Last week wasn't the first time the Illawarra has seen a whale carcass wash up on the coast.
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In fact, two earlier incidents ended up shrouded in a bit of mystery.
On Friday hundreds of onlookers were at Bulli to see sharks feeding on a whale carcass at Waniora Point.
That afternoon, the carcass was towed to Bellambi where it was lifted out of the water and then taken to Wollongong Waste and Resource Recovery Park at Whytes Gully.
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Back in January 2015, a whale was found washed ashore between Fairy Meadow and Towradgi beaches.
Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) spokeswoman Shona Lorigan said the female adult pilot whale died at sea from natural causes.
''The whale was showing clear signs of illness, it was underweight and excessive lice was found in its mouth,'' Ms Lorigan said.
The whale was buried at the beach, which led to a bit of a mystery for months later in April.
A whale carcass was found at the same spot - this one looking very much the worse for wear.
So much so that it raised question as to whether it was the same whale council had buried several months earlier.
But nothing beats the time in 2009 where a humpback whale just simply disappeared.
The female humpback whale washed ashore at Bulgo Beach near Otford in 1993 and was towed to a beach at the outer harbour of Port Kembla, where it was buried in 1993.
There it would have laid undisturbed were it not for the Port Kembla Port Corporation's plans in 2008 to reclaim the beach to construct more berths.
The idea was to dig up the whale skeleton and donate it to some museum but, after a day of digging, no sign of it was found.
As recently as 2018, there had been no further news on the missing 30-tonne whale - it's a mystery that may never be solved.
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