Royal National Park

Hey Bloggers,
My last environment is the coastal environment. The coastal environment that I’m travelling in is the Royal National Park at Audley. This coast line is beautiful and it contains lots of different animals, we saw a white breasted sea eagle. We saw its nest high up in a tree; it was 2 metres in width. The coast line is manly made out of sand stone so it is very white, there are lots of waterfalls that fall over the cliffs. There are many coastal plateaus with spring flowers making it very colourful. You always hear the sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs. We have friends in Bundeena and the park surrounds their house. The fallow deer was introduced to the park in 1885; we went spotting them at night.
The aboriginal people that lived in this area have left paintings and other things to signify the way they lived. They collected shellfish from the sandy beaches. The Dhjarawal were exposed to many different diseases when the English came. They did not survive many of the new sicknesses. There were carvings in the rocks near the pools of water from where they sharpened their axes and spears. I tried to sharpen a stick but it snapped within seconds. Their spears had three prongs on the tip for piercing the flesh of the fish.
This was my last journey so, so long folks.

THe Great Barrier Reef

Hey Bloggers,

I'm here on the Great Barrier Reef Snorkelling the clear waters. Yesterday I was on the island called Long Island Resort, it was fantastic. I went on the donut that was behind the jet boat and I fell in. When I was in the water I saw a sea turtle, it had the fright of its life. That night I was watching the karaoke and this guy sang, “I’m too sexy for my shirt” and he had many shirts on. Every time he said the words, “I’m too sexy for my shirt”, he took off a shirt. At the end he had one shirt still left on, it was pretty cool.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the world. It has over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands covering over 344,400 square kilometres.
Recreational fishing is not a big part of my life but a big part of the people that live up here near the reef. Over 800,000 Queenslanders think of themselves as recreational fishers. I do come from Redcliff which is not very far away, so I’m close to not sticking out like a sore thumb.

Kenya Mountain

Hey Blogger,
I’m back in Kenya as I forgot to go to Mt Kenya and climb to its top! The common name for this mountain is Kilimanjaro. I can’t wait until I get to the peak. The highest point, 5199m, rises from a lush forest to a wonderful rocky peak. The peak is covered by equatorial snow, it was really weird. This snow has formed a series of glaciers and some frozen cliff faces. The profile of Kilimanjaro is a tropical Volcano so I think it is going to be a bit scary. At the base of the mountain there are some famous hotels like the Mount Kenya Safari Club, River Lodge, Treetops, Mountain Lodge and the Bantu Lodge.
Today I started my climb, it was easy. It began as a small incline and then started to get steeper. The next day I had just started to climb in to the snowy bits and there was this big rumble and an avalanche went down the other side of the mountain. It was incredible. The next morning I went to the peak and it was a spectacular view. When I reached the bottom I was amazed that it took me so long to get up but so little time to get back down.
There was lots of wild life at the place I was staying, but they were all orphans as their mothers had been killed by poachers; there were cheetahs and antelope and lots more. I felt sorry for them, I wanted to take them home with me back to Australia but I couldn’t. That night a lynx came up to my tent and ran off into the bushers.

Kenya Savannah Grassland

Kenya Savannah Grassland
The Savannah has very few trees so there was not much shade for dad and me to park the 4-wheel drive under. Most of the trees were surrendered by lions, monkeys, hyenas or wilder beasts, so we just had to stay in the sun and boil as we took pictures of the animals. Dad had the shot gun in his hands if any dangerous animals started to attack us in our 4-wheel drive, if they kept on coming we would have to drive away and leave it for another day. After we’d watched these animals for a while we drove down to the water hole to see if there were some cool animals there. When we got there, we saw a black rhinoceros drinking from the far side of the water hole. A troop of baboons came down to the water for a drink but didn’t realise that there was a cheetah watching their every move. It was moving straight for the old male on the outside of the troop. The cheetah started to sprint with amazing speed; it zoomed past the 4-wheel drive and had reached the troop in seconds. The alarm call went though the troop and they all scattered in to the trees but it was too late for the old male, it had been caught be the cheetah. Three cheetah cubs ran out into the open and started to eat once the mother had finished.
The people of Kenya are called the Masai. Whilst we were there we saw them build thorn fences around their camps to stop the lions and other dangerous animals from getting to an easy meal of goat from a farmers pen. They also made fires and danced around it singing to the spirits to keep them safe during the night. In the day they danced in large groups and jumped very high into the air.

THe Arctic Tundra

Biomes tundra was amazing to see and experience. It lies just above the Arctic Ocean, in the world's highest northern latitudes. There were lots of different animals in the tundra, like caribou, reindeer, lemming and the polar bear. The tundra experiences 24 hour days, so it was hard to sleep because the sun always shone through the cabin’s windows. Tundra is one of the driest and coldest places on earth. All tundra locations can reach below freezing on any night, even in the tropical locations. Last night it was -10C. In the summer the soil gets very soggy because of the melting permafrost. Most of the plants and shrubs bloom early in autumn. In this short period of time the flowers are brilliant; it’s like the area comes from another planet it’s so wonderful. The cabin we stayed in was much like the one in Antarctica. Some armed forces send their troops to stay up here for extensive training. They do this because the people who live up in the tundra live longer, studies show that the air is much cleaner than the air at lower altitudes. Pretty cool, I should stay up here.

The Amazon

The Amazon rainforest contains three different environments; the forest environment, wetlands environment and the river environment.
In the first week we were in the Amazon rainforest dad nearly got eaten by an anaconda, just missed him thankfully. The area surrounded in yellow is the Amazon Rainforest. The Amazon rainforest is very wet in some places but dry in others. There is always wet dew on the leaves close to the ground and the canopy has the sun to absorb the dew from the night before. There is always noise surrounding, but when you get to the spot where you think the noise was coming from there would be nothing there. Which I think was really weird.
On our hike we had a leader that would be at the front of our little party and he would hack in to the growth with a machete to provide a path. Every second we would swat mosquitoes that have landed on us. We wore lots of cloths in case a plant we touched or a snake that might bite us was poisonous. We wore leech socks and had our faces covered so that we would not have to swat our faces if some mosquitoes or leeches had gotten onto our skin. There were huge termite nests clinging to trees, brilliantly coloured mushrooms, massive snails on enormous trees, we drank water that had collected in huge quantities in palm leaves and we ate some fruit from a chocolate tree, it tasted nothing like chocolate.
On the first night we camped we were with a native tribe. We built our hut out of sticks and leaves which were water proof. The next morning we woke to hear the sound of chimpanzees in the trees foraging for fruit.
After a week of trekking in the forest we headed down to the water and started kayaking down the Amazon River. We looked at the river bank and saw all these different types of animals looking at us in odd ways. The first night on the Amazon River was different because we slept in our big kayaks. You would always get woken up if a river wave hit the kayak. I felt unstable in our kayak, I was afraid that we were going to tip in to the water. The next morning on the river on purpose I stuck a piece of cloth in to the water and then quickly took it back out. As I I did so there was a school of piranha’s hovering just under the water. I told dad to have a look but they were gone by the time he did. About mid afternoon a school of Amazon River dolphin swam by, they were making a lot of noise as they splashed and flipped about in the air when they jumped. I thought it was amazing until I saw the scar on our guides arm, it looked horrible, he had been bitten long ago. We saw some natives in their own dugout canoes. They didn’t look at all safe or stable so I was glad that we were in kayaks and not those. After that, we got out of our kayaks and headed for the wetlands I was pretty excited about it all, but when we got there I fell into an enormous mud puddle. Even though it was wet I still enjoyed it like I was not even wet. There was plenty of wild life. I was pretty lucky to see a baby tamarind; it was really cute with its massive mother. We saw some Amazon natives collecting water and I thought it would not be clean but they cleaned it by filtering it through some kind of leaf. It was pretty amazing.
On our last day in The Amazon our guide told us that we were very, very lucky to see what we had seen in the day that he had been with us. I asked dad where we were going next, hoping it was going to be as good as the Amazon Rainforest.

Antartica

Hey Bloggers,
Dad and I are travelling round the world on a great adventure visiting all the different environments in the world.
We're starting in the polar region, Antarctica!!!
It is pretty cold down here. The weather can vary in one day from a nice sunny day to a cold blizzard. The blizzards sound like a cold wintery wind like the June floods in Newcastle for those of you who where there. It also has lots of snow that the wind picks up as it blows over.
Scientists flee Antarctica when winter comes because the weather gets too cold for living. They sleep in goose down sleeping bags so they don't freeze over night during the rest of the year.
Antarctica is also a frozen desert. The only types of plants it has are lichens, mosses, some fungi and one liverwort. The frozen desert is ice covering earth or water. People get around in Antarctia on snow mobiles and dogs pulling slides. Food get shipped in from Australia or South Africa in small planes.
Antarctica is a flat dry ice sheet covering the bottom of the earth. On the horizon I can see mountains covered in snow.