June 7th 2025 – Written by Enorha Guimard
A nursery by the sea
Crossing the desert and the outback of Australia to see one of the most gentle and beautiful animals on this planet. My excitement was overwhelming; my heart beat faster with every kilometre. I had left the cold winter of Victoria behind, and as I crossed into South Australia, I felt the warm sun on my face for the first time in weeks.
There’s something strangely captivating about crossing the outback. A landscape that feels both empty and alive at once. The road unwinds through a vast, ochre-coloured land, where time seems to stretch and bend. Low shrubs cling to the red earth, the heat dances above the asphalt, and every now and then, I could see through the window of the car a wedge-tailed eagle circles overhead. Occasionally, a flash of movement breaks the stillness. A lone kangaroo, half-hidden in the shade of the bush, resting through the heat of the day. It lifts its head, alert and calm, then disappears again into the rustling scrub.
The red fades to gold, then to green, and finally, to blue, that striking turquoise blue. The ocean appears like a mirage, shimmering at the edge of everything. Reaching the coastline felt like arriving at another world. A place where the land breathes differently. We just arrived to the home of the one of the largest breeding grounds of southern right whales: Fowlers Bay.
Australia is a beautiful home for the giants during their breeding season. Most people know it for its humpback whales, but its southern right whales remain one of the country’s best-kept secrets. What makes their presence even more captivating is the journey to reach them — crossing the outback, far from civilisation, driving through endless red desert just to stand on a wild coastline and watch these gentle giants return to their ancient nurseries.
Fowlers Bay is the second largest breeding ground after Head of Bight. The place feels wild, remote, almost hidden, like a well-kept secret tucked away at the edge of the continent. Here, I could walk for hours along the beach without seeing another soul, only the sound of the wind and waves. Just a few hundred metres from shore, mothers and their calves played in the shallows, completely at ease in this peaceful sanctuary.
Home to a shore-based whaling station in the 1800s, this bay has a deep and complex history with whales. Once abundant along the coast, southern right whales were heavily hunted for their oil and baleen. By the early 20th century, the population had been driven to the brink of extinction, and the whales vanished from these waters.
There is still physical evidence of the past here: bones resting beneath the surface and in the bay, silent remnants of a time when these giants were not admired, but hunted and exploited.
But decades after commercial whaling ended, the ocean slowly began to heal. The Southern right whales started to return to their ancient breeding grounds, including Fowlers Bay. Today, this remote sanctuary has become one of the most important and peaceful calving areas in Australia.
The whales that come here now are a new generation—one that never knew whaling, and hopefully never will again.
In Australia, two distinct populations of southern right whales live along the southern coastline. The south-eastern population found in Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales is classified as endangered, with only around 300 individuals. The south-western population in South Australia and Western Australia is larger, with about 4,000 whales, and is listed as vulnerable
“Right whales” were given their name because whalers considered them the right whales to hunt. They swam slowly, stayed close to the coast, and when killed, their bodies floated, making them tragically easy targets. Because of this, right whales became the foundation of the early whaling industry almost everywhere it existed.
Their numbers were devastated across the world. In some regions, like the Bay of Biscay in France, they were hunted to complete extinction. In others, including Australia, they were pushed to the very edge of disappearing forever.
Today, Australia holds two small recovering populations, one still endangered, one vulnerable, a reminder of both the harm we once caused and the resilience of these gentle giants.
And then, there was Head of Bight! There is so many things to say about this place. Around 3 hours away from Fowlers Bay, Head of Bight is the main breeding ground of this species in South Australia. And the particularlity with this place is this time there is no boats around and we observe these beautiful creatures from land.