The Ward Murray Family Adventure 2014

Albany (6 nights)

We don’t want to leave Albany, it’s a great place!!! We are camped at Middleton Beach camping ground which is in a calm bay where whales come in to shelter with their calves. We have seen a few of these whales and early one morning I saw a seal swimming around a lady’s legs while she took her morning dip (6.30am and very cold!!). There is a hard core group of people here that do this every day - very keen!

There is a great walk-cycleway from the beach around the point to the town centre and one day we saw over 20 lizards lounging on the side of the track and in the early morning/evening you see bandicoots scooting about, they are really cute! What wasn’t cute were the magpies up at the War Memorial that tried to take food out of our hands as we ate our morning tea, we had to retreat to the car and still they intimidated us by perching on the wing mirrors and glaring in at us. Speaking of birds, there was a bird in the Norfolk pine next to our camp site that makes a repetitive, resonant “whoom” sound during the day starting at 6am. I caught a glimpse of this fellow and was able to identify him as a ‘common bronze wing pigeon’. Then when people walking past stopped and debated what it could be, I would put them out of their misery and tell them what it was. Anyway several days later I was talking to someone and they informed me they had labelled me the ‘Pidgeon Lady’, this cracked us up given we label people like that too (as described in an earlier post), and frankly it could have been a worse name! Our latest favourite bird is the white cheeked honey eater - beautiful!

Magpie intimidation

Lounging lizards

White cheeked honeyeater

John and Leon have been on a downhill mountain track several times and they have made a short film which we will attempt to put on youtube and post the link soon.

On November 1^st it will be the 100^th anniversary of the ANZAC troops leaving from Albany for Gallipoli. Heaps of things are going happen here that weekend and efforts are in full swing to finish various works like the upgrade of the Princess Fort (meaning we couldn’t visit thatL).

We visited Whale World at Discovery Bay which is based in the old Whaling Station that only closed down in 1978. It is interesting to hear about the stations history but so sad that so many whales were hunted and killed. The whaling industry put so much pressure on the humpback population that in 1962 they were protected and could not be hunted, instead they moved onto sperm whales. What eventually closed the station was the cost of running the place as they used crude oil to fuel all the plant. The price of crude oil went sky high and the station could not make a profit. Near Whale World are the well know cliff features the ‘Gap’ and the ‘Natural Bridge’, checked them out but it was so cold in the wind we didn’t linger.

The Natural Bridge

Whaling ship at Whale World

We headed north yesterday to visit the Porongurup National Park where there is some stunning granite domes (670m high). You walk through the lovely karri, jarrah and marri forest and then scramble over some boulders then climb up a 7m ladder onto Castle Rock where a walkway protrudes from the rock, with a glass balustrade. It is totally amazing but you do need a head for heights (I am marginal!). The weather couldn't have been better for the views!