Whale Season Day Trip from Adelaide
Southern right whales in Encounter Bay
A day chasing whales
Between May and October, southern right whales return to Encounter Bay to calve. A well-planned day from Adelaide lets you put in enough looking time at the best vantage points to give yourself a real chance of a sighting.
When to go
Peak months are July and August. Weekends book out for accommodation; a day trip from Adelaide is much more forgiving.
Pack for it
Warm layers, a beanie, good shoes for short walks, binoculars if you have them. The Fleurieu wind is cold even when the sun is out.
Plan B
Whales are wild animals - they are around but they do not perform on cue. The SA Whale Centre in Victor Harbor is the rainy-day plan, with a great exhibition and a volunteer-run sightings board.
Day 1
5 stops-
1
The Bluff (Rosetta Head)
Victor HarborStart high. A short, steep walk up The Bluff gives you one of the best vantage points over Encounter Bay - and a sense of the historic whaling era.
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2
South Australian Whale Centre
Victor HarborCheck the sightings board for recent whale reports, and take a walk through the centre's exhibits. It is the best way to understand what you are looking at outside.
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3
Granite Island
Victor HarborWalk the Kaiki track on the ocean side of the island for a different angle, and check the seal colony on the way around.
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4
Waitpinga Cliffs Walk
Victor HarborAfternoon: drive south-west to Waitpinga for the best clifftop whale watching on the Fleurieu. Take the short Kings Beach track for a second vantage.
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5
Kings Beach
Victor HarborFinish the day at Kings Beach. The clifftop carpark is a superb whale-watching lookout - stay for sunset.
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On the map
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The shore-based whalers of Encounter Bay
Between 1837 and the 1860s, two rival whaling stations operated from the Bluff at Victor Harbor. They hunted the southern right whale to local extinction in less than three decades. The whales are only now beginning to return.
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When the whales return: the opening of the Fleurieu whale season
Every year in late May and early June, the first southern right whales of the season return to Encounter Bay to calve. It is a quiet, tentative arrival after months of absence, and it marks the moment the Fleurieu wildlife calendar turns over. Here is the history of the whales, how they came back, and how to see the first arrivals.
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The Encounter: when Flinders met Baudin in Encounter Bay
On 8 April 1802, two ships flying flags of opposing empires sighted each other off the Fleurieu coast. The British and French commanders had been mapping the same stretch of unknown coastline for months without knowing the other was there. The bay where they met has been called Encounter Bay ever since.
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The Fleurieu in July: almond blossom, whales and winter fires
Mid-winter is the Fleurieu Peninsula's quietest month and also, quietly, its best. Almond blossom at Willunga, southern right whales in Encounter Bay, cellar-door fires lit from lunchtime, waterfalls at full flow and almost nobody on the roads. Here is the July case.
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48 hours on the Encounter Coast
The south coast of the Fleurieu - where Flinders met Baudin in 1802 and where southern right whales still return every winter - is a world apart from the wine country. Here is how to do it in two days.
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Whale watching on the Fleurieu
Each winter, southern right whales return to the Encounter Bay coastline to calve and mate in the sheltered waters where they were once hunted to near-extinction. Here is where to see them.
Image credits
- Victor Harbor and Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head by Leybj003 , CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons