As I previously mentioned the Davidsons were the only whalers in the world to work in partnership with killer whales (orcas).

​

It seemed that they had an agreement as such with the killer whales which was called ‘The Law of the Tongue’.

​

The Davidsons originally thought the killer whales to be a nuisance but that changed after they hired indigenous Yuin people to join their whaling crews. It is believed that the Yuin people had been hunting baleen whales for in Twofold bay for 10,000 years prior to European settlement and had developed a unique relationship with the killer whales.

The killer whales would track down the baleen whales near the mouth of Twofold bay and heard them closer to the coast. While the killer whales trapped the whales in the bay a male Killer whale, usually Old Tom, would go down near the whaling station and would slap their tail on the water until they got the whalers attention.

​

Once the baleen whale had been harpooned and killed it was tied to a buoy and left for the killer whales to take their share. The killer whales got the first option on what part they wanted of the whales but they mainly took the lips and tongue of the dead whale carcass, the tongue alone weighs about 4 tons. The killer whales would leave the rest of the carcass, including the valuable blubber and bones.

​

To the whalers this arrangement became known as ‘the Law of the Tongue’.

​

Three generations of the Davidson family whalers honoured this agreement and it is said that killer whales would help the whalers whenever their small boats would capsize by driving away the sharks and alerting the other whalers as to where they were, in return the whalers would help the killer whales if they were trapped in the nets in the bay.

​

Logan breaks the law of the tongue “Oh no, what have I done?”

​

John Logan, a neighbor of the Davidson’s, tried to take a humpback without leaving the lips and tongue for the killers. Old Tom, the most famous of the killer whales, is thought to have grabbed the rope that was connected to the boat, and lost some teeth in the process. The struggle was won by Logan who returned with the carcass but according to his daughter, he said “My God, what have I done?”

​

When Old Tom washed up dead sometime later, the Killer Whale’s mouth was riddled with abscesses around the lost teeth. This may have contributed to his starvation and his eventual death. Out of guilt John Logan financed the building of the Eden Killer Whale Museum, which houses the bones of Old Tom.

​

Soon after Old Toms death his pod stopped appearing and in Twofold Bay and ‘The Law of the Tongue’ agreement was over.