Fishing, Art Class and Saying G'Bye to Hamilton Island...

Allen Family on the Paddle Boards...

And we're all up...hurry take the photo!

On one of our days at Hamilton, the boys decided to take a deep sea fishing trip!  The waves were pretty choppy, but they had a blast.

The boat took them and about 4 other fishers to various fishing holes in the Whit Sundays.  Lex said it was gorgeous.

They managed to have a "little" luck.  Little...meaning size-- little fish caught.

Park caught a couple little, cool, colored, stripey guys.  I think they usually let them go, or use them as bait for the big ones! He had so much fun!

Catch and Release!  Or Catch and Re-use as Bait!

One guy on the boat caught a huge tuna!  Lex said it was awesome seeing him reel it in.  And since it was just him and his girlfriend on the island, they offered to give Lex and Park a big chunk of their fish so we could enjoy the fruits of the trip as well!


It's really cool because there's a restaurant on the island that will cook up your catch if you bring it to them a couple hours before you are ready to eat.  So yep-- that night we had tuna steaks!  Talk about fresh!!  Catch of the day!  The chef cooked it a couple different ways for us.  They first brought out tuna sushi for our appetizer...it was ok. The kids weren't sure about raw fish.  They smoked some, marinated some and then brought out the main dish of grilled steaks.  It really was so good.  They served it with salad and mash.  (That's mash potatoes, but they often don't do gravy with their mash).  It was soooo delish.  And such a fun dinner!  Thanks boys for catching our grub!

We all enjoyed it!  Birdy couldn't choose out of pineapple juice or raspberry Lift (kinda like sprite)
 so she had a little of both!

While the boys were out fishing, the little girlies decided to take in some culture.  They had an art class taught by a professional artist that lives on the island and has his gallery at the marina.


Here they are in their art smocks and ready to go!  

What shall we paint today?  This was such a great day for both of these two.   They loved every bit of it.

The instructor told me I could take a few pictures but then I would have to leave, because children did better when their parents weren't there.  There were only 2 other kids in their class that day.  Ahh, the off season!

So excited!  After some teaching, the instructor had a bunch of photos of things the kids could choose to paint.  Birdy already knew she wanted to paint a sunset in the Whit Sundays.  He was excited and said, he would help her do that!

Oaks found a picture of a starfish straightaway, and she was ready to get started!

Mixing and making colors for the sunset!

Instruction on brush strokes

Look at the end result!  I was totally blown away when I came to pick them up and found these paintings on display.  I can't believe how awesome they turned out. For a 4 year old and an 8 year old...not bad hey?  They had so much fun and the artist was such a good teacher.  He had them learning and laughing at the same time!  Oaklee said he kept calling them sausages and guppies!  Syd's sunset was beautimous and Oaks' starfish on the beach turned out great.  After seeing Syd's sunset, of course she had to add one to her painting as well.  :)  What a great day.  Yep, they are keepers!  (and the paintings are great too :)
These will make such fun souvenirs.

 Of course we couldn't leave Hamilton without a fun hike!  We found one along the coast in the mountains up to the highest point on the island.  It was a beautiful trail.

 We walked up through a field that was covered in flowers and butterflies!

I think it must have been a migration season or something, because there were HEAPS of them.  All colors and sizes fluttering everywhere.  It was so fun...but tricky to capture on camera.  Here's a bright orange and red one.

These turquoise ones were so pretty and bright!

The hike had tons of stairs since it was up to the peak.  It was fun and a good workout for the old glutes!  

But man, it was definitely worth it!  The view was incredible.  We saw so many of the different islands in the Whit Sundays from up this high.

 The water was so pretty.  It doesn't show in the pix but it was turquoise and very, very clear.

I was trying to get this little bay/inlet area because there were heaps of sea turtles playing down there that we were watching.  So cute!

After the hike we got back on our buggy and hit the beach!  The tide was low so we could run and dig for miles!  Or kilometres :)  The little pools left from the low tide were warm and fun for splashing.  There was all kinds of sea life along the beach waiting for the tide to take it back out to sea again!  It was great for exploring.

Sunset at the marina and a flower for my ear from Oaks...and it's as big as my face!  These flowers are all over in Australia. Love them!

 That night we hit the mini golf course.  We had won a family game night, thanks to Park, at the resort lobby and for our prize we chose a free round of mini golf.  What is it about mini golf?  It always looks so fun in the beginning but patience wears thin with little golfers and by about hole 5 or 6 we are always done keeping track of "putts" and there's a LOT of putter pushing happening.  Just simply dragging your club and pushing the ball into the hole.  We're ok with it, since it does seem to pick up the pace of the game a bit!  As you can see by our faces, this was a very, very serious game of golf.  I believe Oaklee came in first, at least she's pretty sure she did anyway!

That night we celebrated with Smores!  I brought along some of the American marshmallows that Santa gave us for Christmas!  They were even 4th of July red, white and blue stars--thanks Santa!  We used biscuits called Granitas because they don't have graham crackers here and for the chocolate-- only the best Aussie Cadbury!  Caramello chocolate, mmmm adding that taste of caramel made the Smores even better!

On our last day on the island we spent it playing on the beach!

Microwave popcorn on the beach!  Yummo!

 More snorkeling...it never gets old.  There were lots of cool fish to see all around the beaches!

The catamarans are beautiful all lined up on the shore

Happy Girl!

We couldn't even count all the colors and shapes of fish we saw.  Of course, nothing is quite as amazing as snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, but it was still totally fun to snorkel off the beach.

Here we are on the plane back to Brissie.  No one was excited to leave this trip!  No one including mom and dad!  Who wants to leave paradise???

As we were taking off, I looked over and saw this...it warmed my heart.  They didn't know I snapped a pic, but I thought it was so great. All I could think was....please, please, please let them always take this good of care of each other, stay united, love to hang together and remember that Family is Everything!