Our main break in the long drive back from Carnarvon was at a café called the Big Giraffe in the small town of Bororen, on the Bruce Highway. In addition to the huge Giraffe statue in the front, the place featured many other animal statues, all for sale. But its main attraction for us was the discovery of the jaffle – which turned out to be the Australian term for Aviva’s “patent toast”, to Daniel’s delight.
אמא, את בטוחה שאנחנו חיים? כי זה נראה כמו החוף של גן העדן
On our way to Hervey Bay we called a couple of caravan parks, one of which had no free beach-front sites, another had some, and the third we couldn’t get on the phone. When we arrived, in the late afternoon, we tried the latter, and it did have one site right on the beach for us. The beach was absolutely wonderful, with a very calm sea and lots of different shells. We all walked along the beach before dinner, and after the kids went to sleep, Lilach and I took two chairs and a beer and sat right at the edge of the water. Amazingly, there was no sound at all from the sea. It was so calm, that not even the faintest lapping of waves could be heard.
We spent the morning combing the beach for shells, then swam a little in the warm and calm water. After taking our breakfast at the beach, we walked along the beach to the mangroves on the north side. Following a quick lunch, we drove to the port, to board our whale-watching cruise. When we got there, my hiking boots presented me with a gaping sole. I didn’t want to board the ship in thongs, so I fixed the sole with some super-glue as a temporary solution, hoping to find a better one soon. Humpback whales visit the shores of Australia in the winter to give birth, before migrating back to the Antarctic waters in the summer so gorge themselves on krill (tiny shrimps swimming in huge swarms, which they gulp by the tonne). Hervey Bay is considered one of the best places in the world to see them, and sightings between July and November are practically guaranteed. We saw no whale in the first hour and a half of the sail, though the skipper did spot and chase a Minke Whale at some point. Only when we were well out into the bay, close to the far end of Fraser Island which bounds the bay from the south, did we see the first whale. We later saw several pods of 2-5 whales, almost all of them with at least one calf. The calves were generally more active than their mothers or the occasional male encountered, and it took a long while until we finally saw some fin flipping from adult whales. We did see a couple of breaches of the calves, but none of the adults did us the favor of displaying any acrobatics. Tamar and Daniel were thrilled to see these majestic creatures up close, as were we. Upon returning to the camp, we spent some more time at the beach before preparing dinner and going to sleep.
On our third day at Hervey Bay we woke to a stormy day, after a night of heavy rains. Undeterred, we did our compulsory beach combing and went to the nearby playground, where the kids expended some energy. We decided to have lunch in town and then buy groceries and try to find a place to repair my hiking boots. The lunch affair proved trickier than expected, with one restaurant being closed, and the second being disappointing. Only on the third attempt did we manage to get a reasonable Indian lunch. After that we drove to the only cobbler in town, but instead found a bunch of car mechanics. Turned out that Google Maps directed us to the wrong end of a very long street. We called the cobbler, which turned out to be a tobacconist in a shopping center, which also does key duplication and shoe repairs, and got directions to the correct location, which was in fact very close to where we boarded the cruise the other day. We took advantage of that proximity to buy Daniel and Tamar a plush whale to add to their growing menagerie.
Family Trips 