Up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the horizon out to sea, a 20 minute walk down to the wharf where our chosen boat was waiting to take us around Montague Island and to see whales. For more information on Montague Island click HERE.

Sunrise from the tent (6.00 am)

We used Montague Island Tours who were excellent, they use a very fast boat to get out to the Island / Whales, hold on to your hats.

Speeding along to the southern end of Montague Island you looked back and really could see the smokey haze hanging over the mainland from the still burning forest fires further inland (towards the Snowy Mountains).

A hazy view of the mainland

We completed a complete circuit of the island stopping a number of times to view humpback whales. They were very stubborn today seeming to appear randomly, making pictures difficult. There were two breaches, where the whale hurls itself out of the water almost completely, which were incredible. Along with a lot of tail slap as they dive down. All of these were humpback whales.

Whale tail

And another

As we drew in close to the island there is a large colony of australian fur seals, lots of them dozing in the sun, generally swimming around, even leaping fully out of the water and some stationary holding their flippers out in the sun to warm up.

Let us all keep warm

The boat attracted a large pod of common dolphins who seemed to take great delight in following very close continually breaking the surface in that classic dolphin way.

Another whale was spotted, this time it was a pair of Southern Right Whales with a Humpback, it is quite unusual to see them here, they are normally found on The Bight (Nullabor) where we saw them 3 months ago (I cannot believe time has passed so quickly).

All too quickly our trip was over and we strolled back to the caravan park, paid for another night and spend the afternoon sitting down looking out to sea. Even from the tent we saw two humpback whales swim across the bay. And a pod of 15 dolphins came right close in to the shore, two of them seemed to “surf” a wave in, breaking off just before they would have beached.

Even later as the sun went down two more whales spent 20 minutes slapping the water with their fins right in front of us as we sat in the tent, admittedly a fair way off.

A short video of the “slapping” click this link HERE.

That was the end of a lovely day in Narooma.