Having a whale of a time

Pardon the pun ... this post is about 3 months old but it has been sitting at the back of my mind for a while now as it was quite a memorable event. It will be the last in the sequence of our weekend away to the south coast during the Queens Birthday long weekend in June. We made our way to the town of Huskisson which was about half an hours drive south of Gerringong. It turned out to be a really touristy type of town with your ubiquitous ice cream store, numerous take away shops touting the usual Aussie fast food such as fish and chips, hamburgers, roast chicken, tired salads etc. However, we were there just to check out some whale action! So after booking ourselves on a 3 hour cruise, we decided to get some lunch before the tour started. We knew we didn't feel like fast food so we decided on one of the two cafes. This one, names Supply was also moonlighting as a deli and corner store with some tired looking, expensive fruit and vegetables. Also some "gourmet" type cookies, condiments and candy. I had a pumpkin, goats cheese and baby spinach salad.

At $12.50 it was passable... tasty, a bit greasy but on the smaller side. It was a blessing in disguise. Richard's burger, also $12.50 This was pretty good! I think he got the better deal. It was on toasted Turkish bread, with char grilled veggies, onion jam, bacon, a thick burger patty and of course being Aussie ... beetroot! After lunch, we walked Magic at the off leash area before finding him some undercover parking to snooze in the car whilst we went off. Our vessel to bringeth us whaling whale watching A picture taken from the top tier of the boat of the shore opposite the departure point. Quite pretty ... We chanced upon the resident dolphins within the bay and the skipper gave us a bit of a commentary about them. They were really cute and swam alongside the boat for a bit.

This is called point perpendicular. It formed one of the sides of the "gateway" separating Jervis Bay from the big bad ocean.

However, in order to spot whales, one had to travel out to the ocean .. hence we became whale paparazzi. The boat was literally tailing these whales, getting as close as was legal to them so we could get a good glimpse of these beautiful creatures. We only spotted "teenage" type whales though and they were extremely hard to see against the gray sea. I guess camouflage is good. You only knew they were there from the occasional sea spray from their spouts.

The sea was mighty choppy out in the open ocean. The smiling staff handed out hospital type seasick bags efficiently as soon as we were past the headlands. They were pretty used to it and the rocking didn't seem to bother them. Unfortunately, it bothered about a quarter of us. Richard succumbed to it first, followed by myself. And as I mentioned before, I was glad My lunch was half the size of his because, with the hospital style sick bags (complete with twist lock) you could see exactly what volume of stomach contents had been expelled! FYI Richards was an impressive 1 L (4 quarts!) and mine was 500ml. We returned to shore after three hours feeling pretty weary. If it was any consolation, the skipper mentioned cheerily that we did much better than the morning tour group!

Supply
Shop 1 54 Owen St
Huskisson 2540 NSW
Phone: (02) 4441 5815

Jervis Bay Whales
50 Owen St
Huskisson 2540
Phone (02) 4441 6341
http://www.jervisbaywhales.com.au/