Humpback whale watching in Hervey Bay

I didn’t especially rate Hervey Bay itself as a destination, it was alright but it definitely wasn’t our favourite place. But we had time to kill before we got to Rainbow Beach for our Fraser Island trip and we’d heard it was a great place to spot humpback whales during their migration south – so we stayed here for three nights.

As the whales were our main reason for coming to Hervey and the beach wasn’t particularly anything special, we signed up for a half day trip of whale watching with Quick Cat II. It was quite pricey at $100 each, but you got breakfast and a light lunch, plus a guarantee of seeing whales. And in hindsight I can say it was definitely worth it!

After a stop off to pick up a few people from Fraser Island, we headed out to the marine park. And just minutes after entering those waters we spotted our first humpback whale! And, excitingly, she had a baby with her. 🙂 By judging its colouring, the crew estimated the baby to be about two months old and we stayed with them for a while watching it jump out of the water and splash about. I’ve never seen a whale before, let alone a wild mother and baby, so it was an absolutely stunning experience. I could’ve watched them all day!

But after a while we headed off further into the marine park in the direction of some bigger splashes in the distance where adult whales were breaching! We saw some dolphins along the way, but by the time we got to the other whales they had stopped jumping out of the water. Another mum and baby with an ‘escort’ adult swam around the boat for a while, though. The escort especially got right up close to the boat, which was amazing – they’re absolutely massive!

We saw more dolphins and another mum and baby (these ones were snoozing) on our way back along the western coast of Fraser Island and got back to shore with enormous smiles on our faces. We were really lucky that the boat wasn’t busy with only about 10 of us on board so we always had a good view of the wildlife. The crew also really knew their stuff and it was such a magical morning. Seeing these wonderful creatures so up close definitely made our visit to Hervey Bay worthwhile!