I was quite pleasantly surprised by Albany. It is not a place I have heard much about previously (in fact, apart from the Margaret River, I have heard very little about any of the south of WA). Yet I found Albany to be a very interesting and picturesque city. It is the 6th largest city in WA, and as I found out, the first one to be continuously settled by Europeans. It was settled in 1826 when the British Government gave instructions for it to be established as a military post. Several other European ships, such as Dutch and French, had visited the shores of what was then called ‘King George Sound’ in the preceding decades, but they had never established a settlement. By sending an establishment over to western Australia, the British were wanting to claim the whole of the continent for themselves.

Some of the things that struck me about Albany were:
– the history – I didn’t know much about Western Australian history, so this was interesting. Also there were some lovely older suburbs closer in to town with well established trees and quite pretty.
– the geographic location – with a ‘sound’ and 2 very closed harbours, it was a great place to establish a military post for defence. These aspects also made the scenery very dramatic.
– the beaches and parks – there were many picturesque areas around Albany. There was a drive along the cliff from the beach area to the Princess Royal Sound and it had great views.
– the town centre – had some historic buildings. It also was set on a hill overlooking the harbour. From where we were staying at Emu Point, we drove towards town and came over a crest and the harbour came into view – it was quite impressive.

Our first day in Albany was a lazy day (for us parents anyway). We slept in a bit, then got up and did some jobs. The caravan park had a playground, a jumping pillow and a good area for bike riding, so the younger 3 kids were happy doing this (Lauren prefers to do more resting these days too). I was feeling very tired again, so Michael took the kids for a walk along the beach just near the van park, and I had another sleep. Then they came back for lunch, and then everyone had to have rest time after lunch. (Michael had a bit of a sleep then). Around 3pm, we were planning to head off to the shops – we needed to do some grocery shopping, and also needed to but Bethany some new runner shoes as she had holes in the others. Lauren and Sam asked if they could stay back at the van – so we said they could if they were just reading books or having a bit of a bike ride. It felt strange for Michael and I to be going off with just 2 children after having 4 around us in most of the things we do. Anyway, that pretty much took up the rest of the afternoon, but I had wanted to have a bit of a drive around the town centre and go up to the lookout on Mt Clarence, near the town centre. We rang Lauren and Sam to say we would be a bit longer and did these things. The views were great. We decided we’d have to come back with L&S tomorrow. We went back to the van and Lauren cooked dinner for us tonight.

The 2nd day at Albany was filled with more sight-seeing:-
– We went back to Mt Clarence. This had interest for a few reasons the views, the ANZAC history and the downhill bike track.
The lookout right at the top of the hill had great views over Princess Royal Harbour and King George Sound.
The ANZAC link to Albany was something I had not known about and found interesting. For the 1st and 2nd ANZAC convoys, Albany was their last place of departure from Australian shores, before sailing to Gallipoli. There is an Avenue of Honour on the road at the base of the hill, with plaques along lines of trees. At the top of the hill is a monument to the Desert Mounted Corps (the Light Horsemen). Michael loves the story of the light horsemen, so there was a lengthy retelling and a good history lesson here. Apparently Albany held the first dawn service in the nation (in 1923) and it is going to be the place for the major centenary dawn service in 2014/15.
The downhill bike track was of interest to Sam, so he had put his bike on the back of the car that morning and he rode his bike down the hill and met us at a predetermined place at the bottom.

– We went to the historic precinct at Albany on the foreshores of Princess Royal Harbour and visited the Amity Brig. This is a full scale replica of the ship that brought the first group of settlers, led by MajorEdmund Lockyer, to Albany in 1826. Being on board the ship and seeing the size of the sleeping areas and so on, gave some insight into the hardships that would have been faced by having 45 people plus animals on board for 6 weeks. It was only $10 for our family to tour the ship and it was a very well done replica. It had information stations located throughout the ship with audio information (using the audio wands that you were given at the payment desk). Once we had been through this information, the kids were allowed to pretend they were sailors and so on – they had a great time with this.

– We had lunch at the park near the Amity Brig

– We then took the drive around to Torndirrup NP which is on the southern peninsula of Princess Royal Harbour. There are a few places of interest around here.
There is the blowholes. We did this walk first. It is a 900m walk to the blowholes and there is no guarantee they will be ‘blowing’. When we were there, the swell was not right for the spray to be coming up through the gap in the rocks, but we could certainly hear the sound – it made us all jump the first time we heard it as we got close. It was pretty dramatic just seeing the coastline.
Further along the coastline is ‘The Gap’ and ‘Natural Bridge’, 2 natural features carved in granite rock by the wind and waves. It was much shorter walks to see these (which was good as Hannah and Beth were getting tired by now).
The last thing we saw around here was ‘Whaleworld’ – a former whaling station which is now a museum on the history of whaling. We didn’t go in to the museum, but we saw the whaling boat (which was the last one used at this station) and found out that Albany was the last whaling station in the world to cease operations in 1978.

– We then returned to the van park for some down time.