We've had a lovely few days in Albany. Managed to catch up on the washing & ironing while Trev vacuumed the car. Nice to get some jobs done & feel a bit less like "bush-bashers" especially now the van is shiny white instead of red !!
Monday was pretty wet & cold, but we did stock up the grocery cupboard, and have the all important coffee in town. But yesterday, Tuesday, was a lovely sunny, albeit blustery day, so we did the lookouts over Albany and then went out to Frenchmans Bay to the old whaling station. This was in fact only operational for about 22 years, beginning in 1958, so it was a bit bizarre to walk around knowing that it wasn't all that long ago that the place was buzzing with its macabre activity.
The tour guide (a lovely old geezer) was extremely knowledgable and very interesting as he talked us through the various processes from sighting of whales to the kill & ultimately the processing. Apparently the stench was so bad that a worker entering a shop or a pub could clear a space around him in seconds !! The effect of the closure of the plant had drastic consequences for the whole town & naturally the economy was devastated as many many people were without work. The factory employed hundreds of townsfolk in some way or another and so many Albany families had a really tough time.
The cafe at the whaling station served great coffee & delicious seafood too, so we spoilt ourselves with lunch as well as morning tea there, whilst enjoying the view over the waterfront.
We visited the blow-holes, the Gap & Natural Bridge on the way back to town, which are all amazing configurations of the local granite, which permeates every lookout, and hill side within sight. So we got our exercise yesterday whilst exploring these natural wonders.
Today we have set off from Albany, heading East although first detouring north to drive through the Stirling Ranges, which offered a number of rocky granite climbs to places unimaginably high & particularly unachievable for yours truly. So we admired them from a distance & drove on through some of the best wildflowers we have seen. I think there has been a fair bit of rain in this area, so the flowers are looking fresh & pretty. Not the carpets of ground cover wildflowers that one would expect from photos, but certainly many colourful bushes & shrubs. Unfortunately we weren't able to photograph them as the sun was just not shining enough to do them justice.
We are parked up for the night just out of Ravensthorpe and will head to Esperance tomorrow, where we plan to spend a few days, maybe?
More soon xx
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