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Digger Man

Digger Man Blog

by Nick Drew  |  Thu 13 Nov 2014

Whale kicks up a stink on Perth beach

Our resident Englishman down under Michael Bullock has sent in some photos and screen shots from the TV news featuring a grizzly task that required heavy machinery to remove a rotting Whale carcass of a local beach.

The photos are of poor quality but we can excuse that as it’s still something unusual that doesn’t happen that often. Michael reports that the 28 tonne dead humpback whale was washed up on the beach just down the road from where he normally lives in Scarborough. Michael is currently working away in the Pilbara region but this incident has been big news on the TV networks. According to Michael before it was washed up on the beach 10 large sharks were feeding off it, including a couple of 5 metre long great whites! Apparently some guy with a death wish jumped off a boat onto the rotting carcass and “surfed” it while some sharks were still circling around it! The local council brought in a Komatsu PC135 zero tailswing machine and a Doosan loading shovel, but after a day of struggling to manage the situation the council officials in bright Hi Viz clothing realised that they were going to need a bigger selection of kit! At this point a brand new Liebherr R 936 was deployed along with a Bell B50D ADT plus two cranes and a Cat loading shovel. The whale was so big it had to be folded in half in the back of the truck. As one can imagine the smell was truly awful. Once the whale was loaded a special permit was issued and a police escort went on ahead of the B50D as it travelled through the northern suburbs of Perth on route to a landfill site. During the evening however the truck had to park outside the gates till the landfill facility opened, leaving the smell to linger in the area all night long. This has caused a lot of discussion in Perth, with the clean-up bill estimated at $100,000, plus 3 popular beaches closed for a number of days as the sharks are still lurking because of the smell!      

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