The Tail of a Whale

It's interesting to think about the relationship between people and whales and how it has changed over the last century. Up until quite recently (maybe 100 years) whales were still an important resource for food, oil, bone and other materials. The early colony in Sydney relied on whale oil as a source of energy for light and other things. Whales were also an important resource for local Aboriginal people along the East coast.

This video was shot on the beach at Patonga, near the mouth of Broken Bay and the Hawkesbury river at the point where the river meets the ocean (the Tasman Sea?). It's in places like this where whales would have been hauled up on to the sheltered beach and butchered for their various parts. There were whaling stations in Sydney Harbour and Broken Bay up into the 1900s. It's a gruesome thought really.

However, today people pay lots of money to go and see whales pass near here as they head south (for the summer). There are whale watching cruises at Ettalong nearby and you can see the whales passing from the cliffs near Kilcare. Australians have become strong advocates for the protection of whales and people celebrate when people manage to save whales that have become beached or injured by nets or boats.

This song draws on the idea of whales as intelligent, empathetic, mystical creatures with special abilities which humans don't understand.