The spectators fostered their own suspicions as to why this young humpback whale had drawn up on the sand. Hadn’t a shooting star flared icily over Rottnest Island last week? Astral debris was said to have sprinkled down over the Goldfields. Comets and meteorites were believed, by many, to be connected to whale beachings, though few could say why—maybe the animals confused night for day when stars fell, or changes in the stellar positions led whales to misreckon their nearness to land.
