Hervey Bay: Whale Watching in Queensland
There’s plenty to see on and off Fraser Island, now known as K’gari, but one activity stands out from the rest.
Australia’s whale-watching capital is turning it on. Even though it’s late winter, it feels tropical to the travellers who have flocked to Hervey Bay, drawn by tales of whales that call in for a stopover in Platypus Bay along nearby K’gari’s northwest coast.
It’s a day so perfect – with the lightest of breezes and warmest of sunbeams – that most of us decline to wriggle into a wetsuit as we nose towards the aquatic playground with whale-watching company Tasman Venture.
It’s been operating since 1990, a few years after newly arrived fisherman Brian Perry mistook a whale for a floating log. When he realised he was looking at one of the world’s most majestic creatures, he raced home to tell his wife Jill that he wanted to start whale tours.
She wasn’t that keen but the rest is history.
The Perrys’ first tour in 1987 was booked out and more operators – including Mimi Macpherson and Tasman Venture’s Lloyd and Robyn Burgess – followed in their wake.
Hervey Bay Marine Park (now absorbed into the Great Sandy Marine Park) was declared in 1989 to protect the whales, which pop into this area to rest and socialise while migrating south from the Great Barrier Reef to their Antarctic feeding grounds.
Swim-with-whale tours were first allowed in Hervey Bay in 2014, after the Queensland Government was reassured sharks wouldn’t be an issue.
In 2019, Hervey Bay and South Africa’s The Bluff became the world’s first certified whale heritage sites.
As I’m about to learn, you can know all about these milestones and still be totally unprepared for what an up-close whale interaction feels like. At first, we’re thrilled to spot a distant fin slap, geyser-like blows or a tail slipping back into the water.
Then they venture closer, leaving behind lilypad-like “footprints” on the surface after diving. Our guide, Carolena Gillies, is unnervingly accurate in predicting when they’ll breach (turns out polarised sunglasses help a lot).
We’re told to wave at the whales to beckon them over. Then a young male humpback “mugs” us. A mugging is when a curious whale interacts with a boat for a decent amount of time. Our playful boy rises up vertically to take a squiz, a movement known as spy-hopping.
We’re supposed to stay quiet but one Spaniard can’t help himself, spitting out his snorkel to exclaim: “Loco, loco, loco!” Crazy, indeed.
The whale is practically within arm’s reach of the 10 passengers hanging off a mermaid line at the rear of our catamaran.
While waiting my turn in the water, I contemplate how much things must have changed here since the late 1980s. As whale numbers have increased after being hunted to near-extinction (it’s estimated about 50,000 cetaceans now travel the humpback highway that connects their feeding and breeding grounds), the coverage provided by swimwear has markedly decreased. With all those bobbing bottoms in the water, it can be hard to know where to look.
Finally, a young woman from Argentina gives up her spot and I slip on to the line we must hold at all times.
The water’s so clear that the whale and I exchange glances as he glides beneath us serenading us with song. While there’s more to this tour – such as kayaking K’gari’s fish-filled Awinya Creek, swinging on a rope over Bowarrady Creek, climbing a dune and whipping across a speedboat’s wake on a three-person inflatable – nothing comes close to this encounter.
Even Gillies, a whale-watching veteran, enthuses that “today was a 10 out of 10 day”.
If I had to pick a next-best thing, it’d be taking off in a light plane on K’gari’s 75 Mile Beach.
This “sand highway”, with its 80km/h speed limit, runs along the wild east coast of the world’s largest sand island but you don’t need a 4WD to reach it. I’m on the route thanks to one of Kingfisher Bay Resort’s day tours.
We’re buckled into a 4WD bus that’s made short work of the island’s rugged, rainforest-shaded interior sand tracks and is now zipping along the beach as though it’s a sporty SUV. We spot one of the headline-grabbing white-socked dingoes in the dunes but it quickly slips from view (it’s my only dingo sighting).
People back home keep asking about dingoes but it’s not what K’gari’s about. I start to understand its allure after our plane takes off near the beached SS Maheno shipwreck and we spot mother-calf whale pairs swimming below (after resting in Platypus Bay, whales reverse back around K’gari’s northern tip to continue their journey). We swoop over rainforest that barely shows signs of the devastating 2020 bushfire and admire the on-point naming of Butterfly Lake.
Even from the air, you perceive the exceptional beauty, complex dune systems and perched lakes that earned the island its World Heritage listing.
There’s nothing for it but to wade straight into that beauty. Eli Creek, a gin-clear stream fringed by pandanus, paperbarks and ferns, is popular for good reason.
We grab inflatable rings from our bus and march along the boardwalk to join those floating towards the beach.
If I think that’s perfection, it’s because I’m yet to encounter Lake McKenzie’s gradations of blue. Most of us strip to our swimmers immediately to squeak over the sand and baptise ourselves.
A short drive away is Wanggoolba Creek, trickling between piccabeen palms and strangler figs. No swimming is allowed in this sacred spot where Butchulla women gave birth for generations.
You can learn more about the ways of the traditional owners on a cultural tour in Hervey Bay. During a 90-minute foreshore walk with guide Dingka Dingka (Travis Page), we learn how to read this place. If the paperbarks are in flower, for instance, it means mud crabs are full of meat.
We snack on bidjal (pigface) fruit and learn which plants make good medicine.
Before we part ways, Dingka Dingka says: “We don’t use the term ‘goodbye’. For us that means forever – we won’t see each other again – so it’s always farewell and never goodbye. We use these words – ‘nhaa nyin bana’ – see ya later.”
In the know
Fly direct to Hervey Bay from Brisbane with QantasLink
or from Sydney with Jetstar.
From the airport, transfer by bus to Kingfisher Bay Resort’s mainland reception near the ferry terminal for the 50-minute crossing to K’gari.
On the island, the resort has guestrooms and villas; from $199 a night Scenic 15-minute flights over K’gari are offered by Air Fraser Island ($100 a person).
airfraserisland.com.au
Tasman Venture’s Remote K’gari and Whale Experience runs from July 6 to October 20 next year; $249 an adult/$159 child.
The Djinang Cultural Walking Tour costs $59 an adult.
Hervey Bay’s impressive Odyssey Bistro reveals what’s on the menu only after diners arrive; five-course dinner, Wednesday to Saturday for $105 a person.
Set a course
Another way to soak up the Fraser Coast’s marine pleasures is to charter a vessel. Scott and Steph Whitcombe started Fraser Island Boat Charters in 2019. “We both quit our full-time jobs – and then Covid struck,” says Steph. Their fleet comprises four sailing catamarans and one power catamaran, which you can take up to Rooney Point (northern end of Platypus Bay) or south to Inskip Point. Most people opt for a five-night bareboat charter as navigation is easy. “You don’t have to worry about running into a reef,” says Scott – but you can also add a skipper for total relaxation.
Katrina Lobley was a guest of Fraser Coast Tourism and Events.
