TransParentSea

A return to Old Bar sparks some memories for S4C’s artist/activist, Howie Cooke, who occupied the guest kayak on Day 22 …

The guest boat is now adorned with howie’s humpback art …

“As the wind dropped off and we peddled our way into Old Bar and a glowing-orange sunset I recalled my last stopover in this area in 1995. A Brydes (pron. ‘brooders’) whale had slipped in over the bar and become trapped in the Manning River. Intrigued, I drove my van from Bondi and met some locals at Croki who gave me a punt with a small outboard. I spent about 10 days on the river, on most occasions meeting ‘Willy’ (as he or she had been christened).
It was extraordinary to see a large oceanic rorqual swimming slowly upstream past mangroves, bush and herons. To hear a big whale breathing under a canopy of trees was quite a wondrous thing. It was frustrating that the resident bottlenose dolphins didn’t seem to be offering to guide the whale back out to sea on the king tide.
National Parks & Wildlife Services (NPWS) took up vigil on a Sea World boat that they had moored in the river. The whale gained folklore status in the area, and merchandise and memorabilia flourished in celebration of his presence.
According to some old timers, some other Brydes whales had entered the river some decades before and like Willy had made it all the way up to the Taree Bridge. They also claimed that some other local people shot one or two of these whales and their skeletons are still embedded somewhere in the riverbank today.
Some of the tactics initiated by the NPWS, including banging metal pipes in the water to drive the whale down the river, and an attempt to net him, were disastrous and did little more than terrify and wound it. Ultimately, however, on the whale’s 100th day captive of the river, Willy, now getting skinny and weaker, surrendered to human help and was successfully loaded onto an inflatable pontoon and towed out over the bar to the sea.
Almost immediately, another whale that had probably been waiting offshore the entire time, joined Willy and they were photographed from a helicopter swimming together as they moved off to deep-water freedom.
So here we are, back again in the company of a great whale migration maintaining our call for total whale freedom …”

HC

Howie Cook – passionate activist and artist, always with an eye on the sea and the creatures that live within.

“It has been such a buzz getting out of SE Asia, back to the S4C crew and the Transparentsea mission,” says Howie.
“Arriving at a campsite tucked away behind the dunes I was immediately struck by Australia’s raw connection with nature and wildlife, something that is fast dwindling in other parts of the world. It’s really too hard to put into words the stoke of being back amongst Dave and his happy gang of surfing sailors, playing music and laughing around a campfire, who have gathered for a common cause of cleaner coasts, oceans full of life and its cetaceans swimming free.”