Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 77 - Monday July 25th 2016 - Broome, Western Australia

Well the morning started off slowly. We had time for two cups of coffee and breakfast before Jonathan sat down in one of the outdoor chairs and started trying to catch up on the blogs. We were about three days behind now so this morning gave us the chance to really catch up a bit. We also sorted out the van and the food cupboard, the remanence of the oil slick of yesterday and sorting out the piles of clothes that had been moved around the van making it gradually harder and harder to actually find anything.

Trev had been looking into our onward travel plans, what there was to see and where we could stay. We are actually located on the edge of The Kimberley’s, a huge national park that is stunning but also quite difficult to access without a four wheel drive vehicle. Obviously we don’t have one of those so it does really limit our choices about where we can and can’t go in this area which is a shame but there’s nothing we can do about that.

We have semi planned what we plan to do at least for the next three days

now but only in terms of the distances that we need to travel each day but other than that who knows….well take it as it comes.

So the big thing today was our afternoon and early evening trip out in the Indian Ocean to hopefully track down some whales. From June to the end of September the whales travel up from the Arctic to the warmer waters off Western Australia to mate and give birth to their young calves. In fact, whole pods of whales come up here just for the warmer water so we really did have our fingers crossed for a good day out on our catamaran.

We have been whale watching before to varying degrees of success or lack of it. This had taken place in Alaska and in Sydney on previous holidays but we had never really felt that we had engaged with the whales and had certainly never seen any breech (where they jump out of the water) now that really would be something to see wouldn’t it?

Our mini bus that came to the site to pick us up was running late, no big deal we just waited under the canopy of the reception area of the camp reading all the noticeboards about refrigeration repairs and odd job men and bridge clubs.

Eventually he turned up and we jumped into the the very short ride out to the end of Cable Beach to get to the boat. The minivan literally drove right onto the beach to meet up with the tender boat that would take us out to the catamaran.

The next bit was all very James Bond!

The tender boat started approaching the beach and we are all there thinking, oh, so we are going to have to wade into the water to get onto the boat then, into waters that have warning crocodile signs………. not sure about that. We were wrong though as I said this was all very James Bond. As he got close to the shore he dropped three hydraulic wheels from the hull of the small boat and started to drive out of the ocean and onto the sand……. genius!!

We all climbed aboard this car boat contraption and drove into the sea, the wheels were lifted once we were at a floating depth and off we motored towards the waiting catamaran. This small boat with wheels went back and forward about three time to load all the passengers on board. Once all the afternoon trippers were loaded we raised anchor and we were off out whale observing (hunting would just sound so wrong and there were no harpoons in sight!)

It really did not take much more than about forty minutes or so for the first whales to be spotted, a mother and a calf, not a baby but a couple of years old. We were so lucky. If you have ever been whale watching you will know that it certainly requires a lot of patience. The whales are fussy about showing off their locations so when you see one some way off in the distance you think ah, well go that way but when you get there the whale has gone or has gone for a prolonged dive under the water. Sometimes though you get really lucky and they actually become curious in the boat and want to look at you, yes really look at you.

Today’s whale watching adventure was somewhere in between the two of those. There was quite a lot of waiting around, bobbing up and down and then we were also blessed to see at least five breeches, where the whale literally takes flight out of the ocean into the air and the splash that they make as the come down is something to really behold.

Now we’re not going to lie and say that these breeches happened right in front of us because they didn’t but they were more than close enough for us to see the scale, the sheer size of these magnificent giants of the deep, we were so privileged that they put on this show for us.

The other frustrating thing about whale watching is photographing them. Our equipment probably wasn’t helping to much either as both of us were only armed with our iPhone’s so limited to say the least but it’s also the whales that make it hard.

They just appear, no warning and if they are going to breech they literally completely disappear, sometimes for ages and you think they have moved on and git bored of you then the next second, BOOM! Trying to get that second on camera is virtually impossible so we ended up with lots of pictures of splashes and whale tail slapping but we did see them and it was absolutely marvellous!

One memorable moment of the day involved Trevor and a canape! So the trip came with free water, tea and coffee and a range of canapes that were passed around by the staff on board. There Trev was patiently videoing the sea where the whales were last seen hoping to catch a great surprise breech or tail slap when one of the member of staff came round to offer him crostini with salsa. He put his camera off and went to turn to take one from the plate when BOOM! Out shot a whale form the ocean in full breech right in front of him, unfortunately the camera was focused on the crostini and not the whale so that moment was confined to our memories of the day. Jonathan, Well he was on the other side of the boat looking out at the ocean hoping that the whale would pop up on his side, he did get to see the breech but not as close as Trevor was to it, needless to say he was gutted to have missed it!

(There must be a moral in here somewhere about crostini but I know that from now on in whenever we eat one we will think of the breeching whale!)

As the trip came to a close we stayed quite close to three juvenile whales (teenagers) that were all slapping their tales and nosing their eyes out of the water to see us and generally having some sort of game with each other. It really looked like this would be it, a potential; breech right in front of us by not one, not two but three whales but then it was time to go, to leave the whales behind and head back to Cable Beach, the end of a magical day at sea.

It was without any doubt the best ever whale watching experience we had ever been on and despite our best efforts to catch what we saw on camera we know that we did see it and I’m sure we will always remember it’s just such a shame we did not get that bullseye shot….oh well.

Now the company had labelled this a sunset cruise and they were certainly not kidding. The sky and the whole of the horizon glowed a vivid orange colour. I’ve heard people talk about skies that look like they are on fire but this really did, a perfect orange line on the horizon, a perfect round sun falling into the sea, again a magical moment and the trip really had not ben miss sold in the slightest.

We got of the amphibious craft on the beach under the twinkling stars, the tide was a long way out so we had to walk in the darkness over the sticky sand back to the minibus. You could still see the fire of the sun on the horizon line, it had not left us yet and strangely the land seemed to be glowing as well with an orangey hue.

We were the first to be dropped off at site and our original plan had ben to quickly pack up the van and head into town to buy some beers then straight back to camp to cook dinner (a version of spag bol) and just sit in the outdoor chairs, drink cold beers and talk the night away. That didn’t happen, it had actually turned a little chilly so the thought of being outside lost its appeal so instead we opted for a bottle of wine, equally as satisfying.

Jonathan rang his mum on facetime from the van, it was great to catch up with her as it had been a while, there was no major news from the north apart from Joe being back from Oz but obviously we knew that.

We ended up having an earlier night again, excited at the thought of getting back on the road again and leaving Broome behind. Don’t get me wrong Broome is a wonderful place but after three nights here we had got over the van jet lag so to speak of all the driving we had been doing and we were now ready again to take on the never ending roads of Australia.

We didn’t set an alarm to wake us up, we knew that the road noise would do that for us and by 22:00 we were lights out thinking how we wished we had just got the one picture of a breeching whale…….pppfffffff!