For generations, the Thaua people worked with killer whales to hunt large whales in the water of Twofold Bay, on the southern coast of New South Wales. Killer whales – commonly known as orcas – would herd their giant prey into shallower waters where hunters could spear them. Humans would get the meat, but the killer whales wanted a delicacy – the tongue.
After colonists dispossessed the Thaua, Europeans began capitalising on this longstanding partnership. From around 1844, commercial whalers worked with employed Thaua and killer whales to hunt these giants. The pods of killer whales would find a prized baleen whale, herd it closer to shore and signal the whalers, who lived in the town of Eden.
