The remnants of a 55 tonne sperm whale will be arriving at Lismore Recycling and Resource Recovery Centre today. The unusual arrival is the carcass of a whale that washed up on Patches Beach in Ballina last Friday. 

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The centre’s manager Andy Irvine said Lismore Council staff had already used machinery to dig a hole big enough to accommodate the carcass – thought to be the one of the largest whales yet to wash up on a NSW beach.

Andy said the logistical nightmare of removing and transporting the 16.9 metre whale from the beach to Lismore was the responsibility of the State agency, Soil and Conservation NSW.

Andy wasn’t sure exactly how it was going to arrive at the landfill site, but said it would certainly involve cutting the large carcass into smaller pieces for transport. 

Prime News reported last night that local Aboriginal people had requested that the whale not be buried on Patches Beach due to the area being a Bundjalung culturally sensitive site. 

Local authorities also performed an autopsy on the whale prior to its removal from the beach, in order to work out how it might have died. 

Andy said the whale was not going to be buried in the compost, but in a separate area of the Lismore facility. 

“We’ve been in touch with the compliance people and we have to cover it with polymer and soil,” he said. 

When asked if it might become a plant fertiliser product down the track, Andy replied “we are not planning to bottle it for the garden”.

“That’s not high on my priority list - as long as no one complains about it," he said.

So how does a dead whale smell?

“I’ll tell you about it this afternoon,” Andy laughed.