Our two-person kayak floats up and down in the swell, though I’m far too excited to remember I usually suffer from projectile-level seasickness.

The noise we can hear. It’s unreal.

It sounds like an elephant. Maybe a dinosaur – they’ve been around longer than the dinosaurs, our guide reminds us as he rests his paddle on his lap, his camera pointed at the large black shapes in the water. When your tour guide, who’s been doing this for years, says ‘oh shit’ under his breath, you know you’re onto something special.

The baby humpback whale surfaces again, with mum not too far behind. For a moment, my heart is in my throat. I am but a tiny human, dwarfed by these gentle giants of the sea. I feel small, like when you lie on your back to watch the stars at night, blanketed in a sensation of insignificance. It’s nice though. Humbling. Grounding. Slightly terrifying.

“This is amazing!” are the words I plan to yell out, but they escape my mouth as a garbled noise. I’m too awestruck to form sentences.

A large wave is headed our way, and I see an unmistakable whale shape riding through it. For a moment I wonder if it’s going to crash right through us and tip us into the drink.

Thank goodness I can swim, I tell myself, steadying my nerves, my heart in my throat as the dark shadowy shape soars gracefully underneath our kayaks.

We’re floating off the Cape Byron Headland – the lighthouse is in view, guiding ships to safety and tourists to a great spot for a selfie. There are dozens of surfers bobbing in the water near us, oblivious to our close encounter. My heart rate slows, but not for long, as another whale sprays water into the air not five metres from us, before diving underneath our kayaks again. Its white mottled skin is like a lava lamp under the blue sea, a glowing beacon that we watch, mesmerised, like tiny shrimp drawn to an anglerfish’s lure.

It’s just the two of us, plus our guide – if you don’t count the five humpbacks ‘mobbing’ us. I’d booked the ‘Kayak with dolphins’ tour for my husband’s birthday, and we knew being July, there’d be a high chance of spotting a migrating whale on our trip. We couldn’t have ever dreamed of this, though.

“Does this happen much?” I yell out to Lynchy, our effervescent guide who’s as much a surfy Byronite as you can get, despite growing up in Emu Plains.

“Nah!” He shouts back, before pointing behind us. “She’s coming back!” And indeed, mama and calf beeline towards us. We watch in silence as they dive below.

It is surreal, I acknowledge, but there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on that’s making this encounter all the more special.

The whales start to move away from us, but as though we’ve dropped some salacious gossip at a dinner party, they soon meander back.

All of this is on their terms, I realise. We simply paddled out to sea, and the whales decided we must have been interesting enough to come inspect for a closer look. This was not a human-manipulated encounter, like so many wildlife activities are. This was whale-initiated.

Eventually, the whales lose interest in us and return to their mammoth journey back down the coast. We lug our kayaks across the beach, strip out of our wetsuits and chow down on a complimentary Tim Tam. It’s just me and my husband, so we get the whole packet. Score.

“Don’t ever book with us again.” Lynchy tells us, scrolling through the photos he took and laughing. “It will never get better than that.”

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