Our Friends in the Sea

Nicole had a day off yesterday, that's Sunday, so we went up to Bribie Island to check out a dog beach that she had found out about from someone at work.

It turned out that it was the top, or bottom end of the beach that we usually go to, but round the corner, facing South and a few km along from the end we generally frequent.

Less interesting from the point of view that Red Beach has lots of driftwood around to play on, but nicer in the we pretty much had the beach to ourselves and the sand was lovely and white with the gentle surf rolling its way slowly up over the footprints and tire tracks.

Nicole saw that Matilda was behaving very strangely. That damn dog is usually exploring in the undergrowth and sniffing around for things to roll in, but today she was standing at the edge of the low surf and just looking out to sea. Had she become suddenly doggishly poetic and philosophical?

She - Nicole that is - looked closely at the swell just beyond the surf and whooped when she saw a dolphin fin, and when we all had a look another appeared then another, then more.

It seemed that there were several groups (pods I believe is the correct term) of dolphins browsing just offshore for who-knows-what, just ambling along in the current. We estimated that there might have been twenty of them or more, and they just dawdled along around twenty five metres in front of us, so we settled down to watch them.

And we must have watched them for an hour or more, as they wandered first one way then another, before disappearing into the deep blue.

If an encounter however arms-length with a pod of wild dolphins doesn't call for a cup of coffee, I don't know what does.