Advertisement
Published: March 12th 2010
Edit Blog Post
P1080491
Smile for the camera - this was Mystique actually smiling. We planned a stop at Tin Can Bay which is quite close to Rainbow beach and Hervey Bay for one reason only. Dolphin feeding. I’d read somewhere that wild dolphins come to the marina to be fed every morning so we stopped in Tin Can Bay for just 24 hours to quell our desires!
Tin Can Bay is a small town with very little going on. I suppose it could have been that it was late afternoon on a Sunday that we arrived but I think I’m being a bit generous in thinking that more things might go on during the week there as there was pretty much no sign of life, apart from the people driving up to the drive through liquor store that was a part of the hotel we stayed in that is. I asked the lady at reception whether things were open on a Sunday and she didn’t really know how to answer I suppose...nothing really open, nothing really open at any time anyway. It kind of felt like we were in some Hillbilly state, probably the first place we’ve been in Australia that isn’t really set up for tourists.
We woke early the next morning as we needed to be at the marina for about 7.45am to make sure we didn’t miss the dolphin feeding session. When we got there, there were a fair few people (about 20) all lined up and waiting in the water. Mystique, an 18 year old male dolphin was in the water, waiting patiently for it’s breakfast - 3kg of fish. Nice. At a couple of minutes to eight, one of the volunteers there started a little speech, telling us about how long the dolphins had been coming to Barnacles and Tin Can Bay for a morning feed, facts about the dolphins and other such information that I couldn’t concentrate on as I was constantly taking photos of the dolphin that was about a metre away from me. Literally seconds before we were about to get out of the water and collect our buckets of fish to feed Mystique, another dolphin called Patch appeared for her breakfast too. She’d obviously set an underwater alarm clock to make sure that she got up on time, as she arrived at 7:59am for the 8am feeding, clever thing. The dolphins were so cute, they’re a different type of dolphin to
the usual bottle-nose ones that you see, they were Indo-pacific humpbacks, but were just as cool as the more common type of dolphin. As the dolphins are wild, the staff don’t want them becoming reliant on the morning feeding sessions, so they only give them 10%!o(MISSING)f their daily food ... that’s right, the little blighters eat 30kg of food a day- greedy beggars!
So, as it was feeding time we all got out of the water and got our $5 ready to exchange for a couple of fish for the dolphins, before heading back to the water to feed some wild dolphins (how can all these amazing experiences be so cheap?!). Feeding the dolphins was over pretty quickly, as they gobbled them down whole.
We had to hold the fish under water one at a time for the Patch and she gently took them from us. Once everyone had fed the dolphins, Patch took off fairly quickly (as she had a 2 year old dolphin to look after somewhere else) but Mystique stuck around to see if he could get any more food. He waited patiently, people had photos taken with him and he even did a P1080466
Breakfast anyone? trick of smiling for the camera. I kid you not. The volunteer told us that he did it and a girl went over to him, stood by him, he could see the camera and he opened his mouth slightly, showing his teeth a little and stayed like that until the photo had been taken. Pretty cool. They are so intelligent - they can sleep with one eye open, using part of their brain to check out what is going on around them. That’s what the helpful, if a little scary volunteer informed us. Eventually Mystique swam away too, probably hunting for more food. What else do they have to do?
Unfortunately, Tin Can Bay has pretty much nothing to do apart from dolphin feeding, especially in heavy rain and we were walking back to the hotel/motel for about 8.45am with our bus not arriving until after 4pm - the only time they pick up from there. So what did we do? We checked out of our hotel but stayed there and sat in their living room for pretty much 6 hours, eating, watching movies and so on. Fun fun. One thing that did happen though was before we went
out to feed the dolphins, I came out of the ladies bathroom and felt something on my foot. I looked down and saw what looked like a shred of toilet roll on the floor close by but it started moving along the carpet. After bending down and staring at it, I realised that it was a new born gecko with a white coloured skin or something over it. How cute! It went to the side of the wall so I left it there and when we returned from dolphin feeding, it was still in pretty much the same place. Whilst I was getting changed in our room after having a shower, I heard a vacuum cleaner outside so rushed out to see a lady with a vacuum cleaner attached to her back, starting to clean the hall where the gecko was. I called out to her and she stopped cleaning and I explained that there was a baby gecko down there. I had no idea where it had come from so picked it up and took it downstairs to some shrubbery. I thought I was doing the right thing but later it rained really heavily and I worried that it
might have drowned although I couldn’t see it anywhere on the numerous times I went to check on it. Then I saw another little gecko head looking out from above the light fitting in the ladies toilets so I think that there may have been a nest up there and the baby gecko might have fallen from there earlier. This made me feel even more guilty. I hope baby Gerry gecko is okay!
So after our six hour wait in the hotel we were eager to get on the bus when it finally arrived ... it was a long, long, dull day following our early start and dolphin encounter, but it was definitely worth it, it’s not every day that you get the chance to hand-feed some wild dolphins - too good an opportunity to miss!
Matt and Cate x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.127s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0609s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb