Australia here we come!

28/8/12

All good things must come to an end. We packed up this morning and drove a short distance to Albany. We stopped at the Visitor Information Centre and the staff were very helpful. We chose the Albany Gardens Caravan Park. We were amazed to find they had drive through sites. We managed to set up before it rained. Mary-Anne and I put the front annex walls and one side wall each on our caravans to block the rain and wind. As we were finishing the last little bit of our erections a vicious storm came through and lashed us with heavy rain and strong winds. It was a strange type of storm there was only one clap of thunder. But it is Western Australia and everything is strange over here. After the storm the sun came out and you wouldn't know it had just rained. The girls found an advertisement in the caravan park office about a beauty salon that cuts hair. They rang and made an appointment for 3pm that afternoon. At the appointed time we drove to an IGA shopping Centre where the beauty salon was located and the girls settled for a haircut only as they reckoned the people could not improve on their perfect looks. I offered some suggestions and then ran off. Later we did a little shop at the IGA and then returned to the caravan park for the night.

29/8/12

This morning we drove to Middleton Beach and on the way we passed Dog Rock. This rock is a large piece of granite sticking out of the ground next to a shopping centre. It is a natural formation and has the appearance of a bull dog. Very unusual, but scenic. At Middleton Beach we went for a walk to the edge of the beach and stood under a huge Norfolk Island Pine tree to shelter from a misty shower of rain. It reminded me of Manly beach in Sydney. From there we drove along a tourist drive that paralleled the ocean. We stopped at a couple of lookouts and scanned the bay for whales. We were told by a man that there was a whale but without binoculars you couldn't see it.

We found a turnoff to Princess Royal Fortress and decided to investigate. What we found was a fortress built in 1893 for the defense of the Australian coastline. The harbour at Albany was so good that if an enemy foreign nation took control of the harbour and sea lanes out from it they could prevent shipping from England reaching the eastern states. So the fort was built to prevent this. We paid a small admission fee and set out on foot. There are displays of modern ships, gun turrets that you can walk into, and a 40mm bofor anti-aircraft gun that still has the controls greased and working. You can turn the gun left and right and up and down. We followed the track around to the WW2 main artillery range finding the command post. There was a great view of the harbour and bay from there. The most highlight of the walk was the two main gun emplacements. Each of the six inch guns were positioned in dug outs that had been cut into solid granite rock. There were also the associated ammunition bunkers and powder rooms hewed into the granite rock. Everything was in exceptionally good order. The huge guns could be turned left and right and raised up and down. I was in seventh heaven and had to be dragged away by the girls. Just down from the big guns were original slit trenches and barbed wire.

The fortress was closed down in 1956 as the age of rockets made the fortress obsolete. The historical society that runs the Princess Royal Fortress should be commended for the exceptional work that they have put in to keeping everything as original as possible.

From the Princess Royal Fortress we drove to the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial situated on a granite mountain overlooking the fortress. There were about a thousand steps to climb to view the Memorial but it was worth the climb. The Memorial was dedicated to the Australian Light Horsemen who served and fought in Egypt and Palestine during the First World War. There was an Avenue of Honour with many trees planted on each aside of the roadway and dedicated to fallen soldiers from the Albany area. There was even a real Gallipoli Pine tree growing at the Memorial. From the Memorial and a few more steps up the mountain we went to a 360 degree lookout with views of Albany, the Harbour and inland.

Our next stop was the replica of the brig Amity. The Amity was the ship that carried the first settlers who established the town of Albany in 1826. It was an exact replica and we couldn't work out how 61 people, cows, sheep, horses, pigs and food and stores as well as equipment could have crammed into the small ship. Let alone live aboard for more than 6 weeks. It was fascinating to walk all over and inside the ship. The headroom down below was so restrictive that we all had to bend at the waist to get around. We couldn't imagine doing that day in and day out. After the Amity we had a walk around the grounds of the Albany Museum and historic buildings as they had closed up for the day and it was getting late.