Have you swum with dolphins?
As mother-nature intended, the dolphin season has begun with the number of bottlenose dolphins returning to Koombana Bay for their summer breeding season increasing by the day.
The past week has been particularly impressive with the Dolphin Discovery Centre recording up to five dolphin visits within the Interaction Zone every morning.
As a way of celebrating the start of another dolphin season, the DDC will again be throwing a big party and you are invited.
Now known as the Dolphin City Festival, the weekend of events and activities will begin on Saturday with the centre’s free community Open Day starting at 9am.
As always, the event will be packed full of free activities for the kids and include bouncy castles, face painting, sandcastle competitions, beach games, fishing clinics and animal displays.
Chester the Times Tiger and the centre’s own mascot Louie the Dolphin will also be available throughout the day trying to compete with the ever popular GWN7’s Doopa Dog who will perform his one and only show at 2pm.
There will be discounted dolphin sightseeing cruises run every hour from the beach, an impressive list of live entertainment and a number of displays packed full of information about our local marine environment.
The fun then continues into Sunday with the inaugural Dolphin City markets held at the centre between 9am to 1pm. A gold coin donation at entry will give the whole family a chance to enjoy the market stalls and a range of activities offered by the centre.
There will be a diversity of food stalls on-site, live music all morning and the hourly sightseeing tour specials will again run throughout the day.
This year’s Open Day will also coincide with the 25th Anniversary of dolphin interaction at the DDC.
The Bunbury Dolphin Trust, a non-profit community organisation was founded in 1989 by two businessmen who were inspired by Mrs Evelyn Smith, a local resident known as “The Dolphin Lady”, who began feeding the dolphins from a small jetty near her home on the Leschenault Inlet during the mid-1960s.
She became a popular tourist attraction feeding the dolphins in front of crowds of up to 200 people at a time.
When she died in early 1975, regular feeding of the dolphins she had befriended ceased until 1989 when the Bunbury Dolphin Trust was formed and dolphin interaction programs commenced from the beach in front of the present DDC.
Under the watchful eye of dedicated volunteers, the experience once again became popular and convinced local sponsorship and support networks to come up with the resources needed to construct the DDC as we know it five years later.
Fast forward 25 years and the centre continues to deliver tourism, research, conservation and education programs to the highest of standards. Throw into the mix the building of momentum for the centre’s Stage 2 re-development and you would have to agree the future of a true Bunbury icon looks bright and one worth supporting.
