The moment a baby Humpback calf is born somewhere in the warm waters off North Queensland, it comes out tail-first and swimming, weighing about as much as a family car and suckling up to 600 litres of mother’s milk per day. The pair stick close together as they begin a 5000km journey south to Antarctica. With not even a quarter of this maiden voyage completed, they cruise into the warm embrace of this giant north-facing bay and stay for weeks.

For mother and young, we see in their exuberant displays of breaching and tail-slapping that this isn’t simply a crucial time for gaining strength and skills but also a blissful one. We are lucky to be able to witness it. If there is a place that could be described as sacred in the 50-year, million-kilometre lives of Queensland Humpbacks, surely Hervey Bay is it.