The Return of the Troopy

The Return of the Troopy
Melville leaving customs and the port

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Whale watching



Last weekend we went down to the Dunsborough area to go whale watching with some friends. Always keen on spending a night outdoors we decided to make it a  two day trip and spent the night somewhere in the Leewuin -National Park. As always, it took us some time to gear up and get going but we finally managed to leave Perth about 3 in the afternoon, which was about half an hour too late to make it to camp before sunset, nevertheless we could still enjoy a bit of the view.
While checking out the surroundings we walked along the 'Cape to Cape Walk' in very dim light making a lot of noise - discussing that this was rather pointless as surely all the snakes had already called it a day given that it was a bit windy and not very warm. Holger then started to descend a kind of natural stone stairway down to the beach and used his hands to  support himself. I was just about to follow him when I saw that where Holger's hand had been placed 15 second before the better part of a snake was disappearing into the shrubs. Dear, oh dear - did my heart race! It was nearly dark, so all I could see was that it was quite stout and brown/black zigzaggery striped. Whatever the colour - I decided when you are about 45 minutes away from main roads and it's dark you don't really want to make too close contact with any snake and walked back to camp... Holger made much fun of me for the rest of the evening whenever I was sharing my vision of me driving a bitten Holger back over that ragged and slow road ;o{
Well, we survived - and the whale watching was excellent. A humpback whale breached about 20 meters away from the boat and did some more stunts - absolutely amazing. For probably 30 minutes a group of three adult humpbacks accompanied us and they were watching us as much as we were watching them. I don't think I've ever been so close to them :o)
Yep, it was worth the trip and I've attached some pics!

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