Bones, Grot, Snot and Pong, the horrible whaling boat pirates, slowly sailed their creaking boat towards the open mouth of the icy bay where the whales were swimming. The humpback whales had seen many tourist boats before and eyed the strange vessel with happy curiosity. 

“There are always people in tourist boats coming to see us, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” said the humpback whales to the minke whales. The minke whales were not so sure. 

“WHALE-HO . . . ” yelled Snot loudly. 

“I can see it, stop yelling in my ear,” replied Bones grumpily. 

“Prepare to fire the harpoon,” growled Pong, who had hoisted the pirate flag. 

The poor minke whale was right in their way. Grot aimed the harpoon. 

“You can’t miss,” yelled Bones excitedly. 

Before anyone knew what had happened, there was a loud explosion and the harpoon shot out from the boat like a rocket, missing the minke whale by a hair’s breadth and landing with a huge splash into the deep, icy ocean. 

“Who forgot to tie the rope?” moaned Snot as the harpoon and rope disappeared under the sea.

“Oops!” replied Grot, “I’m sure I tied the rope to the reel,” he said looking rather sorry. 

“Let’s anchor the boat so they can’t get out; we’ll have to find another rope and harpoon quickly!” snarled Bones who was very angry, he could see at least six whales trapped in the little icy bay. 

As the pirates bumbled and fumbled and searched and grumbled looking for another rope and harpoon, the whales had their own meeting. 

“They’re trying to kill us” said a very frightened minke whale, 

“and they’ve blocked our way out!” 

The humpback whales discussed the matter. “We could all try and escape together, but one of us might get hurt,” declared the largest humpback, gravely.

“It’s too shallow at the entrance to swim under their boat,” moaned another sad minke. 

Then Humpy, the youngest of them all, spoke; “If we contact my friend Mudpoo, who I met in Hervey Bay last year, I’m sure he could help.”

All the whales looked at Humpy, the young humpback who had spoken. It was possible that Mudpoo could actually help. After all, he had, taught the whales to sing a new song called ‘The Blue Danube’ and it was very popular with all the humpback whales. (Humpy was actually quite famous in the whale world for being the first to learn that tune from Mudpoo!) 

“Even if your friend can stop the pirates shooting at us, which I doubt, how could we possibly contact him?” queried the largest and oldest humpback with a frown.

“Maybe we could use our whale song and sing words that say, ‘we are trapped by pirates and we need Mudpoo’s help to stop them’,” suggested Humpy, rather hopefully. 

The largest and oldest humpback replied, “Young Humpy has a good idea, we can try to sing a message for help, but we still need to think of another plan in case it doesn’t work.” 

And so . . . the wise old male humpback swam to the bottom of the icy bay, spread out his pectoral fins and boomed out his whale song using a series of squeaks, squeals, moans and groans. In human words, his song said; “Help! We are trapped by pirates in a bay near the Antarctic peninsula, tell mudpoo, the singing boy from Australia, to help us . . . Urgently!”

Many whales outside the icy bay, deep in the Southern Ocean heard their urgent song for help. They repeated the song to other whales that were already on their way to Australia. 

By a miracle of nature, the song very quickly travelled along the ten thousand kilometres from Antarctica to Australia, passing from whale to whale all the way along. In years to come, this would become known as the ‘Incredible Whale Rescue Song’. 

In less than a day after it was first passed on, the song was being sung by a pod of whales that were swimming along the shores of Bluff Beach near Iluka. All they had to do now was get Mudpoo’s attention. 

Humpback whales are very clever and what they did next is proof of it. The oldest and wisest of this group of whales decided that they could use their blowholes to alert Mudpoo. If they blew three short blows, three longblows and three more short blows, there was a good chance that Mudpoo might see it.

(Whales have a ‘blowhole’ that releases a blast of warm air from the whales lungs. As the blast hits the cooler air, it creates a vapour cloud that can be seen from far away.) 

But even if he could see the blowhole signals from the whales, how would Mudpoo know that the signal was for him? Or what it meant? 

And what on earth could he do about it anyhow? 

Perhaps Mudpoo’s whale friends were doomed to be harpooned by the horrible, mean, smelly pirates.