Was sitting, quietly fishing, in my cockleshell dinghy at River Heads - and about ten feet behind me hear a quiet 'pfphoof!?
?? think i.
Look around, and see two minke whales travelling up the river.
Update: 28/02/07 Japan suspends whaling operations this season. Link pinched from Link .. heh.
9 comments:
Whales in your River, eh? I'm sure we have a chemical to cure that.
you can't just end the story there!
did thrill overcome fear ?
did they take your bait ?
did you wish you had your digital camera ?
did you row like mad in case they tipped you out ?
what a wonderful thing.
a few weeks ago a koala ran towards me on a sealed road while it was changing trees.
I am still not 'over it'; so I know what a rush you'd get from 2 whales.
Brownie, I hope you were changing tyres or tires or whatever those round things are under your car.
Changing trees is Davo's line of work...he has the baby pictures and all that. Can you imagine it? Scores of trees in diapers!
My dinghy is an inflatable, but it's getting old and starting to leak. I use an electric trolling motor on it.
They are great.
I could write a great story about the first time I took my 32 footer out and it burned out an exhaust tube and the fiasco after that when a drunk came to tow me back to the marina.
He caught my anchor in his prop, the wind was blowing good and my boat knocked ten feet of windows out of his boat.
Lucky I didn't kill myself getting off his boat back on mine so that I could get my boat away from the fool.
He caught my anchor ROPE in his prop
Perhaps I should have been a bit clearer as to the location. River Heads is an estuary at the mouth of the Mary River in Queensland, where it enters a portion of Hervey Bay, a popular "playground" for whales as they travel along the east coast of Australia. It was, however, extremely rare to see them in the River, and I felt extremely blest by the event. It was also about ten years ago.
Billy B, boats and fools seem to have an uncanny attraction for each other; I must write up some of my more stupid adventures :-).
GS; baby trees in diapers, whoo hoo, hadn't heard that one before :-D.
Brownie, it is always a pleasure to come across Fauna in the wild, and
1. yes I can.
2. No fear, just awe and amazement.
3. No.
4. I would have wished for any camera at all, but these events are unpredictable - and am thinking that digital cameras hadn't been invented back then :-).
5. No. Whales aren't vicious.
Speaking of fools and boats, in your previous post I confessed to a mess I caused through no fault of my own. Now I have an even more embarrassing confession.
I rowed from Silver Glen Springs (in the national forest in central Florida) up a "run" into Lake George -- a huge lake. I dropped the anchor over the side and relaxed with my fishing rod for an hour or so until the sun began to sink and the wind began to rise alarmingly.
I started rowing, anxious to get back to the springs and shelter. The strong wind bent the water grass on either side of me, little wavelets formed, and I couldn't make any headway. No matter how hard I rowed, in ten exhausting minutes the boat never progressed more than a couple of yards . . . and it was beginning to get dark.
How could wind and current be so strong near the shore of a shallow lake? They couldn't. I realized at last that I hadn't hauled the anchor in!
WOW.
(fleming, that's really funny.
I had a similar experience but I was only 8 and a rocky shoreline was involved. I got rescued.)
Link, I'm glad you enjoyed my story. I should have mentioned that I was about 13 at the time.
I'm also glad that you commented because it led me to look at your blog. I haven't had time to read much yet, but I'll be back regularly. You're a very lively and entertaining writer. Also, you like Botticelli.
You might want to look at my blog, FLIGHTS OF PEGASUS.
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