Over the last two days we have had a good look around the city of Albany. It is the oldest city in Western Australia and located on the Princess Royal Harbour. It’s an historically important city on the wild south coast of Western Australia – not only providing magnificent views over King George Sound (one of the country’s great deep water harbours) but it is an area of elegant public buildings, historic homes, store houses and wharves.
Our first activity yesterday was to meet up with my friend Dianne and her husband Peter for coffee. I first met Dianne in 2002 when we were both in the same party walking the 96 kilometre long war time Kokoda Track in New Guineau. We aren’t able to catch up very often but it seems that when we do, we can pick up a conversation as if we had seen each other just the other day. Dianne is an author, writing stories for children and young adults. She is just about to publish her 27th book. By sheer coincidence, we found ourselves eating dinner at night in the same pub.
After coffee, we drove around to Emu Point for lunch. This is on a popular, family-friendly coastal peninsula about nine kilometres from the city centre. It has a safe swimming beach and a nice cafe.
Driving back into town, we passed by the harbour with its large wood chip export facities and grain handling silos.
Princess Royal Harbour in Albany is a natural deep-water harbour. It features a 12-metre deep dredged shipping channel, manages 3–4 million tonnes of annual trade, and accommodates major cruise ships. It is so large that it is hard to fit in a single photograph.
By the shoreline in Albany is an exact replica of the brig, Amity. She was a 148-ton brig used in several notable voyages of exploration and settlement in Australia in the early nineteenth century. The ship was built in New Brunswick in 1816 and for some years was used as a merchant vessel trading between America and Britain before being brought to Australia in 1824.
Once here, this vessel engaged in a number of trades, including as a whaler in
Van Diemen’s Land. She brought the first European settlers to Albany. Hiostoric as she is, I would need a larger ship if I were going to sail some of thoise waters.
Heading around the Bay to the ocean coast, we came across a large windfarm which is quite a tourist battraction in Albany. It’s one of he few wind farms where you can wak right t the base of one of the towers. At that distance, the continuous ‘whoosh’ sound of the rotating blades is very loud.
These turbines can operate in a breeze as little as 7 kmh and at that windspeed the blades complete a circle every six seconds. Even at this slow speed, the tip of the blade is travelling at 130 kmh. The turbines have a maximum rotation speed of 22 revolutions per minute (one fill circle every three seconds. If the wind inceeases to over 125 kmh, the turbines will automatically shut down . They produce 80% of Albany’s electricity.
On the rugged ocean coast, lookouts at both The Gap and Natural Bridge give outstanding views of the Southern Ocean and along the coast.
A raised pathway leads from the parking and picnic area across the top of the exposed granite rocks to reach the viewing platform at The Gap. There is a cantilevered lookout that allows safe access to some of the best views, while keeping vulnerable plants and lichens on the rock surface from being damaged. It’s a bit scary to look directly down from this structure and see large swells crashing into the rocks 40 metres below.
Another pathway and viewing area at the Natural Bridge gave me a look at this very exposed coast. Somehow, in 1978, a man fell over the edge of the cliff here and was washed into the sea underneath the bridge. He was rescued by one of the nearby whaling station’s whale chasers with the assistance of a spotter plane. What a lucky man!
We travelled around further to see some blowholes but after walking along almost 1.5 kilometres of track, I turned around after some other people told me that the swell wasn’t high enough for them to be active. It was probably just as well as the battery in my camera died as I tried to take a photo of some of the wildflowers along tne coast.
Today, we visited the National Anzac centre but that is significant enough to be the subject of another post.
