Great Barrier Adventure

• Eliza Davis, Grade 2
• Short Story
• 2022

Why is everyone staring at me, I think as I snorkel along the Great Barrier Reef. I am Mirabelle, a nine year old girl on holiday with my family. I am finally old enough to snorkel alone and I’m having an amazing time. I’ve just touched the most peculiar rock I have ever seen. You might be wondering why it is so peculiar, I’m going to tell you why, it is oddly shape like the sun and for some reason it is hot pink.

I’m feeling a bit weird. Hang on. What’s happened to my new pink and purple bathers? I touch my arm, and instead of my skin I feel fur! Why am I all fury? And I have black dots all over my body.

When I look around there are eight dolphins, hundreds of multi coloured fish and a dozen turtles circling me. The youngest turtle did a little turtle growl, grrrh and said ‘’what is a leopard like you doing swimming in the Great Barrier Reef with an ugly green snorkelling mask? How you are still even swimming!’’
I am not a leopard I’m a little girl. For some reason all of the animals started nodding there heads like they understood something.

The dolphin closest to me said in a kind voice ‘’did you touch a pink rock that looks like the sun?” I nodded. She told me that that rock turns humans turn into leopards. It only happens every hundred years. The dolphin said, I just have to touch the rock again and I would be human once more. I was so nervous. How was I going to find one single rock in this giant colourful reef. I swam this way and that way. I looked behind every piece of coral. I touched rock after rock after rock.

Finally after what felt like hours of searching I found it. I quickly reached out my paw, and touched it. I was human again. But my bathers instead of my pink and purple bathers, they had turned in to leopard printed bathers instead. I hope my mum doesn’t notice.