Albany

Albany is beautiful but a bit like Melbourne with its weather! It is quite a big town of 30,000 people surrounded by bays, inlets, & national parks. We stayed at the cheaper big 4 out on the edge of town but the kids were still able to attend the free kids club at the other Big4. This left Kieren & I with some free time to shop, launder, visit the caravan show (we’re now grey nomads before our time :P) AND also fit in a date night to a Thai Restaurant during the Friday night disco. Bonus! This is only our 2^nd night out in 5 months without our munchkins.

We visited the ANZAC centre in Albany – the place where 101 years ago our soldiers left for WWI. The history preserved here is amazing and the interactive museum that was built for the 100^th anniversary was the best we’ve seen. On entry you are “given” a soldier to follow and as you walk around the museum you learn about which ship he left on, what happened during the war, when or if he returned and what they did after the war. It was very sobering but amazing to follow the journey of some of our soldiers. We also did a free tour with Brian – an older fellow who has preserved a lot of the buildings, memorabilia & weaponry at this base. Mr J loved being able to get up and crank the artillery and rifles (lucky there were no ammunition in there or there might have been some explosions out to sea!)

the only part Miss A liked...

The next day we visited Whaleworld – the site of the last whaling station in Australia. Miss A was not impressed with the Flensing area (where the whales were slaughtered) but the rest of the station was very interesting. We loved the 25m skeleton of a humpback whale that filled an enormous shed! And that was classed as a small whale! The holding tanks that were used to store whale products had been turned into theatrettes – with fantastic presentations on the history of whaling & also on sharks. We also got to explore the last whaling ship that is dry-docked there – the Cheynes IV. It was an amazing rabbit warren of a ship!

On the way home we visited ‘Salmon Pools’ – a beach just near the whaling station. We watched a couple of fishermen land some enormous salmon. Unfortunately we didn’t have our fishing gear with us L

The next day saw us sitting at our site in the campground with just chairs & tables. Believe me it was a funny site! Our caravan had to be towed to a repairer to find a gas leak. Yes – we’ve all been a bit sleepy waking up lately but lucky I have a good sense of smell & realised that something needed to be repaired quick smart! #1 on the shopping list is now a gas detector! 

We ventured to the beach after lunch as it was really hot out but the water was FREEZING! “Why?” asked Miss E – because this water comes straight from Antarctica! The weather was going to turn cold again so we decided to venture inland to Wave Rock near Hyden.