Tourists stunned by 'unlikely' sight on Aussie beach
The tour guide said it felt as though the whale 'gave the camels a wave' on the beach.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
Last week a small group of tourists travelling along an Aussie beach got a front-row seat to whales breaching the waves only a hundred metres or so away from them — all while they sat and watched on camelback.
The tourists had signed up for a 20-minute camel ride along Birubi Beach in Port Stephens, NSW with camel tour company Oakfield Ranch, a family-owned business, when the whales "gave the camels a wave".
"The camels were actually knee-deep in the water when the tour first spotted them," owner Rodney Sansom, 57, told Yahoo News. "Everyone was just like, 'We've seen whales! We've seen whales!' They were really happy."
Spotting whales on the beach is "not a rarity", Rodney said, explaining it's a well-known spot for whale watching during the migration season. "There's two times in the year when the whales are going up then they're coming back down and, yeah, we managed to spot them on the camels that day," he said, acknowledging it was an "unlikely" meet between the two species.
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Family owned business has over 80 camels
Rodney grew up on an animal farm in nearby Salt Ash and explained he's always been surrounded by and loved animals. As an avid camel racer, he bought his first camels as a younger man and now his family have over 80 of them, as well as cattle, sheep, donkeys and horses, on their 600-acre farm near Woodberry.
"If our camels are not happy, then we're not happy," he said. "We're kind to them, they feel like our workmates and we love working with them," he said.
Oakfield Ranch offers various camel rides to tourists from across the world and many Aussies even travel to experience the animals firsthand too.
In NSW residents must have a biosecurity registration to own camels as they are not native, however, there are feral camels found in Australia after they were introduced in the early 1900s.
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