I went whale-watching for the second time this season last Monday. I’d been watching the weather forecasts, looking for the very bestest day when the bay would be calm and the wind a zephyr and when the planets were in alignment I’d booked my trip on my favourite boat, Freedom III, for the following week….
I love Winter in Hervey Bay. The nights are cool, the days are mild, the humidity’s down – and in late July the whales start to drop by on their annual migration. They swim up the east coast (and the west coast, but that’s another population) to find calm, warm water to birth their calves,…
After a short period of smugness as we in Australia compared our covid-19 statistics with those of countries like Brazil, the USA, and the United Kingdom, the virus snuck up behind us and yelled “SURPRISE!” But we in Queensland could still afford a bit of hubris. After all, the mounting figures were in Victoria and,…
It’s unseasonably cold, wet, and miserable here in Hervey Bay. Yes, it’s winter, but our normal winter is dry and pleasant, with day temperatures in the low twenties and nights in the low teens. And that, friends, is why I haven’t been out whale watching yet. There’s plenty of time. The season peters out around…
It’s whale season in the Bay, that time of year when humpback whales make their annual migration up both sides of the Australian continent to give birth to their young in the warm waters of the tropics before heading back down south to Antarctica for the summer. Many whales on the East Coast run stop…
Whale season is drawing to its inevitable close. Since late July the Bay has been jumping with acrobatic humpbacks, a curious Right Whale and her calf, who hung around for a couple of weeks and even did some breaching, and a few Minki whales. As many as twenty-four thousand whales do the annual migration up…
Since we’re now in the middle of the annual whale migration, I’ve been communing with the whales on one of the half dozen boats that take eager tourists out to view these majestic mammals. This trip was a little bit different for me because I went out with a small group of other keen photographers,…
It’s that time of the year again. The whales are back! Humpbacks are on their annual migration from Antarctica to the Whitsundays to have their babies. They stop off in the shallow, calm waters of Platypus Bay off Fraser Island to fatten their calves, mate, and generally mooch around before heading back down to the…
Whale season is a great time here at Hervey Bay. The whale migration, when the whales swim north from Antarctica up to the warm waters of the Whitsundays and beyond, then back down to the feeding grounds in the icy south, happens every year. The whales appear in late July, with the first arrivals being…