Sorry about the long lag in the blog. After the arrival in Tasmania of Aidan and Heather on December 22 followed by Josh and Laura on Dec 24 we enjoyed a fabulous week of summer family fun, feasting on seafood and visiting favourite old haunts together. Part way through that period I created a page of pictures on the blog but for some reason the post wouldn't save. I fiddled with it for a couple of hours, even deleting the original and starting from scratch, but the wayward post just wouldn't stick. Over the past dozen years, when I ran into technical road blocks I had to persevere until the problem was resolved. In retirement I have the new-found luxury of walking away and coming back another day - so I did! All I can think of is that one or more of the pics in the troublesome post were corrupted, so I've abandoned them and edited new pics to share.
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| Christmas Day on Sandy Bay Beach |
In 1988 when Josh was 6 and Aidan was 4 we lived with my mum at Coles Bay during her last year as proprietor of The Chateau. Nestled within the boundaries of the Freycinet National Park, the 16 acre property has a beautiful sandy beach at the front door and The Hazards mountain range rising from the back yard. The boys still savour their year of 'home schooling' in such a magical place. A couple of weeks before we returned to Canada we were enjoying a typical morning of snorkelling, collecting fish and sea horses for our aquarium. We'd keep them in the tank for a few days of close examination then release them back to the ocean. On this particular day we were surprised by some sea creatures that were rather too big for 'collection' but certainly provided ample opportunity for close examination. A pod of 80 pilot whales swam right into our corner of the beach and proceeded to strand on the sand. Thus began one of our most fascinating and memorable family adventures. Over the course of 3 days we helped the whales to return to the sea from this and a second stranding, swam with the pod, videotaped the entire sequence of events and subsequently produced a video documentary.
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| Coles Bay Beach and The Hazards |
The spot on the beach where six-year-old Josh helped the whales escape their stranding in 1988 is the place he chose to propose to his sweetheart Laura in 2010. That same magical spot drew us all back for several visits over the past few weeks. Memories of our close encounters with the whales have remained fresh over a quarter-century and as we strolled the beach together each of us was transported back to that life-altering experience. This week's mass pilot whale stranding in New Zealand brought the memories flooding back yet again, and the eventual death of most of that pod reminded us how fortunate we were to save all but 2 of the estimated 80 whales in the Freycinet stranding.
