It was a calm morning in early October, not far away from the Julian’s Rock in Byron Bay. I was out in the open water with a group of friends kayaking our way around the beautiful bay.
We knew that the chance of seeing a whale in the distance was big as the whales where on their way back to the Antarctica where they spent the summer in the cold waters. After about an hour away from the mainland we spotted a full-grown humpback whale breaching about 500 meters away from us.
We were so impressed that we just stayed there, floating the water and just doing nothing while enjoying this sight of this incredible mammal. About 15 minutes later the whale was gone and 10 minutes later we started to paddle to the coast again.
Something I will never forget left me speechless for quite a long time. The fully-grown Humpback Whale, which must have been about 12 meters long, showed up out of nowhere and lifted our kayak. For seconds which felt like hours, the kayak was in the air on the back of the whale who apparently only wanted to check out what this plastic thing was that was floating in the water….
Everybody was shocked and even though most of us had a waterproofed camera there is not picture of this event as everybody was paralyzed.
What felt like hours was over within seconds and we only saw the whale, about 5 minutes later and 300-400 meters further, breaching in the water as it was trying to say good bye!
With a smile on our faces we kept going and as if we haven’t experienced enough a school of dolphins appeared next to us. This time we tried to grab our cameras so fast that most of us overturned with our kayaks and landed in the water. The dolphins were gone and no pictures taken again!
All what remains of this amazing day at the east coast of Australia are the memories, and they are more powerful than photos anyways!
This is a guest post from Sebastian of Off The Path and Worth a Journey – he’s currently making his way around South East Asia so go check out his blogs, follow him on twitter (@sebaboerner) and hit up his Facebook page. If you’d like to submit a guest post just drop me an email via the Contact Me page.
That must have really been an amazing moment. I have never seen anything like that. I mean I have seen a whale but at sea world never out in the wild like this. This is something I wanna do one day!
If you ever make it to Australia Jaime go surf in Byron Bay too – heaps of whales and dolphins always join you. I am rather jealous Sebastain basically got to sit on one though!