Well - it is the first show of the new year, and Anth figured it would be a grand opportunity to do a live cross from Tasmania. Bron was a bit out of practice with the weather, and the show all went pretty well according to plan until Anth brought up the exploding whale story from Taiwan. As a result - this show has been dedicated to exploding whales.

A whale was being transported though a city on Taiwan - being taken to the museum to be cleaned and turned into an exhibit - when a build up of gasses internally caused it to explode. That might have been fine has it not chosen to do it in a main street at a busy time. Some of the pedestrians and a few of motorcyclists were not happy. See the pic below for why.

Ofn course there is also the legendary footage of a whale been blow up in the US as a means of disposal of the body. The use of explosives to destroy carcuses in Nationla Parks in the US is standard practice. It is used to destroy large animals which will attract scavangers and large carinivores that may attack humans. It is probably the basis of all the attempts to expernally blow up dead whales.

The US example can be see here.

Have we ever blown up a whale ? Well, according to a couple of callers during the show, there have been some interesting whale disposal attempts here.

Callers came up with a couple of local examples:

Thanks to Adam for the info on a "alleged" whale being blown up along the Great Ocean Rd. Apparently the attempt to atomise the dead animal resulted in mini sized chenked being hurtled into the air !

The second story was not so much about a whate, but bits of one. A small crew was "allegedly" send to remove a whale penis from a carcass that was on the coast at the 12 Apostles. They "allegedly" removed the penis with a chainsaw, they carried it up to the road past a whole range of rather upset tourists.

Finally a deal whale was washed up on a beach where a major surfing carinval was due the next day. So the carcass was "allegedly" buried and shaped to look like a sand dune. Over the next few days people sat on it as a great vantage point, and even set their umbrellas up on it - lucky it didn't explode !