The Albanians of Western Australia

Monday, 11 February 2013 – Albany, Western Australia

After two days of sailing the troubled waters of the Great Australian Bight, we arrived this morning in the beautiful multiple bays of Albany. There are 33,000 Albanians (really, that's what they call themselves) who live in a couple of upscale mostly retirement communities at the southwest corner of Australia. Albany, pronounced "Al-banny" by these locals, has a lovely one main street which slopes down to the wood chip and wheat bulk carrier port. We drove down and then back up again at the end of our tour and noticed that this street had an inordinate number of Chinese and Italian restaurants as well as a huge number of sidewalk cafes and family restaurants. We later learned that Perthian (?) families drive the six hours during the January summer vacation period to this godforsaken and otherwise comatose town to, uh, go to Chinese and Italian restaurants or sit in cafes. There is a fantastic broad white sand five mile long beach but hardly anyone uses it during the summer because of the sharks and more because of the constant 40 to 60 knot winds that blow onshore twelve months of the year. A matter of fact, Albany generates 80% of its electrical needs in a nearby wind farm.

We spent most of our 4 hour ship's excursion at the nearby Whale World Museum, said to be the "world's largest whaling museum". It is actually a whaling station and whale oil factory that was fully in use until whaling was banned in Australia in 1978. The site includes the gigantic wooden ramp which was essentially a cutting board for slicing up the whales, a gigantic machine driven "whale saw", and large machines for grinding and separating the fat and for rendering the oil. Huge tanks remain that were used for storing and then shipping out the oil. There was an excellent docent onsite who provided livid details of all this to supplement the very detailed mixed media and audio presentations about the entire process. No wonder that our tour bus had a "vomit kit" handily stored on the shelf above the passenger seats. We did enjoy climbing about the whale chaser boat that was in use until whaling stopped there and apparently ready for use any time the rules might change. There was also a 3-D movie about whales (not the process of dissecting them, thank goodness). We avoided buying souvenirs at the big gift shop. I didn't want to see what they had to sell.

Before returning to now off-season--the school holiday ended last week--and now empty Albany main street, we stopped at the Torndirrup (aboriginal word for "don't fall off the cliffs while throwing up from the whale museum visit") National Park to walk a short path to the spectacular Natural Bridge and nearby blowhole. We were told by the tour guide, a retired farmer with tractor suspenders who apparently could operate his tractors better than the bus's PA or air conditioning systems, that the blowhole wasn't blowing because the 50 knot winds today were "in the wrong direction". So, thar she didn't blow. We ended our tour with the traditional drive up to the highest hill near town to photograph the ship, but we couldn't do so since the path to the overlook was fenced off for construction. No matter, we did enjoy the ANZAC Memorial which consisted of a bronze statue replica of the one destroyed in the 6-day war in Egypt but placed here on stones rebuilt from the original plinth shipped to Albany from Port Said.

We returned to the pier and sailed for Fremantle at 1:30pm where we will arrive 24 hours later.