Bremer Bay

Visited: autumn

Recommendation: Bremer Bay is beautiful lots of wildlife potential. It is definitely worth a visit with offshore trips, a busy estuary and lots of heath to explore.

Bremer Bay is a little out of the way, sitting on the coast right next to the Fitzgerald River National Park. The location is beautiful with wonderful lookouts and bays like Blossom Beach and Native Dog Beach. The township is small, dominated by 2 large caravan parks, both close to the water. 

Wellstead Estuary is at the head of Devils Creek and when I visited, there was only a broken trickle of water running into the ocean but the creek widens up into quite a substantial body of water further inland and you can get views of it at the old boat ramp. This was my first stop and there was a lot of activity with dozens of Chestnut Teal on the mud flats. As expected, they didn't stick around long. Over the water was a large group of pelican resting in the afternoon sun. I also spotted oystercatchers, Caspian Terns and lots of gulls.

There is a trail running alongside the road from the township towards the ocean called the Paperbark Trail. It is very pleasant and there are lots of wattlebirds, parrots and honeyeaters around. At the estuary beach, there was so little water that I could actually walk across into the National Park itself. Malleefowl are resident in the park but I didn't want to risk getting stuck over there. Returning to the caravan park, the gum trees were also full of activity with Red-capped Parrots being the star attraction. Unfortunately, with gloomy light and their shy nature photos were not possible. 

The best experience here in Bremer Bay had to be the whale watching cruise. It was very expensive at $400 per person for a full day. It was lovely sunshine and appeared quite calm on stunning, deep blue waters but even though the boat was sailing slow, it was very bouncy. Most people sitting outside got very wet as we headed to the deep trench of Bremer Canyon. It was a slow and not very pleasant couple of hours to get there. Even the sight of gannets and Flesh-footed Shearwater were not enough to take the edge off the bouncing. I was very glad that I had taken sea sick pills before we left. Several people were sick from early on and missed the entire experience!

Once the sail to the canyon was thankfully over, we started to see Orca very quickly and incredibly, saw them the whole time we were out there. The crew located them by simply watching the birds. The shearwater would fly around where the Orca were, hoping for a free feed. Several different family groups came close or were hunting near to the boat. There were very large males with incredible fins slicing through the water. But my favourite would have to be the 4 month old calf that the crew had named Ren. Hard to believe an animal like that could be deemed cute, but it was. I came close to the boat on several occasions and we could actually watch it roll around under the water. They all looked like very happy animals. 

On the long journey back to Bremer Bay, I slept a little and just tried to relax. Just offshore is Glasse Island which is home to a colony of Australian Sea Lions. Several were basking in the sunshine and a large female was curious enough about us to waddle down to the water and jump in. It was wonderful to see them so closely and a great finish to the day. I was very glad, however, to get back onto dry land.