Most of Australia welcomed 2026 from a backyard. The Arnolds family — the husband-and-wife duo behind Arnolds Around Oz, with their two young kids Reef and Rocky — towed their plate boat across the Moreton Bay run, anchored up off Moreton Island and turned the calendar flip into a three-night live-aboard fishing mission with weather thrown in.
The video opens with the format change framed clearly.
"This is our first episode of 2026, and we're back doing things a little different," the narration runs. "Instead of travelling Australia the usual way, we're towing our plate boat along the coast, chasing islands, reefs, and the kind of adventures you can only reach from the water."
The boat — nicknamed the Blue Eddie — had been getting in and out of the family's tow vehicle every trip, an inefficient setup that the Arnolds rebuilt before the Moreton mission. A permanent battery mount, a Blue Eddie 2 DC-DC charger, a quick-disconnect 12 volt power hub designed to push out the door for camp use, and a clean solar plug-in were all installed before the boat went out of the driveway.
The upgrade is a useful signal in itself. Family-fishing audiences in Australia have been migrating away from caravan-towing road trip formats toward fully-mounted plate-boat live-aboards over the past 18 months, and the gear chain is responding — DC-DC chargers, secondary batteries, and proper offshore-capable 12 volt setups are now standard on family rigs that two years ago would have run a sealed cooler and a single AGM.
The big fish of the day fell to mum Zoe, fishing the lighter outfit while juggling the boys.
"Three ones for mama," husband Luke said over the rod bend. "If mom gets another big one, I'm letting her have her beer."
The fish was a solid emperor — a heavy reef species that fights notably differently to the snapper the family had been hooking on either side of it.
"That's a big emperor," Luke said as the fish came over the side. "Mommy loves them."
The rest of the family scoreboard ticked over inside the next hour. Multiple snapper to a respectable size came on the heavier outfits, the kids took turns winding fish up to the boat and dad Luke locked his own snapper soon after.
"Now we have three fish for dinner," the dialogue runs.
A grassy run pushed the Arnolds off the bite and around to the western side of the island, where the wind was softer but the water was colder than the family had planned for.
"That is way colder than I thought it would be. That's actually freezing," Luke said as the kids tested the swim.
The quieter back-of-island anchorage gave the family the kind of calm shoreline that doesn't get filmed often — clean water, sand flats and a constant dolphin cycle around the boat. Zoe, who had grown up with a dolphin-themed bedroom, framed it neatly.
"We see dolphins all the time on the water, but it never gets old."
The weather shifted overnight. By the time the kids were down, a southeast system had pushed across the bay and the Arnolds were double-anchoring against incoming squall lines. Mainland fireworks came through the dark as a brief glimmer before the rain hit fully.
"Well, the storm has finally hit us. We got both kids down and we're bunkering down," Luke said into the camera.
Dinner that night was the day's catch — a fast lemon-pepper-and-sea-salt cook on a small portable cooker, with the boat already rocking enough to make plating a job.
What the trip captured — beyond the fish — is a window onto where Australian family fishing content is heading in 2026. Plate-boat live-aboards, properly wired DC-DC offshore power, and NYE long weekends spent on Moreton, Fraser or Hinchinbrook are now a credible alternative to mainland resorts for any family willing to travel by hull rather than highway.