Submarine

It was a cold, crisp dry season day in The Bay. The rains had stopped, the warm wet season had morphed into the cold wet season, and it in turn had given way to The Dry. Clear blue skies, hard orange, red and black twilight sun rises and sets. Fog on the ground in the mountain gullies in the mornings, and cold hands and feet before dawn. Wetsuits in the water, and hot drinks afterwards. Some people around here call it Winter Time. It’s a term that has always been oddly incongruous for Australian conditions, and one of those colonial hang-ups we have carried over from the olden days and the cultural cringe.

White fella came here from England and they didn’t like anything they saw. Because everything was better in England, Ye Olde Mother Country, that sent us overhere in abject misery and slavery to break our backs and kill ourselves for the greater glory and profit of the blokes holding the whips. So of course the land had to be remade in the image of the old country. Therefore miscellaneous animals and plants were introduced, to “improve the landscape”, i.e. make it look more like England. They brought in rabbits and foxes, which proceeded to, respectively, eat, nibble and gnaw the country into a barren desert, and hunt, prey on and murder our native wildlife, grown up and evolved in 65 millions years of marsupial isolation and ill-prpeared against the onslaught of opportunistic nothern hemisphere placental murderous bastard things. The willows, poplars, blackberries, elms, oaks, peppercorns and gorse that were introduced here to lend a nice pastoral English countryside flavour to the country proceeded to devastate waterways, destroy native forests and choke and kill native vegetation.

Similarly the seasons were divvied up into recognisably English sections: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Except they don’t exist. Australia is a continent with lots of different climatic regions, none of which display the four seasons so desperately clung to by the white people. In my country of the Northern Territory whitefella recognises two seasons, The Wet and The Dry. In actual fact there’s at least four: The Wet, January to mid April, when the monsoonal thuderstorms break at 3.05 pm sharp every day and cyclones periodically destroy our houses; The Dry, mid April to July, when the cool southerly breezes start to blow in from Antarctica and the dragon flies dance over the water of the billabongs and swamps; Fire Season, August to September, when the winds have dried out the land, the speargrass has gone yellow, and the billabongs have dried up; and The Build-Up, October to December, when the atmosphere becomes saturated with up to 99.99%  humidity, the clouds amass in great banks preparing for the monsoonal action yet to come, and people binge on mangoes, lose their temper, get divorced and commit murder. The blackfellas identify at least eight seasons, and potentially up to twelve, incorporating the times when various plants bear fruit and different food sources become available.

South of Sydney there’s a climatic line somewhere that cuts the sub-tropical majority of the continent from the colder south. In Victoria the seasons are something like Cold And Wet, More Cold And Wet, Cold And Dry, Stinking Fucking Hot and Bushfire Run For Your Life Season.

The whole four-season thing where everything dies in autumn, trees lose their leaves, plants whither and die, and everything goes dormant, frozen and snow-covered over winter to start growing again in spring just doesn’t make any sense in Australia. Melaleucas, acacias and eucalypts flower in the middle of “winter”, when they are most protected from the glaring Australian sun. Our trees don’t lose their leaves, and, outside of a tiny high-country area stradling Victoria and New South Wales, we don’t get any snow. Most of the country does not, in actual fact, get any rain, most of the time, and Santa Claus wears speedoes, fins and a snorkeling mask when he comes down here.

So each climatic region has its own set of distinct seasons. Here on the far North Coast of New South Wales the seasons are Hot Season (mid December-late February), Wet And Warm Season (late February till mid April), Wet And Cold Season (late April till mid July), Dry Season (late July till late September), and Northerly Season (October till mid-December), when the hot northerly wind howls over the mountains, dunes and beaches, scouring everything in its path and bringing bluebottle jellyfish to our shores.

Mingled with and criss-crossing those seasons there are other events that characterise and identify the various times of year: during the northerly season the mutton birds will migrate back here from their summering sites on the Siberian islands of the Bering Strait in the far northern Pacific. They’ll fly for 9,000 km more or less without stopping to eat or drink, and, in a bad year, they will land 100 m from shore on the water, within spitting distance of dry land, and will float there, completely exhausted, until they wash onto shore and die in their thousands on the sandy beaches. What a way to go. Homo Sapiens members, stuffed with deep-fried chicken covered in salt, MSG and preservatives, washed down with drinks that are 99 % sugar, like to walk around the carcasses and complain about the stench, until they duly collapse and die next to them from heart attacks. It’s The Circle Of Life, where death is the great equaliser. There is powerful poetic justice to be found in the unexpected death of a big city developer millionaire right next to the humble mutton bird, even more so when the seagulls come to shit on their heads and the crows pick their eyes out.

One of the other life-cycles that intersects our perceived seasons is that of the humpback whale. They leave their home in Antarctica to travel north to the warm shallow waters of the Barrier Reef to have their babies. Born without insulating blubber, they wouldn’t survive for five minutes if they were born down home in the Antarctic Ocean. They spend the better part of six months travelling up and down our coast, fattening up the calves, before they disappear again down south when the northerlies start to blow.

On this day in the Dry Season we went looking for the whales. Curious people and holiday makers from all over the world come to our bay, and, when the time is right, want to go see the whales.

So we gave them lifejackets, spent five minutes telling them how to use a paddle, got them to carry their kayaks down to the water’s edge, and, after a quick brief on how to negotiate waves and breakers that they invariably failed to understand a word of, pushed them out through the surf onto the open waters on a whale watching tour.

This was not without risk, perceived and other, to the various passengers. Often times we would get people who not only professed to not being familiar with the ocean, never having been out on the water, and not knowing how to kayak, but also, frequently, not knowing how to actually swim. Disturbingly, some of these people would come from places like Hong Kong. Hong Kong is an island. It’s small, and it’s surrounded by water. The notion of living on an island and not knowing how to swim is mind-boggling to us, but seemed to be quite run-of-the mill for them. It does raise the question of how they got there in the first place, in those long ago days before organised sea and air travel. You can only wonder at how many people, families with goats and chickens stuffed into some water craft, sailed across the straits to the island, only to drown fifty metres from land when their boats capsized in the shorebreak. Might have been worth their while learning how to swim first. There must have been many unfortunate recipients of the Darwin Award For Natural Selection.

No one drowned this time as we pushed and, for some, swam them out through the surf, and we pulled the group together just outside the last breakers. Encouraging everyone to stay close together we gave them a few background stories on whales and dolphins, and we set out across the bay to find some.

There was no wind, no clouds drifted across the dry steel blue sky, and the surface of the ocean rolled gently underneath us. People paddled along amiably, getting to know each other, and sharing a novel experience. Anticipation ran high: it was the middle of whale season.

We cruised across the Bay, stopping over at a reef where turtles like to stick their heads up and say goodday, then pushing on further out into deeper water, looking for the tell-tale signs of whale presence. There’s a few. The most common one is the whale spout, the column of water vapour that gets blown out of the animals’ breathing hole when they surface for a breath of air. It can be seen from a long way away. The most glaringly obvious one is a whale launching itself headlong out of the water, breaching, lunging for the high sky and landing on its back with a huge splash, sometimes executing a half or full turn in the process. It is a spectacular sight, and never fails to blow people’s minds. It is not uncommon for whales to jump out in groups of two or even three at the same time, in a performance of synchronised breaching, and it is breath taking. They are huge animals, up to fifteen metres long, weighing over thirty tons, and the agility with which they throw those big heavy bodies around is truly impressive.

There are strict rules regulating interaction between humans and whales, for the protection and safety of both. When accompanied by calves the animals can be vulnerable as well as defensive, and it is not hard to imagine the impact a thirty ton animal would have if it crash-landed on top of an unsuspecting kayaker. You’d need a much better quality helmet than the ones we were handing out.

There’s also a thing called a whale footprint. It is an area of seemingly incongruously flat water surrounded by moving water, caused by the submersion of a large body and the attendant movement of eddies around it. It can be seen a fair way off, and is a good indication of whale presence.

In spite of the perfect conditions we weren’t having any luck, and as we paddled onwards and outwards over the Bay we could feel the jolly expectant mood of the passengers dropping, their voices more muted, their jokes and exclamations less frequent. If we didn’t find something for them to look at that we could call value for their money it would turn into a shit tour, and the return journey and picnic on the beach would be less than enjoyable.

Us guides stood up tall in our kayaks and scanned the ocean while paddling, looking for the tell-tale signs. We paddled on, skirting the rocky headland, until we were almost out on the open water, when the call went up: “whale!”.

Sure enough, to a relieved and ecstatic chorus of oohs and aahs in ten different languages from our customers, a whale had turned up a good few hundred metres behind us. It rose and fell majestically and rhythmically as it cruised along the bay, and it was clear it was headed straight towards us, apparently aiming to leave the bay, go round the headland and head back down south, straight to the Shark Attack Capital Of Australia, four headlands further down from us. Hopefully smashing and taking out a few great white sharks that lurk around there in its wake.

We sat and bobbed around on the water, rapt and spellboud. Within minutes the whale had caught up with us, and we started to consult among ourselves about the best way to negotiate its presence. As we were doing so, he or she passed about fifty metres to our left hand side, the side of the open ocean, rising up and down steadily, and we turned to follow. Suddenly the whale stopped and lurched into a sharp right hand turn, seemingly coming straight at us. Us guides glanced at each other, queringly, guardedly. Whales didn’t usually behave like this. We pulled up, calling out polite but firm orders to the tourists, who had no idea anything was amiss. The whale passed across the bows of our foremost kayaks, within fifteen metres. The punters oohed and aahed in rapture, appreciative and unsuspectingly. The wake of its passing rocked the front few boats, and we straightened up, tensing, ready for something, we didn’t know what. Glanced at each other. Frowns, nods. Pay attention. As we were watching the whale dived, head down into the water, tail fluke up, waving majestically in the air, swinging to and fro. We were so close we could see the barnacles on its hide, and some of the customers blanched visibly, grasping the sides of their kayaks, looking around nervously. The animal disappeared under the water, and the water rushed in behind it, causing the flat footprint.

The water went quiet. We looked at each other. Where was it? Where had he gone? What was going on? We conferred quietly amongst ourselves. Several of the guides had been in the trade for many years, and they had never seen a whale do something like this. We considered our options, and most of them included getting out of there quick smart, without causing any panic among the tourists.

Then, as we were in mid-huddle and mid-plan, the water of the footprint started boiling and bubbling, off to our right hand side, no more than twentyfive metres away. To our amazement and disconcern we saw the whale turn around under the water and swim upwards. As we watched he rose up to the surface, and, no more than fifteen metres away from us, broke through the water, slowly, inexorably, looming, rising up high, his dorsal fin sticking out high above the surface, the water rushing and pouring off his shiny black back like the hull of a submarine, and as we watched in horrified fascination, unable to do anything that would make any difference, he picked up speed and headed straight towards the middle of our group of kayaks, like a bull in a ring that’s had a gutful of being annoyed by humans and is going to make short shrift of it. In a cattleyard that’s when you jump the fence. On the open ocean there’s nowhere to go.

People started screaming, shouting, crying. Kids grabbed their mums’ hands across the decks of their boats. The massive black shape came powering straight towards us, seemingly hell-bent on devastation and destruction, exacting revenge on behalf of its species for two hundred years of wholesale industrial slaughter at the hands of Homo Sapiens. The water pushed out in front of it, causing a bow wave that rocked our boats. Two of them capsized, their overseas passengers landing in the water, screaming hysterically. Guides rushing frantically to their help, trying to get there before the whale.

Then, at the last possible minute, the whale stuck his head down and his tail up, dived down into the deep, and swam underneath the whole length of our group of kayaks. We watched him go as we fished hysterical punters out of the water, skulldragging them by their lifejackets back into their boats. He resurfaced twenty metres off to our left hand side, on the side of the open ocean, blew water vapour out of his hole, and duck-dived down again.

Next time he came up a hundred metres further away, and appeared to be heading south. Disappeared again, came up another five hundred metres away, out in front of the headland now.

We sat and watched him go. Within minutes he was out of sight, making good time.

Us guides exchanged looks of disbelief. We weren’t going to discuss this in front of the customers, who were scared enough as it was. But things like this just didn’t happen. This was the stuff of once in a lifetime. And we had been very lucky indeed that the whale had decided to just give us a warning to leave him alone, and had decided not to push the matter any further. It could have been carnage out there. You can’t argue with a pissed-off animal that weighs thirty tons and can swim six times faster than you can paddle.

It didn’t seem likely that anyone was going to complain they didn’t get their money’s worth of whale watching that day.