautiful and really one of the things you need to see in Australia. Because of its environmental threat we consider not to wait too long. In the evening, we had dinner on a luxury boat with the Coral Reef as landscape. After dinner, we departed to next destination.
Taronga Zoo
The 4th day after a long day of driving in our rented van, we went to the Taronga Zoo. There are 2 ‘Taronga zoo’s’ in Australia: one in Sydney Harbour and one in Dubbo. These two zoo’s aren’t exactly the same. Because our trip was at the coastline of Australia, the information and tips we are going to give are about the zoo in Harbour.
