WHALE CENTRE: Victor Harbor, the Fleurieu Peninsula region of South Australia

Today it's a popular tourist and retirement destination. The ideal seachange from the stresses of modern living. But it hasn't always been so. Back in the early eighteen hundreds Encounter Bay was a remote whaling station on what must have seemed the end of the earth.

These days the Bluff offers little hint of Victor Harbor's whaling past but from 1837 until the early 1870s a raised flag meant a whale had been spotted off the coast and soon crews would set off in small craft for the open sea.

A bit like the Postcards team recently when we set out in search of whales on a rough and windy winter's day. But fortunately we were on board something a little more sturdy - the Wind Cheetah - of Jim Thistleton's Whale Encounters.

The South Australian Whale Centre had reports of a whale off the coast near Basham's Beach just east of Port Eliot and Pullen Island which forms the town's spectacular offshore breakwater. The sea was a little rougher than the team would have liked with two metres swells and wind gusts of up to fifty kilometres an hour. But for the early whaling crews this was standard fare.

Soon we were riding the waves into Middleton when we spotted a Southern Wright as it broke the surface amid the surging waves. Jim Thistleton explains:

"I reckon that would be about fifteen metres. I reckon it's nearly the length that we are. It would probably weigh forty five to fifty ton. They come here to mate and to calve. In actual fact that animal won't eat for nearly six months until it goes back to Antarctica."

We were on Jim's fifty foot catamaran but the early whalers would set off in a twelve foot row boat, complete with sail on what was often a deadly voyage euphemistically called the Nantucket Sleighride.

"They'd harpoon a whale. And they had to get their sail down and everything stowed away and their oars in and go on a wild ride and all of that would have to be done in less than a minute and a half. Then of course they had to row back dragging a whale. And these things are called the Wright Whale because when they harpooned him he floated and therefore they could drag him back."

The Whale Centre's life-size floor painting helps you appreciate the true magnitude of these spectacular creatures. The Whale Centre's Director, Elizabeth Reid says it also helps explain the effort a mother goes to when raising a calf:

"By the time that the whales head back to the Sub Antarctic at the end of the season the calf has doubled its size and that's because its drinking about one hundred and twenty five litres of its mothers milk every day."

In the early whaling days they used to harvest the baleen, the material found in the whale's mouth and used to process the tiny crill, the animal's main food source. It was used in corsets and umbrellas while barrels of whale oil made their way around the world to be used in the oil lamps of New York and London. With such financial rewards at stake the whalers took incredible risks.

"So they're using very flimsy little skifs to paddle out to something that's three times the size of their boat. It's about eighty tons… and they're going after it with something like this which is clearly flimsy. This is supposed to be straight when it was lodged into the whale but it's been twisted around by the sheer power of the animal in its struggle to get away from them."

The last whale caught at Victor Harbor was back in 1872. By then the whalers had been too successful - there were hardly any left. It's estimated there were once about one hundred thousand Southern Wright whales in existence. The current population is put at about seven thousand. But thankfully they're coming back both to Encounter Bay and the Great Australian Bight to put on a very spectacular winter show.

Whale season extends until October. The Whale Centre is located on the Victor side of the Granite Island Causeway. For information regarding the whales and their whereabouts call 1900 931 223. Jim Thiselton's Whale Encounter voyages costs $55 per person and last about two and a half hours. You can book on 0427 102 387. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards.sa.com.au

More information on the Whale Centre