on my way Backpacking, roadtripping and travelling the world

Sunshine Coast and Whale Watching in Hervey Bay

In my latest study break it took me a while to buy a van, as especially then only a few vans were for sale. I bought a normal van so I then spent a couple of days fitting out the van to make sure nothing is missing for my road trip up the coast together with Elana who came from New Zealand to visit me for a week.

Our first stop was Rainbow Beach, where we spent the night on a nice campground on the beach. After visiting the big sand dune the next day we continued to Hervey Bay. The nice double rainbow in the afternoon made us hope to have a awesome day the next day out with the whales - and it was awesome!

In a small group of just 6 including crew, we spent all day in the bay cruising around with the big catamaran sometime even catching some wind so we could turn of the motor. It took a while until we saw the first whales, but then they would not stop jumping and diving up. We even saw a Southern Right whale with a young calf (check out my youtube channel for a video). These kind of whales normally only show up in Hervey bay every 5-6 years, and our Skipper said he had never seen a Southern Right that close to his boat, especially with her calf.
One of the Humpback Whales was that close that it seemed it will touch the boat as it dived under our boat just below the bow.

The following days we spend some time on the Sunshine coast stopping in Noosa, Mooloolaba and the Glasshouse Mountains. Instead of visiting the Australian Zoo we decided to go on a small hike around Mount Tibrogargan.

Now that I have a van I will try to do some more weekend trips in the next time, especially as summer just started to hit Brisbane. This weekend we'll spend a day at the beach with 28 degrees to be expected. Good bye "winter"!