My family decided to go to Australia in October 2001. There was lots of organising. We got the visas and passports. Our Uncle drove us to the airport in Dublin. We flew with Aer-Lingus to Frankfurt in Germany. Then we changed to a bigger plane for the longest part of the journey. The airline was called Malaysian airlines. We flew from Frankfurt to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia. We stayed in the Airport Transit Hotel. We slept for nine hours in the hotel. We couldn’t go outside the airport because we hadn’t got vaccinations. Then we flew from Kuala Lumpar to Perth in Australia.

It took a total of 24 hours on the planes. We were too tired to be excited. We caught the last taxi to the YMCA hostel. I couldn’t sleep but you can’t imagine how tired I was. We spent two weeks in Perth. Perth is the largest City in Western Australia. Lots of different nationalities live there we met Germans, Dutch, British as well as Aborigines. There are lots of tourist attractions in Perth. We went to Kings Park it is a memorial to the soldiers of World War ll. Every tree is dedicated to a different soldier. There were lots of Irish names on the trees.  

There was a big flame in the middle of the water, which the queen of England had lit. We also went to Perth zoo it is the biggest zoo in western Australia. There was a reptile house, A butterfly house, a penguin pond and lots more strange animals.

From leaving Perth we travelled to a small country town called Waroona. We stayed in a cabin in Lake Navarino Caravan Park. The lake was man made. It was made so farmers will have water in the dry season.

The lake which was very beautiful was surrounded by a thick forest. It is also a very big tourist attraction. People go there to water ski, swim, canoe and go fishing. It is where we learned to swim. We also saw lots of beautiful wild life. We made friends with a kangaroo, some parrots, and also saw lots of small lizards. We stayed in a log cabin called Jarrah tree cottage.  

Our plan was to keep travelling south across the southern coast of Australia and up to Sydney. To do this we had to buy a car a car trailer, a tent and cooking equipment. This is the way most people travelled in Australia because it is so cheap and the weather is so good. The next step in our journey was down to Donnybrook and Kirup. These are two fruit picking regions. We stayed in Kirup for three weeks. It is a beautiful township. It has a school, a shop, a pub, a caravan park and a petrol station. My father worked on a fruit picking farm for the three weeks we were in Kirup. The fruit picking is not done by Australians but by backpackers who are paid very little money. Some of the fruit they picked are pears, avacodos, plums, oranges and peaches.  

One of the backpackers we met was from New Zealand and he showed us to the most beautiful waterfalls. These waterfalls were in the middle of the bush and not many people knew about them.

I went to school in Kirup for most of the three weeks. It was very interesting to see all the different subjects. Like we in Ireland learn Irish, in Australia they learn Indonesian. 

After leaving Kirup we made our may to the coast again. The backpacker from New Zealand travelled with us. We went to a place called Margarets River. Margarets River is a big town. There are lots of tourists there. It is famous for its surfing beaches and its wine. Jason, the New Zealander, showed us one of these beaches. He taught us the basics of surfing. Hundreds of backpackers go there for casual work, fruit picking. We stayed in Margarets River for three weeks before moving on to Warpole and Denmark. The main industries in these areas are wheat and dairy farming. There are massive trees in Warpole called tingel trees.  

This is a picture of my mother my brother and myself inside one of the tingle trees that hade been burned out by Aboriginals. The tingle trees are about 50 feet in height very wide and are native to Australia. There is a suspended bridge over the trees called the tree top walk that we went on.  

Esperance was the last coastal city we stayed in before hitting the Nullobor. We hade to get from western Australia to south Australia. The plain is 1400 KM long. There are no towns on it. Instead there are road houses every couple of kilometres. You have to make sure you have enough food and water to last you the journey. It took us 3 days to cross the Nullobor. We saw emus, kangaroos and camels on the way and stopped at an Aboriginal roadhouse. We drove on the largest straight road in the world that is 90 miles long.

The first town you meet after leaving the Nullobor is called Ceduna. This is a small coastal town. We stayed at Shelly Beach Caravan Park. It is a beautiful beach that is covered in all types of different shells. You could walk out into the sea for half a kilometre and the depth stayed the same. The water there is very very warm. We rested here for three days and then moved on to Adelaide.  

This is a beautiful city called the city of cathedrals. The center is made of beautiful gardens and churches. This is where we did our Christmas shopping and sent our Christmas cards to Ireland. We met some lovely people here especially an old Australian man called Ray who brought us for lovely walks. After one week we left Adelaide and travelled to a small country town called Terang. This is a dairy farming area where an average sized farm is one thousand acres of land! We stayed in a caravan park in the town as we where spending Christmas in our tent we decorated our tent with tinsel and lights. We met a family who are also called O’Brien and my father got a job working for them on their farm. Farming is a lot easier there as cattle can be wintered outside due to the good weather. Hay doesn’t have to be brought in like in this country. Farmers just leave it in the fields. Milking is the biggest job of the day as they can have up to 600 cows in a herd. The biggest nuisance for my father was the flies they are every where so you have to keep covered in bug repellent or they will drive you mad.                 

We spent the nicest month of our journey in Terang and were sad to leave. We moved onto Melbourne. On the way we stopped at the blue lake. This is an extinct volcanic creater filled with water. In summer the water is pure blue but in winter it turns a murky grey colour.  

Melbourne is a large city as not nice as Adelaide. We just spent three nights here before travelling to the last city Sydney.

We stayed at a caravan park near the airport. We were a walk away from Botany Bay and went swimming there. This is where all the Irish people landed hundreds of years ago. We went to the city centre and saw Sydney Opera House.