There is an upside to this rather miserable time of year, and that is the beginning of whale watching season. Being located in Adelaide at the moment, I’m well placed to pop down to the high peaks of the Victor Harbour bluff (or any one of the cliff edges that look out over the Southern Ocean) to watch the Southern Right Whales as they frolic around, give birth to and then play with their babies.

Yesterday we heard there was one such cetacean playing off Victor Harbour, so we all jumped in the car and set off on the one hour trek (with many games of eye-spy and twenty questions along the way to defer the inevitable ‘are we there yet’ from little miss six).

To add a bit of spice to our quest there was also a storm rolling in which we were desperate to beat. We could hear the crashes of distant lightning punctuating the old-time tunes on the radio (because we were listening to am radio as dad was driving and he is a big believe in ‘driver picks the radio station’, no matter how desperately the passengers protest. So really the lightning sound was a bit of relief).  

With the first splatters of raindrops on the window (splatters, not patters, these were big drops that looked not unlike clear seagull droppings) we arrived to search the slate grey ocean for signs of life.

Did we see any whales before the storm drove us back into the car and a further torturous round of twenty-questions? I’ll let my photos do the talking…