The Virtual Reinhard
Created | Updated Aug 19, 2004
A Letter From Narooma: Part One
Teun and Loes had managed to get hold of a holiday home for the weekend, down on the eastern coast of Australia near to Eden. It is possible to get there from our home in Canberra by road, but it is also possible to draw a straight line diagonally across the map and travel through the bush so, of course, this is what we did. Loes' sister Ninke happened to be in Australia at the time and at the last minute she decided that rather than travel in the back of the characterful but somewhat uncomfortable Wahoo, she would hitch a ride in our slightly more comfortable Nissan.
It is a good many hours of off-road driving from here to there and we convinced Ninke that it would be a great idea to learn to drive the truck since, in Holland, all the cars are tiny. She ended up having a lot of fun and, although on a couple of mountain passes Bronwyn and I were wondering whether the nearside wheels were actually hanging over the edge, we thought it best not to mention it until the evening. Eventually, after a long day in the bush, we arrived in Narooma, finding the house to be an enormous property with a verandah looking out over the sea. We soon got down to some beer and food and some serious partying, some time next day on the beach, local seafood - including the famous Moreton Bay Bugs which taste fabulous but which look like nothing on this planet.
Next morning it was time to head down to the beach to board the Whale Safari. When we arrived, though, the operators were looking pretty glum. The early voyage had come back empty-handed, and the signs were that the whales had moved on. We'd still see seals, they said, but they were more than happy to refund our money if we wanted to cancel, because they reckoned we only had about a 10-15% chance of seeing anything bigger.
Never mind, we boarded anyway. The boat was going to take us to Montague Island, a local tourist attraction, and look for whales on the way, so we thought we'd go along for the ride.
Once out of the fierce harbour exit, it was a pleasant summers day cruise, although Ninke was looking a little green from the motion. Then, suddenly, a humpback whale surfaced, and within moments we realised that we were right in the middle of an entire pod, all apparently delighted to see the boat. We were then treated to nearly an hour of the whole gamut of whale behaviour: showing heads, showing tails, breaching, tail diving, swimming upside down, diving under the boat, and generally having a pretty wild time. The boat operators were ecstatic, they said they'd never seen a display like it; and then a second pod turned up to join in the fun.
I did take quite a few pictures, some of which grace this page, but really I spent most of the time staring at them in wonder. I've been on whale safaris before, seeing Sperm and Minke Whales in Norway, and Blue and Beluga Whales in Canada, but I'd never before seen them playing around and having such a great time, just like enormous dolphins.
