We Saw Some Whales - Part 2

Now to continue with our recent trip to Port Stephens to see the whales migrating north…..

After postponing our whale watching cruise for two days, due to windy conditions, we were booked in for Thursday morning.  To our delight, it was a calm day.

For the first time, you could look out and not see white caps.  What a pleasant change…. and relief, as I’m a terrible sailor.

We walked into town and saw some rainbow lorikeets along the way.

Here is our boat, moored at the marina.  Look how calm that water is.

When wandering around the previous day, we had noticed a boat yard with a large travelling overhead crane to bring boats in.  Of course, that sort of thing really intrigues Mick.  He was tickled pink to see that they were in the process of bringing a boat in for a once over. 

Not exactly the sort of thing we see at home.

Now to our cruise.  Firstly, I took some travel tablets and wore my sea bands on my wrists.  I swear by them, as I have not suffered from motion sickness since using them, some ten years ago.  I did not feel at all queasy the whole trip………thank goodness.

Here we are, the obligatory photo of us on the boat.

 It was fun seeing the craggy coastline from the water.  You don’t realise how steep it is when you are on land.

We could see the Port Stephens lighthouse at Fingal.  It was built in 1862 and still operates as a fully automated lighthouse.  Sadly, the additional buildings were destroyed by a fire set by vandals in 1991.  It is now looked after by the National Parks and they do tours.  That is something to keep in mind for a future visit.  You can read more about the lighthouse here.  It is really interesting.

As we left the calm waters of the harbour, we started to feel the ocean swell, but it wasn’t too bad.  We also started to see whales.  I won’t bore you with loads of photos of just a splash, but here are a couple.

These were the more spectacular that we saw.  Most were just a blow, or splash, or glimpse of a back.

There were two that came quite close to the boat, but they were just swimming along and this is all they showed.  We didn’t see one really close up, like some of the photos you see.  However, what we didn’t see close up was made up by the sheer number we saw.  There was a constant stream of them swimming north.  It is estimated that there are about 40,000 migrating this year.  Considering their numbers were down to about 3,000 at the end of whaling in the 1970s, that is quite incredible.  The boat captain had a lot more information, but we were standing right at the bow and couldn’t really hear him all that well.  It was just wonderful to see so many whales.

We saw other interesting things too.  See that rough section of the water in the photo above?  That is a bait ball.  A huge school of bait fish.  We saw a few of these. 

At the entrance of Port Stephens there are lots of little islands.  The view across the water was gorgeous.

One of the main islands is Cabbage Tree Island, named for the palms growing on the island.

Apparently, it is unusual due to the type of vegetation on the island.  The craggy coastline reminds me a bit of the south of the Isle of Man.

It is the home of a small colony of Australian Fur Seals.  There were a couple having fisty cuffs (not that they have fists.) Can you see them at the top of the rocks?

On the way back, we travelled via the northern side of Port Stephens, which is home to the small towns of Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest.  This is Jimmys Beach.  

We saw a couple of dolphins, but they weren’t doing much.  Apparently about 100 call Port Stephens home. 

We really enjoyed our morning’s outing.  It was worth coming up for the experience. 

After that, it was time for a lunch of fish and chips.  You have to have at least one meal of fish and chips when you visit the coast.  It was huge.  We didn’t need any tea that night.

As we were walking back to the caravan park we noticed the boat we were on travelling out for the afternoon cruise.  You will notice from the photo that the cloud cover has already returned and that afternoon the wind picked up again.  We were blessed with the weather for our cruise, as it was the only sunny, calm period of our whole time there.

We had one more thing we wished to do that afternoon.  There is a headland behind the caravan park is called Nelson Head and at the top there is the “Inner Light Tea Rooms”.  We had hoped to have a nice afternoon tea and look around the small museum.  However, it was not to be, as they closed a bit early.  I suppose because everything was so very quiet.  We still had a nice wander around the grounds.

This building is the Nelson Head Inner Lighthouse.  I was looking for a typical lighthouse, but there isn’t one.  The lights are in the octagonal room on the corner of the building, which was built in 1876.

Before the cottage was built, from 1872, the light was a kerosene lamp on a timber pole, lit each night.  Wouldn’t that have been fun in foul weather.

In the cottage Light Room, white lights from two of these kerosene lamps are set in the deep windowsills.

And a red light from the centre lamp with a red chimney.

This is were they shone.

In 1948 the light was changed to electric power and mounted above the windows.

In 1995 the light was moved to a mast on the WWII bunker nearby.  We saw the bunker, but I didn’t realise that it now had the light above it.  Darn!!!

You can read more about it all on the information board.

Nelson Head is now home to the Marine Rescue.  They have a little gift shop and I’m guessing you can learn more about their organisation.  Sadly, they too were closed when we visited.

It is also the official weather station for the area.

So that pretty much wraps up our visit to Port Stephens.  We now want to return during warmer weather, as there is quite a bit more we would like to see and do.  We don’t need to be there in the winter, as we have seen the whales. This is our little list (for my future reference):

1.    Visit The Inner Light Tea Rooms and Museum at an earlier hour.

2.    Take the boat tour to the Port Stephens Light House and Fingal Island

3.    Take the ferry from Nelson Bay to Tea Gardens.  It is an hour long trip with about two hours over at Tea Gardens.  They are heritage ferries and it would be a good opportunity to see more dolphins.  It is a long drive over there, so this is a much nicer option.

4.    Take a 4WD tour on the Stockton Beach.

5.    Maybe even go for a swim.  Now that would be nice.

We had a good trip home.  I had to take the obligatory photo of the opening bridge and we once again crossed at Hexham.

Our five days away were a lovely little break.