Wednesday March 12

As we are about to leave Albany after a terrific five days and make one of our few ‘inland’ excursions to the Stirling Range and Porongurup National Parks, where we will hopefully be in a parks campground without internet connection I had best make the blog current!

Our journey to Albany was very pleasant, with a detour into Cheynes Beach and Waychinicup National Park (what a great name!), where what I initially thought were very tall, grey Grass Trees turned out to be Kingias. For those of you who may love ‘The Lorax’ as much as I do, these plants seem to me our version of the ‘Truffula Trees’ which were decimated to create ‘Thneeds’. Maybe I should take this up with Tony Abbott as a way of utilising at least one of our unproductive national parks!

We have enjoyed our time in Albany, going from history to seascapes in the blink of an eye! I will start with yet another of my far too frequent confessions of a lack of knowledge of our history and say that I had no idea that Albany was settled several years before Perth in 1836, when 23 convicts and their militia overseers arrived in the brig ‘Amity’ or that it was the port from which 30,000 Australian and New Zealand troops (and their horses) departed by ship for World War 1. The photos of the huge number of ships lined up in the harbour bring home the horror of it all.

We have walked up Mt Clarence, where the Desert Corps Memorial is located and enjoyed the views and driven up Mt Adelaide to visit the Princess Royal Fortress, which was established in 1893 as the first federal defence of Australia, to guard against the loss of Albany’s strategic port to an enemy naval squadron – so we had Portsea in the east and Albany in the west! In 1956 these coastal defences were dismantled, never having fired a shot.

Middleton Bay from Mt Clarence

King George Sound from Princess Royal Fortress

King George Sound & Vancouver Peninsula from Princess Royal Fort

Married Quarters, Princess Royal Fort

Magnificent stone work, Military Institute, Princess Royal Fort

On the side of Mt Adelaide we spotted more Kingias, which had responded to a recent fire by producing multiple flower stalks – a quite bizarre sight! Not many 'Thneeds' from these I am afraid!

We spent an informative but totally horrifying half day at Whale World, Albany’s historic whaling station. The Cheynes Beach Whaling Company operated here until 1978 and processed thousands of Sperm and Southern Right Whales. Walking around the site and hearing the sounds of the work of the whaling station so graphically recreated and seeing the machinery used to rend these whales into oil and other products was truly awful.

Flensing deck

Whale chaser - there were 4 of these operating

It took the refined oil from 103, 50 tonne Sperm Whales to fill
this tank & I am there just to give it a sense of perspective
not because I am impressed by it!

The whole whale, apart from the teeth, was rendered and
what was left after the cooking to remove the oil was
dried into these 'solubles' which were used for stock food,
fertiliser etc. Enough said!!!!!

Rumour had it that the Salmon were starting to run along the coast and as there are a couple of renowned Salmon fishing spots in Albany, we spent Monday morning at one - Salmon Holes, a stunning beach in the Torndirrup National Park. Sadly Murray didn’t snag a Salmon (neither did anyone else as it turned out), but he did catch a herring and who could ever regret a morning in such a beautiful spot.

Foolish fishers get washed off these rocks with monotonous regularity

The granite headlands, limestone cliffs and white sandy beaches of Torndirrup National Park are pounded by the Southern Ocean.  The rocks of this area were left behind when Australia and Antarctica parted 45 million years ago, so looking across the spectacular granite blocks of The Gap and Natural Bridge and imagining all this was pretty incredible.

Cable Beach

The Gap

Natural Bridge - wouldn't want to be crossing when this collapses!

It is really difficult to stop taking photos of these amazing rocks!

West Cape Howe is the most southern promontory of WA and on Tuesday we visited this national park and once again, were just astounded at the beauty of the coast. Travelling into the park we encountered our first patches of karri forest, before going through more superb heathland to the stunning granite and black dolorite cliffs of Shelley Beach Lookout and Shelley Beach. The Lookout is a popular launch site for hang-gliders and paragliders, some of whom were launching themselves off the platforms whilst we were there. As a confirmed coward, I was astounded that anyone could do such a thing and was absolutely incredulous when a French fellow and his daughter, who was about 6 or 7, took off on a shared flight.

Looking north from Shelley Beach Lookout

Shelley Beach 

The stories this little girl will have to tell!

Down on the beach we watched the gliding activity overhead, enjoyed the scenery, chatted to fishers, were entranced by a seal which was entertaining us all by playing with a large fish it had caught and reminded ourselves once again how lucky we are.

The black dolorite is so impressive, especially against the
 turquoise water and white sand

The seal tossing its fish around, with one very hopeful seagull flying close overhead

Today was well spent in Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve and Gull Rock National Park, to the east of Albany. It is almost unbelievable that we keep visiting these places which are so spectacular. Long before European settlement, Two Peoples Bay was originally named ‘Baie des Deux Peuples’, following a chance meeting of French and American mariners, in honour of the two new republics.

Two Peoples Bay

Little Beach is another of those superb spots with massive granite headlands, white sand beaches and turquoise water that we have been so spoilt with along this southern coast.

Dotted through the the wetter areas of the park were the brilliant orange flowers of the Swamp Bottlebrush (Beaufortia sparsa) – another wondrous moment of seeing plants we have used in our garden in their original environment.

Gull Rock National Park is on the outskirts of Albany and supports exceptional botanical diversity. The granite rocks of Ledge Beach were a perfect place for lunch and became even more special when some of what we now know were King’s Skinks, which had been sunning themselves quite happily on the rocks before we arrived to disturb them, came back out to share our apple.

The rock fetish continues! The ship is waiting in Middleton Bay to come into the port 

King's Skink

So ends our time in and around Albany. We won’t have any beaches for the next three days, but we are anticipating some pretty spectacular scenery and vegetation, so stay tuned!