Our last full day in Albany dawned clear and cold, although not nearly as cold as a dozen other centres shown on the weather map around the country today. We set off with lunch packed in the eski, although we had no plan to travel very far afield.
Today was the day to immerse ourselves in Albany’s culture and history, to date only dabbled in. First stop was the Vancouver Art Centre, barely mentioned in the tourist publicity and for good reason, as it turned out.
The Centre is housed in a wonderful old building, or series of buildings, formerly the Albany Cottage Hospital, built in 1887 and alas, today falling to bits at the edges. Damp is creeping into the exterior block work and there will be pleas to the council for funding before long. After the hospital vacated the premises in 1962, it served briefly as a school hostel and holiday accommodation, before a major refurbishment program began in 1980 before the transformation to its current status.
Today the centre was busy with arty crafty people; spinners were busy spinning in a large activity room, fans of an artist all the way from Japan were enjoying a morning tea and chat from the artist herself, and her works, minimal and uninspiring as we found it, was in two very small rooms to which we were directed by the delightful receptionist. This same charming young woman invited us to join the morning tea and to wander about this wonderful old building in an attempt to spot the odd artwork exhibited. We thanked her but I could not bring myself to gate crash the tea party, however we did enjoy exploring the building even if the artworks were scarce. The Centre is essentially a meeting place for people who have artistic aspirations and should not, and does not, promote itself as a gallery.
From here we headed to what we thought was the Albany Museum, which turned out to be only a part of a group of attractions that together make up the town’s Cultural and Tourism Precinct, a fact I found later. Had I done my homework with the usual diligence, we would have approached this from a different perspective.
We pulled into a parking area beside a very old collection of buildings and found the reception area, tucked away and manned by a friendly man whose first language is German. His English is so peppered with his mother tongue that it is almost unintelligible to the partially deaf middle aged antipodean. We nodded and smiled and waited until he waved us on through to the beautifully restored Albany Gaol.
This really is worth the modest entry fee, with excellent stories all about.
In Western Australia the approach to convicts was unlike that of New South Wales and Tasmania, in that it was based on the concept of rehabilitation. The convicts that were brought to Albany in the brig, Amity, were carefully selected for their skills and trades, with a view to settling the area. They came here to establish the first European settlement in the western part of the continent and built a small outpost here more than two years before the Swan River Colony, now Perth, was established in 1829.
Those first few arrived in 1826, although it was not until 1852, the goal, as it is today, was built. The Old Gaol began as a Convict Hiring depot and in 1873, it was extended to perform as a public gaol.
There are stories of ghosts who lurk about the premises, the story of the murderer Frederick Baily Deeming, who was thought incorrectly by some to be the Jack Ripper, who passed briefly through the gaol before being executed for his hideous crimes and the one hanging at the gaol of William McDonald in 1872. There are a number of manikins in the cells and in hammocks to echo the poses and places of those past, the kitchen well set up for the baking of three hundred and fifty loaves of bread per day and the laundry with the irons all lined up on their racks above the wood stove.
James, the German, had made himself understood to us, in so far as directing us across the rail to the rest of the museum and the Amity toward the sea.The rigging of the Amity beckoned us across the precinct, and we walked the gangplank to find there was a separate entry fee for this, which included an audio tour courtesy of a brick-style cellphone thingy, a description you need to be of a certain age to comprehend. We braved the cold wind on deck and the cramped quarters below decks to absorb the facts and experiences of that voyage all those years ago.
The vessel on display today is a full size replica of the original Brig Amity, built in the mid-1970s to mark the 150th anniversary of the brig’s arrival. The original vessel was built in New Brunswick, Canada in 1816. After some years as a trader she sailed to Hobart and in 1824 was bought by the Colonial Government in Sydney to assist in supply and exploration.
In that same year, the Amity transported convicts from Sydney to a short-lived penal settlement at Redcliffe, at Moreton Bay, Queensland. After bringing Major Lockyer and the settlement party to King George Sound in 1826, the Amity paid two more visits to this struggling outpost, bringing much needed supplies.
The Government sold her in 1831, and for the rest of her sailing days,
the Amity worked as a trader, whaler,
sealer and transport ship. In 1845, she was wrecked in a storm off Finders
Island, near Tasmania, a sad end for a tidy little ship if the replica is
anything to go by.
Nearby is the Albany branch of the WA Museum, the reception area, a shop, a small exhibition about the lighthouses of this southern coast and an art exhibition of aborigine artist Jimmy Pike. We had seen some of his work in a Geraldton art gallery, most already marked with “sold” stickers suggesting that Mr Pike was at last going to be a wealthy man. Today the work did not appear to be for sale and was of a simple nature, done with felt tips. I suggested to Chris that a school class of ten year olds might come up with work of a similar standard however he drew my attention to the skills Jimmy Pike has as a colourist. Alas, I am such an ignoramus!
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| Replica of the Brig Amity |
The exhibition about the lighthouses was very small but very interesting, including the basket which was used to haul people and supplies up from boats to the keepers on Eclipse Island south west of Albany. Those keepers and their families were staunch folk, living a harsh life long after so many of us had the comforts of modern life.
We dragged ourselves away, lunch appealing to our hunger, but then became distracted by the centre piece of the museum, which in fact we should have started with. The main museum exhibits are housed in the Residency and is as wonderful as any we have seen. We should have spent much longer there however our hunger drew us away and we did not do this museum justice at all.
However in the rather brief and cursory visit, I did learn that the lands inland of Albany were settled as were those to the west of Albany, through Group Settlement Schemes. Each family received a hundred ans sixty acres of thick forest, swamps and snake infested country. I had read earlier that these farmers had struggled with the poisoning of their domestic animals, not by resentful indigenous peoples, but by the unknown vegetation often the only diet after drought or flood.
There were in fact fourteen different varieties of toxic plants on offer, and it was not until 1841 that botanist James Drummond discovered the toxic nature of a number of native peas, almost all restricted to the south-west of Western Australia. Around thirty of the one hundred species are known to be poisonous, and some of these are associated with stock poisoning. The key ingredient of the poison found in the leaf tips and the seeds, was identified in 1944 as sodium fluoroacetate, now marketed as the infamous 1080. The poison is highly toxic to some animals and humans, but many of the native fauna of the south-west have a natural tolerance to it. These days it is used in Australia to help control feral animals including rabbits, foxes and cats. In New Zealand, it is used to control feral animals such as ferrets, weasels, cats and possums.
Albany’s geographical location and importance as a coaling port has periodically thrown the town onto the national defence stage. As mentioned earlier, it was here that the fleet set off with Australian’s contribution to the war effort in 1914. The refuelling of those ships with coal was one of the major factors, and interestingly it was not coal from Collie just “up the road” that was railed down, because that was not of sufficient quality for such purpose, but coal shipped from Westport in New Zealand, part of which was probably dug out by my rellies, coal from Newcastle in New South Wales and more from just out of Wollongong in the same state.
The port provided the same service for the American “Great White Fleet in 1908, the final departure point for Boer War troops in 1899 and was home to part of the US submarine fleet in 1942.
This role dates back to 1853 when the Peninsular and Oriental Company stationed the old sailing ship and convict transport Larkins in Princess Royal Harbour. It acted as a floating coal storage facility, or “coal hulk”, to service the new steamer service. The Larkins was the first of twenty three coaling hulks at Albany owned by various competing companies.
Albany experienced a rapid burst of growth in the late 1880s. Gold discoveries brought large numbers of people to Western Australia. Albany was the point of entry for many diggers heading to the goldfields and the source of their supplies for the fields. The opening of the Great Southern Railway from Beverley to Albany in1889 added to the prosperity.
The 1950s was again a turning point for Albany and its Port. Agricultural and pastoral production increased. Harbour works began in earnest with dredging and reclamation work and a new transit shed. Three land-backed berths were opened in 1955, 1957 and 1971. Bulk handling facilities were introduced in 1956. The number of ships using the port increased with a wide range of exports as new trades emerged and some, such as whaling and trawling, disappeared.
The number of cruise ships visiting Albany has grown in more recent times. Grain, timber products, including woodchips and later logs, became increasingly important as the Albany Port moved into the twenty first century.
With this wealth of information, heads exploding again as they always do after a trip to a good museum, we sought refuge in the land cruiser down at the water front. Lunch was most welcome but even more, the bonus of the day; a couple of dolphins swimming across the harbour within our immediate view.
We could have returned to the museum, or museums, as we were fast learning, but instead chose to take some exercise. We drove along the shore toward Middleton Beach and Emu Point, and pulled into the car park at Lake Seppings. I had noticed this several days ago when we drove out this way and stored the “Bird Walk” for possible future activities.
The walk is just 2.7 kilometres and circuits the lake incorporating a lookout, bird hide and a boardwalk, from where, if lucky you may see some of the 107 bird species who apparently inhabit this wetland. We set off through the melaleuca thicket along a muddy pathway, dismayed to find so much of the vegetation laid waste. Soon it was evident that the storm that had caused damage when we were at Walpole had wreaked havoc here too. Since then, maintenance men had been through with chainsaws, clearing the way for keen walkers, but leaving the waste strewn beside the path.
Lake Seppings has had an interesting history and it is quite miraculous that it is today a reserve for nature lovers to enjoy and home to so many birds, long necked turtles, bandicoots, snakes, et cetera.
In 1888 the lake was declared a Botanic
Garden, in 1900 the lake was called Albany Park and protected as a natural
wetland. Then somewhere between 1900 and 1970, the lake became a rubbish tip. In 1972 the Department of Fisheries and
Fauna recommended the lake became a waterfowl reserve, then oddly the Albany
Council investigated the possibility of discharging treated sewerage into the
lake.
The amazing saving of this lake came in the 1980s when the Apex Club of Albany started work on the Bird Walk. In 2000 the community suggested the lake be protected and restored and in 2004 the circuit walk was restored.
I would like to think there will be no more stages of this metamorphosis, that we are now all sensible enough to recognise how important these sort of places are and how they need to be conserved, but who is to say. Life is full of contradictions.
We met an old chap walking around the lake in the opposite direction to us, with his very friendly sheep dog; he warned us of another weather front fast approaching the region, and then as we passed him on the opposite side of the lake, he told us we had missed the bandicoot on the side of the path. Lassie had no doubt frightened it off for the week; the old chap was just so full of good tidings!
Before heading back to camp and taking down the awning in case of possible night storms, we shopped at the supermarket and filled up with diesel. We are now all set to leave in the morning; hoping the northerly wind will have turned. The current situation does not bode well for fuel consumption.
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