Albany Sightseeing and Walking

The weather has warmed up a bit in Albany, so as well as continuing with our regular golf we have done a few tourist things around town and the surrounding region. When we were here last year the waterfront area was a building site, with the most notable feature being seemingly endless cyclone fences, but now most of the building seems to be finished and the brand new Albany Entertainment Centre has opened. It is quite an attractive building, designed to mimic the shape of a boat. We checked out the upcoming events but it doesn't look like we'll see the inside as paying guests, so we contented ourselves with walking around the outside.

Porongurup National Park is about 30km north of Albany and has several walks. Last year we did a walk trail up Nancy's Peak, this week we tackled Devil's Slide. The first couple of km of this walk were reasonably easy, uphill along a fire trail, but for the next 800m or so we scrambled very steeply upward. At one point the trail seemed so steep that Wendy was unable to walk up the rock face, but had to sit down and ease her way up backwards on her backside - it was only after this fairly scary operation when John was contemplating whether to do the same thing that we realised the trail actually went around this steep section and John could scramble quite comfortably up to the same point. The photo above shows the view back down the trail from the top, with Nancy's Peak in the background. As the photo shows, it wasn't a very nice day, and we were worried that the mist would turn into rain, which would have made the descent over the granite rocks very slippery and dangerous, but luckily the rain held off until we were back down at the car park.

From quite early in its colonial history the harbour at Albany was considered to have immense strategic importance, and late in the 19th century it was decided to build a fort on one of the surrounding hills. The site continued in this role until 1956 when it was decommissioned, and over the subsequent years it fell into disuse and disrepair. Now the city of Albany has renovated and repaired many of the buildings and it is open to tourists as the Princess Royal Fortress. Albany was the place from which most Anzacs departed for World War I, and for many it provided their last glimpse of Australia. As well as photos, artefacts and stories from this period, there were also several other historical displays related to the history of the various fortifications on the site, and of Australians at war. We were surprised at how interesting we found the displays, and spent more than 2 hours wandering the grounds and buildings. Its site on top of a hill overlooking the harbour also provided magnificent panoramic views, and the lovely sunny day showed Albany at its best.

On another day we drove west to the West Cape Howe National Park. We were hoping to drive down to Torbay Head, which is the most southerly point in WA, but the track looked too sandy for novice 4wders like us, so we contented ourselves with doing a short walk along the top of a ridge and admiring the sweeping views up and down the coast in either direction.