Arriving at the turning of this river this day, where the sandbar has been made with the flowing in and flowing out of tides, we find a splashing of water, a flying-hopping of pelicans, a movig dark cloud under the water where the white of the sandbar should be. And then we see the fins coming up through the water, many fins, tails too, a foaming and a thrashing, and soon, fish flying through the air. There are no seagulls in the fray, no crested turns spotting above. It is just a barely-moving throng of dolphin, pelican and mullet, probably. The dolphin fins move above the water, resembling the movement of sharks—about 11 fins in total—but only because the water is so shallow. A few days ago there was a brawl of young men here as part of ‘Australia Day’ celebrations. But today the dolphins, with the mullet and the pelicans, are taking it back. Brawling in their own way; passing though a real life and death moment. Some of the dolphins are right in the middle of the fray, pushing the pelicans out of the way as they pass through at speed, or turn and thrash about. One or two other fins sit a bit further away. And eventually a smaller group moves off, a mother with calf that jumps through the air landing upside down, full white-pink belly showing. They go with another, making a pod of three, leaving a further seven or eight in the slowly swirling mass behind. Every now and then a dolphin will shoot out to the side, or shoot back in, moving swiftly through the water, its fin showing, unable to dive any lower. And then in one sploshing moment, a fish—poor mullet presumable-–is hoisted by the flicking tail of a dolphin through the air for some metres to land with a splosh, lucky not to land in the open mouth of one of the two pelicans, which come flapping-spearing in with their beaks, trying to pick the odd one off.

“They’ve been there for an hour and a half,” a fellow watcher says. “The fish aren’t moving much,” I say, “I guess they’re frozen stiff.” “Stunned mullet,” my wife offers. We walk a little further on, and come across another watcher further up the cliff. “Did you see that one go flying through the air?” he asks, as another does the same. “I’ve never seen them do this here, only in the Murray.” I’ve seen them do similar things with fish (though not the tail flick) by rocks just upriver and downriver, but never on the sandbar, where I have seen them cross without diving, but not coralling-hunting like this—a kind of circling and then a shooting through. The pelicans seem to get pushed further out. Some seaguls flap around, turns begin to circle as a small dinghy anchors nearby to watch, and the kayak paddlers stroke a little closer. Everyone is watching. We move further downriver and see some nankeen night heron pushing further south, but everything else seems a little less…well…spectacular. We tell some others about it. They move to Harvey Beach and watch with us at water level, an hour after we first saw them, the fins still protruding above the surface: fins protruding, tails protruding, everything that usually belongs to the up-down movement of the depths risen to stay for longer stretches this day on a frothing foaming surface—the same as Australia Day brawling maybe—though perhaps with a little more purpose…(though I won’t say ‘porpoise’).