Albany Part 1

By the time we got to Albany I think we were all a bit “travelled out”. We'd done so much over the past couple of weeks, and moved every 2-3 days, and it was starting to get a bit tiring. We had some things we needed to do at Albany, including getting the car serviced, the windscreen replaced and catching up on school work, so we treated our 5 days there a bit more like being home, and a bit less like travelling. By that I mean we did some touristy things but not as much as we had at other places.
Albany is the first European settlement in WA and is located on the King George Sound, which is an amazing body of water, dotted with granite islands. The Sound is very beautiful and also comprises Princess Royal Harbour. These water bodies combine to create a massive, sheltered body of water. I don't think I took any photos of it though. I think the travel fatigue translated to a lack of interest in photographing things. I tended to just absorb what we were doing, rather than also trying to remember to take photos so we could look back on it all.

Albany is quite a nice town with lots of shops and services. I checked out all the possible camera purchasing options but the 2 camera places in the town had very limited options (one had 2 compact digital cameras – a $99 one and a $585 one). There was a Harvey Norman but their prices were excessive ($30-$50 more) and we didn't discuss price matching, which in hindsight I should have done.

Tilda, Rory and I had a lovely afternoon on the beach near our caravan park. It was nicely sheltered, which was good, as the wind was blowing pretty strongly the whole time we were there. The sand was a lovely white and there were shells galore. We made a sandcastle covered in shells. We could have covered the sandcastle 4 or 5 times over with the number of shells Tilda found.

Albany has a strong whaling heritage and I remember going to the whaling museum when I came to WA in 1985. We didn't go to the museum as it was pretty expensive for a family and we had been to the whaling museum in Eden. I didn't think the kids needed to go to another one, at the price being asked.

The Brig Amity

We did the audio tour of the Amity, which was the ship that carried the first settlers to Albany. They have built a replica that we toured. The kids had a great time exploring the different decks. It was amazing to think they housed 63 people in the mid deck, although they were obviously on different watches but how the heck they slept them all under there was incomprehensible. I was impressed by how much ore luxurious the officers space was. There was so much more fancy work on the wood work and a couple of the officers and captain had their own rooms, although they were not much larger than a modern toilet! The beds certainly weren't full length by any means. It was interesting to do the audio tour and hear what the journey was like and to learn about what supplies they brought with them to establish a new settlement. It wasn't as good a location as hoped and so Swan River (Perth) became the main settlement in WA.

The Officers area

The Captain's bedroom (kids are sitting in the bed)