Day 12 - Traveling Home

We woke at 5am and packed the car. We dropped the rental car back and got the shuttle to the airport. We had fun spending all our last coins in the airport and then waited for our plane. The flight home was good apart from a bit of turbulence just before landing. Unfortunately we got stuck on the plane for 40 minutes because the air bridge was broken! Finally we got out of the airport and back to the car, it was so nice to be home although very cold and windy in Wellington!! After a quick dinner we drove back to Palmy, we were all very tired and sadly it was too late to pick up Luna! What an amazing trip we had, we filled every day with fun activities and lots of great time with our cousins and family! Bring on the next trip on 2 years time ☀️☀️☀️☀️

Day 11 - Mt Tambourine (2nd visit)

We headed back to Mt Tambourine for a fun day at Thunderbird Park. Riley, Ella and Max went for a pony ride and Jensen and Rich went for a game of mini golf. Unfortunately it started raining so we had some lunch inside first and then headed to the mining. We walked up the big hill and started digging. At first we didn't find much but then Rich and Hamish found a great spot. They dug out heaps of great eggs including 2 huge and perfectly round ones! After about 2 hours of digging we took the eggs we found back to the shop. We got a few cut open, Hamish's egg was so good inside the lady wanted to photograph it! All of the ones we opened had lots of great patterns and even a few crystals! We brought lots back to cut open at Hamish's and bring back to NZ. On our last night we had a lovely meal of Thai together and there was a small storm which turned out to be a mini tornado that had just missed our house!! Sadly we said our last goodbyes ready for an early start the next morning 😢😢

Day 10 - Australia Zoo

We headed up North to Australia Zoo early in the morning. We reached the Sunshine Coast and the weather was really hot! The zoo was amazing, we saw so many cool animals... crocodiles, wombats, snakes, koalas, dingoes and lots of water dragons just roaming through the zoo. After looking at a few animals, we went to the croc show. Bindi Irwin was there and she and some of the zoo keepers showed us how they feed the huge crocodile! There were also lots of amazing birds including a huge condor! We had a yummy lunch up high in the tree area then went and looked at more animals. There was a cool bird avary with lots of native birds, kangaroos that the kids got to pat and koalas that could be patted too. We saw tiger cubs playing with the keepers, lemurs, red pandas, tortoises, giraffes, zebras and rhinos. After lots of walking we caught the zoo train back to the ice cream shop and them took our 'treasure map' to the counter to get our prize for finding all the clues! It was a fabulous day and a long drive back to Brisbane but so much fun! 

Day 9 - Mt Tambourine (1st trip)

After a yummy pancake breakfast we headed out to Mt Tambourine. It was a cool drive through the country and up into the hills where it got greener and more tropical forest like. We drove straight to the St Bernard Hotel and had a lovely lunch outside looking at the amazing views! We also patted the huge dog, saw geese and walked around the gardens. After that we drove to The Polish Place and fed the birds, they even ate out of our hands! Further down the road we parked up and headed off on the Witches Falls walk. It was a 3.1km round trip and all downhill to start with. The falls were very high but didn't have much water in them, still a fabulous view though! We then headed back up and saw some huge trees and interesting bush creatures. After our walk we drove back down the mountain and back home. We had a yummy BBQ for dinner and then watched Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a really cool NZ film.