Yesterday I went out to Magic Point, just to the south of Maroubra Beach, to look for whales. It was a pretty casual thing - a friend who lives out there had the day off work and we were thinking of doing something together. Maybe visit the Biennale, maybe go for a walk along the clifftops. Maybe both. We ended up choosing nature over art and walked off into the afternoon about four pm. I didn't have very high expectations; I've never seen a live whale in the wild. On the other hand, this is the migratory season in our part of the world. Almost as soon as we walked out of the scrub of the headland and onto the low cliffs, I saw the spout of a whale not far away to the north. So casual and unexpected I wasn't even sure that's what it was. We kept on walking all the way out to the point and stood there for about half an hour, during which time maybe half a dozen, maybe more, whales went through. There was a large container boat moored a fair way out to sea and, just below us, a small tinny with a couple of blokes in it fishing. The whales passed along the sea road in the rather large space between these two vessels - some way out by the ship, other so so close in that the blokes in the tinny might have had something to worry about. They are beautiful to see. Calm and majestic as they dive and surface, dive and surface. Most of them seemed to take three or four breaths, if that's what they were, directly off the point and then dive and stay down until their next breath, too distant to see properly. The photos below, taken off Magic Point but not by us, give a fair rendition of what we saw:
Images from here and here
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