The Roaming 5: Jan 12 - 13 (Day 327-328)

150km

Tuesday 12 January

We had quite a slow morning catching up on school and business work while I looked up what things we could do nearby and in Albany in the afternoon.

I remember coming down to Albany as a young child (not sure what age) to stay with Uncle Steve and Aunty Nola Higgs. I don't remember much about the countryside but I do remember seeing the Dog rock and also going to a blowhole near the beach.

After lunch we made our way into Albany. On our way out we thought we would just check out the beach close to where we are camping as it's a 4wd track and we'd left the caravan behind. It was a bit hilly with softer sand than we'd expected so we needed to keep the speed up a bit, however the tracks were also quite skinny with lots of blind hills and corners. So it was a bit of a hairy drive, especially as we still had hard tyres from road driving. We got to the end of one track which we hoped led to the beach but it was just a look-out, so we checked the satellite map and found one that led to the beach. This was a long downhill one so we started down the track, but came across another car coming back up the other way. Eeeeek! He of course needed speed to get up the hill and had to stop. We needed to keep moving but also had to stop. He could roll backwards down the track but we had to reverse back up the track from a standstill! So hardly surprisingly we started sinking in the sand. We quickly got the recovery tracks off the roof to give us a bit of grip - these helped get us moving a bit, but we couldn't get enough speed up on the tracks to take us any further than the end of the recovery track, at which point we had to reposition the track and try again, all while the other people were waiting further down the track. After a few goes we let the tyres down to 20psi which helped, and after a few more tries we got to the top where we could turn around (after sinking in a few more times!). Our mild interest in seeing the beach had utterly evaporated by now, so we headed out onto the main road to find a petrol station up the road to pump the tyres back up again.

Dog Rock, Albany, WA

First stop in Albany was petrol. We hadn't filled up along the coast or inland because it seemed like it was cheaper in Albany. Then onto look at the Dog rock. We turned a corner in town and there it was in front of us. I don't remember it being in the middle of town but that would have been at least 27 years ago. But it was a cool sculpture to see anyway.

Us at Dog Rock, Albany, WA

We drove down to Middleton Beach to see what it was like. It looked beautiful but we decided that it was too cold to go for a swim just now.

Middleton Beach, Albany

We then drove along Marine drive to look at the other side of the headland.

Looking south west from the headland, with Frenchman's Bay on the left and
Vancouver Peninsula on the other side of the right-hand side inlet to Shoal Bay

Middleton Beach

The start of the 'Chainsaw drive' - Albany, WA

The next spot I'd thought would be cool to look at was Chainsaw sculpture drive. This is a whole series of tree trunks which have (apparently) all been carved with chainsaws! We weren't quite sure what to expect but it certainly didn't disappoint!

Check out this handiwork!

It was incredible to see the intricate handiwork (if that's the right term for work with a chainsaw??) and the variety of different things they'd made. Of course there were plenty more than that but that's a sample.

Then we drove back down to Middleton beach so the boys could have a swim for a while. We bought a coffee to share and a hot chocolate for Bek, who (again) sat with the grown-ups while the boys enjoyed the water, similar to what I mentioned at the start of this south-west leg of the trip. It's lovely (yet equally scary and sad) seeing her growing from a little girl and teenager, and now seeing the first glimpses of young adulthood. As she's growing we're trying to make sure we let her grow and treat her as a little more grown up, so little things like buying her her own hot drink should act like a slight badge of "you're just a touch older now" to her sub-conscious, like we're not just treating her like a little girl all the time anymore.

The boys enjoying the playground at Middleton Beach...

... and the beach itself.

We then did a little food shopping and then headed back to the camp ground.

Wednesday 13 January

We had some time this morning to catch up on school & business work after breakfast before we packed up the van, hitched on and headed to see the Blowholes.

It was little bit of a walk from the carpark but it was nice to get out and do some walking in the fresh sea air. The 'blowholes' are simply a spot where waves from the Southern Ocean crash against the rocky shoreline, but there are holes and cracks in the rock, so when you get a larger wave you get a jet of air and a 'whooshing' noise as air is blown up through the cracks in the rock. If the waves are bigger you'll also get water shooting out like a jet from these cracks, although when we were there that didn't happen. It was still very impressive though, sensing the enormous power of the ocean just from the noise of the air! It sounds a little bit like when someone turns up the radio when it's static to full and then off again fairly quickly. We do have a video, but for the sake of not taking any longer to get this posted I'm just adding the photos in for now.

Bek at the blowholes

On our way back up to the carpark Greg spotted this blue tongue lizard which the boys both had a hold of also.

On our way out of the Blowholes Greg suggested to drive to the end of the road to just see what it was like down at Frenchmans bay. Once we got there we saw that there was a Historic Whaling station which looked like it could be interesting for us all to learn about. We were unsure about spending $75 to explore something we'd only just stumbled across and had no plans to visit (we were supposed to be on our way out of Albany); but sometimes you have to just go with the flow and this looked like a pretty unique experience. I (Greg) had learned a little about whaling in Pt Lincoln on a family holiday in the 1980's, but this was apparently the last whaling station in Australia and was almost immediately turned into a museum upon its closure in the late 1970's. Reviews were good, so we went inside.

We were all so hungry but it wasn't quite lunch time so we got a bowl of chips to share to keep us going until we had finished looking around.

A pretty impressive shell collection is at the start

An old whaling vessel

It's interesting to learn about whaling. I have always been pretty unimpressed by the industry, in terms of the cruelty to the poor whales simply to get oil from their blubber. And I still feel that. But touring through the centre and getting a bigger picture of the whole industry, you start to realise that killing a whale for its blubber isn't really that much different to killing cows or sheep for their meat, other than of course that it's a wild animal rather than one farmed for the purpose. But it's not just people going out and killing whales for a bit of fun, any more than an abattoir is about having fun killing cows. In both cases, there's something in the animal's body which humans need or at least can use - for cows it's meat and leather; for sheep it's meat and wool; for whales it's meat and blubber. Blubber could make a whole heap of different products including high-grade lubricating oils which were heavily used in manufacturing; also skin care products, leatherwork and other industries. The meat and bone portions were used to create animal feed. So while it's still horrible to see footage of these glorious wild whales having a grenade-tipped harpoon fired into their head and all that blood going in the ocean, the rest of the process is not that far removed from what we already do in other farming industries. It also of course provided jobs for 110 people in Albany and it was a big part of their economy in the 50's-70's, at a time when other forms of modern oil manufacturing which now exists weren't around. Some of the sailors said in interviews the death and brutality side of it started to get to them after a while, but that it was their job and they needed an income. I guess this is just like being an undertaker is a job or a sewerage plant operator - any job has its unpleasantnesses and you have to learn to take the good with the bad.

Anyway I still think it's a very unpleasant process, but having learned a lot more about the whole process now, I think my perspective has changed from one of whaling simply being people going out and shooting whales for ... no real reason, to one of understanding the economic value the whale products brought to mankind while still mourning the slaughter of such amazing creatures.