Whale Air Charter Flights: in the Fleurieu Peninsula Region of South Australia

There are many ways to experience the myriad of waterways and islands at the end of the Murray. But down at water level it's easy to get lost in the vast sweep of this watery expanse as you glide passed Hindmarsh Island and the nearby cattle station on Mundoo. And deep in the narrows and onto the barrages you enter the maze of salt water channels that make up the Coorong with its source at the shimmering Murray Mouth.

To really get a handle on what fans out from this narrow opening you need to spread your wings.

"We'll track down along the coast, have a good look at the Murray mouth down through about Middleton."

"Wonderful"

"Yes it's a good way to see it."

Having got our bearings on the Goolwa Airstrip, Whale Air pilot Nigel Dunn takes us on a journey which provides a new appreciation of this aquatic wonderland at Adelaide's doorstep.

Soon you realise that smaller waterways like Currency Creek and the Finnis are but tiny parts of a much much bigger tale of how the Murray River meets the Southern Ocean.

"As the name suggests, Whale Air was established so that tourists could get a birds eye view of those leviathans of the deep travel to our coastline each winter. But it's not until you take part on a flight like today's that you realise that there is so much more to the south coast."

From on high you get a real sense of the vastness of Lake Alexandrina.

"It's a massive expanse of water. Yes it is quite large. Even flying around it in an aeroplane would take an hour."

For thousands of years this was home to the Narrangdjeri people. An estuarine environment where the salt water of the ocean mingled with the freshwater of a river with its source hundreds of kilometres inland. But now thanks to a massive engineering program begun more than sixty years ago all of this has changed.

"You can see two of the barrages over there at nine o'clock....which separates the salt water from the freshwater."

And separating all of this from the might of the Southern Ocean is the seemingly endless line of dunes that make up the Coorong.

"A lot of these dunes are about one hundred feet high - about thirty or fourty metres."

At the completion of a flight there's both a sense of wonder and frustration as you gaze down on the Murray Mouth. Its accumulation of sandbars highlighting the lack of flow down Australia's longest river system.

It's just one of the lasting images from Nigel Dunn's Whale Air Flights. A thirty minutes flight costs $85 per person. You can book on 8555 4075. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au