Great Barrier Reef

Next we headed to Palm Cove, a quaint little beach town on the northeast coast of Australia near the Great Barrier Reef. We spent five days there, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We went scuba-diving one day and the rest we spent just relaxing by the pool, walking along the beach, enjoying the boardwalk of shops and restaurants, and just hanging out together.

The family on Christmas Day

About to board the catamaran that took us out to the Great Barrier Reef for a full day of scuba-diving (we went on three dives, each at different locations along the reef). Do you think this family supports Two-Five? We're all seven sporting a Two-Five shirt (Brad's awesome company - www.25cloth.com - buy a shirt.. change a life!).

Ready to hit the water

Kolby and I at a depth of about 60 feet Mom petting a HUGE grouper that followed us around on our entire second dive (Kolby is in the background)

The fish and coral were absolutly beautiful! I didn't spend too much time trying to take pictures because I wanted to just enjoy the dives and I knew the pictures wouldn't do the scenery justice... which they don't... but here are the ones I took:

We saw three white-tip reef sharks (Kolby and Brad saw a fourth) that were about about 5' long! Something about scuba-diving makes you feel invincible so none of us were scared to see them, they were surprisingly cool to come across. The first picture below is one that I took (even though it was just a few meters away and we could see it perfectly clear, my camera's flash couldn't reach it so the picture is bad), and the second is just one off the Internet to show you what they actually looked like.

A giant clam --- we saw some that were almost 4' wide!

Just hanging out at the Great Barrier Reef

Here is a video of the whole family underwater--- can you tell who is who?

We're really glad that we were all able able to get scuba-certified this past summer and everyone did even better in the ocean than in our practice dives at the pool and lake (i.e. Mom didn't look like a wounded turtle trying to swim and Russell didn't accidentally let too much air into his BCD and dangerously rocket to the surface). We had a ton of fun together underwater and Kolby commented on how remarkably strange it was to have that many Webbs in one place and hear nothing but silence!