Saturday saw some of the Macca crew do an IRB drop off to Green Gorge, (down the east coast) where we landed Gaz and Craig for a quiet weekend away. After the drop off, the team headed back north for some boat and SAR training, cruising past some east coast rock stacks, dodging porpoising penguins and into Secluded Bay where we were met with gloomy low fog and a crew of curious fur seals checking out the red inflatable boats.
The armarda then continued north past station to the tip of Macca, known as North Head, where the tussock hills were well hidden by fog, before cruising back to the boat ramp, washing the boats and being back in time for a social beer and a feed in the mess.
On Monday, after a great morning's work installing ridge capping for the CAL (clean air lab) building, Dominic, Pete M, Greg B, Jez and I towed the boats out of the shed and down to the ramp to head down to Green Gorge to collect the fellas after their weekend away. Whilst warming the engines up we spotted two orcas a few hundred metres offshore, heading south. That gave us a good feeling about the trip! We had been on the water two minutes before seeing those whales again, just opposite the razor back gap, breaching and blowing.
Stoked!
A twist of the throttle and 30 odd minutes later we were at Green Gorge, radioing the fellas, to get down to the beach for their pick up.
After a smooth landing in between the elephant seals, king and royal penguins, we had the boats turned around and were back out in the water.
Just after taking off from Green Gorge, Jez pointed out to a mass gathering of birds some 200 metres away. After going to investigate, we spotted a pod of 4 to 5 orcas - breaching and showing off as well, and leaving chunks of debris in the water from whatever it was they were feeding on. The whales came within 50 metres of the boat, calmly doing their thing. As we cruised back up the coast the orcas were at the same pace as us all the way to Brothers Point where we lost sight of the pod. I could write another 10 paragraphs on how wild this experience was, but I've been told to keep this short.....as long articles bore people!
You’ve just got to get here and experience it yourself!!!
Big Al out…
