It’s a pitch black night here at Thala. A strange repetitive sound  ‘zoop zoop zoop zoop’ softly resonates  through the rainforest. It is hard to tell which direction it is coming from: But it seems to be generally high up in the canopy. The sea breeze has died away and the still humid air hangs like a blanket over the forest.  ‘zoop zoop zoop’ it drones on.

Nocturnal birds, as mysterious as their call, Papuan Frogmouths are nesting overhead in a fork of a giant Paperbark tree at the edge of the thick forest.

Papuan frogmouth chick in nest.

Their flimsy nest, balanced 20 metres above the ground with a few sparse twigs, is  home to this magnificent chick. Piercing red eyes distinguish these birds from other species of frogmouths. While guests at the lodge are sleeping, his parents work hard throughout the night capturing moths, small reptiles and frogs to keep up with the chick’s voracious appetite. They usually sit motionless in a tree alert to every movement on the ground below; swooping down on stealthily quiet wings to grab small prey with their large wide beaks.

During the day parents and chick spend their time motionless often with their eyes closed to protect their sensitive retina from the harsh sunlight. Cryptic colours and feather patterns means that extremely keen eyes are needed to see them at all. Thala’s naturalists Brett and David first spotted this chick and for many weeks guests have enjoyed watching him with the aid of a powerful telescope.

Now at night  the forest feels alive and mysterious. Thick brooding air carries the zoop zoop zoop of the Papuan Frogmouths right along the beach. Waves cast phosphorescence  onto the eerily glowing sand. This is the wet season in all its natural glory, a remarkable celebration of life.

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I have been in the water for fifteen minutes. The water is thirty-five metres deep and clear. It is now silent and shafts of sunlight meet at a point beneath me in the blue void.  I feel surprisingly relaxed. Out of the stillness, a shoal of five large and energetic remoras swim directly to me as if they are lieutenants preparing a visit for their eminent host. They spin around heading back towards the whale, which again rises to the surface now only a hundred metres away.

Looking through my mask above the surface, I can clearly see a ridge on his rostrum directly in line with the blowhole and dorsal fin. He is now perfectly aligned facing me and moving forwards slowly, but not yet visible underwater.  He moves closer until at the edge of my underwater visibility (I estimate about sixty-five feet), I first see the huge white flippers glowing white and the outline of his head.  There is a sense of calm.  I have a feeling of pure wonderment.
He is five hundred times my size and has enough power to raise his forty tons clear of the water.  His sophisticated brain has formed a clear impression of me and my internal organs. I only have my eyes to rely on.  I can see just 45 feet with clarity and a basic outline at 65 feet, beyond nothing. I am in his world. He is the master. His is a world of perception through  sound and electromagnetism that passes unseen through my body: In both respects, I am illiterate.

With spectacular ease, he glides down and takes up a position head down at an angle of forty five degrees from the surface. The posterior tips of his flukes just eight metres from the surface and now directly below me. There he lies absolutely motionless; not a movement. There is a sense of perfect balance and symmetry. Whilst he holds this position with precision and ease, I am adrift.

I remain in wonder at the grandeur of this magnificent humpback whale.  His world and experiences are so different from mine. Our lives seem worlds apart, yet we are very close. We are both mammals and depend on our mothers care and milk at birth. We are intelligent. We breathe the same air.   We have social and family ties. We have a comparable lifespan. We have much to learn about each other and from each other.

I, not he, am the representative of greatest danger: A member of the species that has nearly brought his to extinction: Justified by putting oil in our lamps and meat on our plates.  He has good reason to be aggressive and disgusted. He will have heard the painful cries of harpooned whales echoing around the ocean depths. Still he chooses to satisfy his curiosity by approaching  me gently and with no malice.

I am humbled.

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When I was staying at Thala Beach Lodge, the ocean was clear and I spent a day swimming around the rocks with my underwater camera. Within 200 metres of Thala’s shore is another world that only a handful of people have ever seen. Freediving to the bottom in just 5 or 6 metres of water I entered an astonishing world of corals, algae-encrusted rocks, sea fans and sea whips. I was also surprised by the variety of fish: Including tuskfish, barracuda, sardines, butterflyfish, blennies, rock-cod, trevally, surgeonfish, darts, wrasses, butterfish, drummers, sweetlips and damselfish. At one point only 20 metres from the shore, I held onto a pinnacle of an oyster encrusted rock just breaking the surface, trying to remain as motionless as possible. The rock rises up from the bottom like an arching rhino horn. In the gentle surge, my body was swaying rhythmically with the algae when a large Green turtle approached. Normally they are very timid, but this individual allowed me to watch as it grazed algae from the same rock and less than two metres away. Underwater, I could even hear the rasping of its bill. After ten leisurely minutes it drifted away around the point towards the long sandy beach. I am posting up a few of my photographs taken in this magical ‘other-world’.

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The rainforest clad mountains behind Thala Beach Lodge cause uplift in the afternoon sea breezes of The Tradewinds. With stiffly held upturned wings, sea-eagles soar effortlessly along the coast, riding these invisible waves for hours at a time. Their exceptional eyesight detects  fish activity from a great height. They descend when fish present them with an opportunity. But close to the sea they have less uplift and have to expend more energy beating their wings powerfully.

Our Logo - The White Bellied Sea Eagle

On the coastal road just South of Thala Beach Lodge, I watched a sea-eagle struggling to gain altitude a few hundred metres offshore; a huge fish hanging from its talons. Flying less than two metres above the sea, it headed for  a poplar gum tree alongside the road. Just as it gained the shore line, it had to let the fish go to avoid being hit by a car that came up behind it. The driver of the car made no attempt to slow down and would have collided with the eagle had it not let the fish go. With only a second to spare the eagle gained a few centimeters of  altitude and barely missed the top of the car. I felt incensed at the thoughtless behaviour of the driver as the car sped on.  The exhausted eagle had gained a perch in the eucalyptus tree and was watching its prey spread out in the middle of the road. I rushed out to move the fish before another car came by.

I was staggered when I came close to the fish. It was a Slender Sea-pike about 115 centimetres in length: Now quite dead but its jaws bristled with formidable teeth. I carried the fish onto the nearby sandy beach, where the sea-eagle could later come down and reclaim its prize without risk of being hit by passing traffic. The fish had a substantial weight and I was in awe of the eagle’s ability to lift such a load straight out of the sea !

Pairing for life, the magnificent White-bellied Sea-Eagles (Haliaeetus leucogaster) are a poignant symbol of fidelity in wild untamed coastlines.

As the embodiment of this wild and beautiful place, they have been adopted as a powerful emblem for Thala Beach Lodge.

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