Down the highway they stream, as they do every year in October. But unlike the holiday makers who come by road, these visitors come by sea. This year they've turned up in their thousands.

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Every day, under unseasonably warm skies, they pass by, their spouts and occasional breaches sparking excitement. Their appearances broker conversations between complete strangers on the beach.

"Did you see the whales?" squeals a young boy, his face pink with holiday sun and wonder.

"One breached right over there," says an elderly local who walks her two small dogs on the beach every morning.

A paddleboarder returns to shore, all dreamy smiles. "Oh my god, one passed within 100 metres of me. What an amazing experience," she says.

Up and down the coast, knots of people gather on headlands to watch the passing parade, some with binoculars, others with smartphones pointing seawards in the fragile hope of catching one of the giants leaping into the air. If they're lucky, they'll see a mighty display of tail slapping.

No matter how busy the Humpback Highway has become, it still delights those fortunate enough to see its traffic.

According to marine scientists, there are now 20,000 more eastern humpback whales than there were estimated to be before commercial whaling hunted them almost to extinction. The latest estimate is that some 50,000 humpbacks now travel the highway on their annual migration to temperate northern waters to breed and to the cooler southern latitudes with their newborns. It's a remarkable comeback from the early 1960s, when it was thought there were as few as 150.

We did it. We saved the whales.

The rebounding humpback population is a welcome good news story, no doubt about it. And the spinoff story is just as uplifting. The whales are connecting people in shared fascination, taking them off their screens and lifting their gaze to the horizon. Seeing them,........

© Canberra Times