We took a short break up to Hervey Bay to whale watch and do a bit of coastal strolling and we had absolutely perfect weather the entire time – cold, but bright and dry. The apartment we rented was less than optimal but that was the only issue. We took our new (secondhand) Hyundai Kona 2022 EV and it was a dream to drive. It helped that Hervey Bay has a terrific charging high speed station with four bays at one of its shopping centres – it’s unusual in that because Queensland is struggling to keep up with demand on charging.
Anyway, the whales. Doug was chief photographer while I made do with my iPhone. (All the whale shots here are taken by him.) We went with Freedom Whale Watch which were 10/10 on every measure. It was a long day and I was glad I had taken all the drugs for seasickness just because there was more than enough motion and wind to cause me issues otherwise. But we had a blast! We saw whales from afar. We saw them right up at the boat. We saw dolphins! Gannets, terns, and a sea eagle! A couple of times the captain told us that whales loved reds and purples, and were curious about noise, so got us to wave and cheer while she played music over the speakers. It got very silly – but it worked 🙂
The whales are all juveniles this early in the season. Other whale watching we’ve done has been later in the year so there are mothers with calves, but these were all young show offs 🙂
I also took a short video of some dolphins who suddenly turned up while we were trying to entice some whales to come closer 🙂
The island you can see in some photos is k’Gari (formerly Fraser Island) and frankly, other than fishing and whale watching, the only reason to go to Hervey Bay which is a boring little town (though with a bit of a nascent foodie culture on the water’s edge, we discovered). Below are the Arches on k’Gari, which is the world’s largest sand island.
It’s home to some pureblood dingoes, which have gained some notoriety for attacking humans because other humans insist on feeding them 🙁 The whale boats all keep in contact with one another which is how our captain learned there was a dingo was on the beach. She brought us in close enough to get some shots. This one was uncomfortably close to a fisherman, who got annoyed not by the dog but by us spoiling his fishing. Eventually he threw rocks at the dog to get it and us to bugger off.
One of the sights in Hervey Bay is Urangan Pier, which is popular with walkers and fisher persons, and far enough out into the bay that we actually saw a whale closer to k’Gari from it. It’s also popular with the bird life hoping for scraps and looking for the same schools of fish as the people.
A young pelican was happy to pose for ages on the railings, as were some terns, while other pelicans sat on the light poles (not bothered by the anti-bird pokey things on top!)
There is a small but lovely botanic garden in the city, with a tiny but amazingly comprehensive orchid house
In the garden itself, a little pied cormorant
So many native terrapins in the little lake
And fruit bats
Our apartment was on the Esplanade which meant lot of traffic noise but we could just had to cross the road to see the sunset
There are miles and miles of perfect golden beaches on the bay
To think we used to disdain these when we were kids and had to drive five hours to get here, because there was no surf 🙂
On our morning of departure, I was up early enough to catch the sunrise above the houses and trees beside and in front of us. The weather was on the turn so lots more clouds
And that was that 🙂