A Touristy Day

Day 9: Albany to Bunbury

Well, we still must be operating on Queensland time because it was another early start for us. We ended up making the decision to pack up camp to give us some flexibility in deciding where we were going to spend the evening. The general thought was to do some touristy things, head west and see where the road took us. So, after we packed up camp, we hit the streets of Albany. Being a Sunday, a lot of the local shops were shut (a little disappointing for me as I was kind of looking forward to some retail therapy) however this proved to be a non-issue as there was plenty of interesting stuff to see and do.

First stop: A tour of the replica of the Brig Amity. This ship set sail from Sydney to King George Sound in the late 1800s. It was great to have a walk around the ship (guided by an audio device) and get a feel for what life was like – glad they didn't have a 'smell-o-vision' tour though. The place must have stunk with the poor hygiene, cramped spaces, maggots and buckets of excrement everywhere!! Mind you, back then, the bad smells were probably some of the least of their worries by the sounds of things!

 

We ended up deciding to head to Bunbury for the night – doesn't make too much sense probably but it was a better road for driving at night and we thought it might have increased our chances of finding accommodation late on a Sunday evening.

 Next stop: About 20km out of Albany is a great little tourist drive (Frenchman Bay Road) with some awesome rock formations and whale watching spots along the way.  We headed out here in search of Whale World.  Whale World was an old Whaling Station which was last in operation in the late 1070s.  It's pretty graphic in parts (the photos of the killings and how they harvested the whale oil and meat) but really interesting all the same.

This is the skeleton of a Blue Whale which was beached down in one of the bays close to the whaling station. It's massive, 25m!! Apparently big Blue Whales can get as big as 34m!!

This was one of the last whaling ships in use in Australia. Now you can climb aboard and have a look around.

After finishing up at Whale World we continued to head west and stopped at another great tourist attraction – The Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk. This is just east of a little town called Walpole and is definitely worth a stop if you're ever in the area. The trees are Red Tingles (a type of Eucalypt) and you get to view them from the suspension bridges ~40m in the air, as well us on the ground. Very cool. (Unfortunately I'm having trouble uploading the photos which show the bridges - sorry)

This is a picture of one of the Red Tingles from the ground.