We swam with sealions!

What an amazing day we’ve had! The four of us went on the “Baird Bay Ocean Experience” tour today ( see www.bairdbay.com ) and had an incredible time. We were taken by boat to Jones Island with a couple from Queensland, and the wild sealions living there came out to play.

This shows us all in wetsuits before we got on the boat. You’ll see a dolphin and sealion carved into the limestone.


No more photos yet as they are on an underwater camera which needs to be taken somewhere to process, but stay tuned!


Max did especially well as the water we were taken out to was cold and also rougher than he is used to. He’s really only swam in swimming pools and the calm Dalyellup and Cottesloe Beaches before. I found the swim hard and needed some help from the lovely Alan who ran the tour. Harry was very excited but freaked out as soon as he got in the water, finding it too ‘cold and scary’.  He sat in the boat for most of the trip. He has been a bit uncertain of water since taking a tumble into the Bunbury Hospital pool as a 2 year old and also,like me, finds changes in temperature difficult to cope with, so his reaction wasn’t surprising. As expected, Trevor found it all to be fine.


Once we were in the water the sealions slowly came to visit – they are not fed or deliberately trained or anything like that, so actually getting to play with them is very lucky. They twisted and turned around us – sometimes getting close enough for us to touch their whiskers. Max even got a smooch from one!! They have short fur – almost like a dog’s, and while they look pretty ungainly on land, their swimming abilities are phenomenal! They somersault about so elegantly and in the water their bodies turn into sleek swimming machines.


We also went out to find some dolphins – only Max and Trevor went in this time as I was tired out and incredibly cold, even after a hot Milo and biscuit. They only got to see a few dolphins as, in Alan’s words, the young males ‘are all too busy fighting’. Even so, it was amazing to see wild dolphins up so close.


If you ever happen to visit Baird Bay, Alan and Trish’s tour is really worthwhile.       It sounds cliched I know, but my memories of today will last forever.