Telling stories is never as much fun when people can’t laugh at all the shit that goes wrong, and after a few days of amazing craziness and plenty of things going a bit tits up as has been known to happen on my adventures, our final day, which is the one after the one that was supposed to be the final day, this particular adventure finally finds its feet and knocks it out of the park.

We head down to the beach late in the afternoon and sit by a fire. We’ve had three goes at watching the shearwaters come in to roost and by now we’re all pretty convinced Rod’s full of shit and has probably dug the 10,000 nests we’ve seen himself just to take the piss. Which you have to admit, would be a pretty awesome prank.

And then it happens. Well, actually two things happen.

First, one of my fellow adventurers thinks it will be a good idea to pop a bottle of wine in the shallows of the ocean to cool it down and that it won’t get washed away with the tide. To be fair, this logic could have been the result of all the chilled bottles of wine already being emptied – less stuff to carry back apparently. When the bottle starts to go bye byes I jump in – to about knee deep – and rescue it and am immediately treated like a hero. Not because the rescue was particularly daring but because… wine. And not just any wine. This is the most special and valuable and treasured kind of wine ever – one of the last bottles of wine on the island.

The second thing that happens is on the horizon, we see a whirlwind of specks. I assume, considering the luck we’ve had to date, it’s probably a swarm of killer bees, but no, it’s the shearwaters. They’re circling what might be a few hundred metres of shore, or possibly fifty metres, or maybe three kilometres, because how the fuck would I know? But they’re out there. Hundreds of them. No, thousands. Actually, it’s starting to look like hundreds of thousands of them just like we were promised. And here they come.

I start thinking about that Hitchcock movie about the birds that peck people’s eyes out – you know the one I mean because it was from a much simpler time when you could literally just call a film ‘The Birds’.

I have no idea what they were waiting for, perhaps they’re sizing us up to see who has the best eyes, or they’re in a holding pattern waiting for some invisible signal that it’s clear to land, but come in to land they do. Everywhere you look, they are buzzing in. And I’m pretty sure they’ve been on the piss because most of them are doing donuts, flying in circles, loop the loops, and pretty much anything other than just flying in a straight line. I do wonder if maybe they’re just trying to get their bearings because let’s be honest, how the fuck do they find their particular hole when there’s precious few landmarks and 99,999 other holes that look exactly the same as theirs?

We watch them come in for what seems like ages, because it is, and there’s still no sign of them letting up. I try and estimate how many there are by doing that crowd counting trick where you count about 10 or 20 of them, see how much space they take, then multiple it by how many similar size patches there, then multiple that by how many are coming past every few seconds, and come up with the conclusive answer that there’s fucking heaps of them.

I try taking photos and honestly, they’re all shit, because they could just as easily be bats or flies or locusts or ash from the fire. So after three nights of trying, we finally get to the see the shearwaters and we’re all grateful we ended up staying an extra day. Even if it was mostly so we didn’t die, with this spectacle thrown in as a bonus.

After dinner, Kelly and I figure we’re on a late roll now and we’re going to head down to the beach to try and spot some penguins. We’re warned to only use the red light on our headlamps rather than a regular light because weirdly enough penguins fucking hate people shining bright lights in their face and actually go blind for a short period of time. We head down to the beach and it turns out red light does sweet fuck all when you’re trying to see where you’re going over sharp rocks and I start to wonder if maybe Rod has just had enough of us and this is his plan to get rid of us and call it an accident.

We stop at the edge of the rocks and I do my best Attenborough and with the full light on, explain that we’re about to go looking for penguins. I point the light towards the rocks and holy shit, there’s a penguin there and he does not look fucking happy that I’ve just blinded him. But I’m calling it an accident because I honestly figured we’d have to search for ages to find one. Which is a not altogether unreasonable assumption because we spend the next 30 minutes looking for another one and see sweet fuck all.

On the way back we try and spot ol’ mate the temporarily blind penguin but he’s disappeared and I’m guessing not blind at all otherwise he wouldn’t have gone far and I feel way less guilty.

The next morning it’s basically picture perfect, like we wanted it to be for our entire trip, and man have we been punked by Mother Nature. We pack everything up and start loading stuff down on to the beach. Everyone else is having breakfast when I spot the dolphins coming past so I strip down to my boxers and jump in. I know what you’re thinking, that would be a bit inappropriate, and you’re right, it was. Thankfully the dolphins don’t seem to mind, and the couple of random seals tagging along also seem genuinely curious. I was once trolled online by a guy who said I looked like a, and I quote, “albino walrus”, and maybe they’re wondering what an albino walrus is doing on St Francis Island and you can’t really blame them for that.

When I swam with the dolphins the first time a few days earlier, I somehow managed to not hit the record button on my GoPro, so this time I’m determined not to be as big a dickhead and I double, triple, quadruple check I’ve hit the record button and here come the dolphins and I get a few decent shots and then… the fucking battery runs out. I shit you not. And fuck my life.

I hang out with the dolphins and the seals, laughing to myself like a mad man at how very, very cool it is to be standing on a beach on a remote island with seals and dolphins swimming around me while I’m in my jocks. Not that the jocks part is really relevant, it would have been just as cool in bathers. And weirdly enough, given my usual luck, a great white doesn’t appear out of nowhere and bite me in two.

It’s a moment.

One of those moments that you take to the grave with you with a smile on your face. One of those moments that almost didn’t happen, but because I said ‘yes’ to going on this particular adventure, because we couldn’t go back as planned, and because I took a punt and stripped down to my jocks and jumped in the water, it happened. Because sometimes you don’t have to be extraordinary to have those moments, you just have to say ‘yes’. And hope for the best.

It’s what I like to call ‘The Relentless Pursuit of Wow’.

‘Wow’ doesn’t have to be the most exotic destination or a world record or something massive. It just has to be a moment where you think “well fuck me, how about that”. And this was definitely one of those moments. Another little dot on my ‘connect the dots’ page of life where when I join them all up, I’ll look at it and think… well fuck me, how about that.

We finish packing the boat, head back to Ceduna, don’t die at sea, (not that I’m not worried about dying at sea because it’s still bloody windy and fuck those waves are big), and head home. Turns out that despite the few little hiccups I’m not so unlucky after all. Until we get 450kms away and I realise I’ve left my camera bag with about $15,000 worth of cameras in it on the minibus back in Ceduna. Which is probably less about being unlucky and more about being a fuckwit. Thankfully the good people of Ceduna rise to the occasion, find it, and send it back to Adelaide a few days later with Shirley AKA No 122.

Big thanks to EP Cruises, SA Tourism, Glam Adelaide, Northpoint Toyota – and my fellow adventurers – for making this another little bit of Wow to add to my collection.

 

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