Sunday we think it’s going to be a quiet day today but we do need some milk and have to make a quick trip into town along with a visit to the Information office to see what’s new in Albany – not a lot really. However, the ANZAC memorial centre is new and something we want to see during the week and apparently the Whaling Station has improved considerably, the last time we went there was 1987!

One thing you can’t do here is just sit peacefully outside your caravan because people just rock up with their chairs for a chat, often of a technical nature.    Today Roger has had some serious discussions about solar panels for charging the services battery in the troopie, strategic mud flaps to prevent stones wearing all the underseal off the chassis and opinions on the usefulness of the sprung base for the Engel freezer in the troopie.

Most of the company have arrived today……..

The evening happy hour and conversation goes down well, usually in direct proportion to the amount of wine imbibed! As a group we decide what we fancy putting on the agenda during the week and our intrepid leaders promise they will try to sort an evening meal somewhere, a trip to the Anzac memorial, a climb up to the granite skywalk in the Porongorups, and a trip to a Banksia Farm that has all the known species growing there. Rex seems to be the entertainments officer this time and has compiled some quizzes and other light hearted activities to while away the happy hour each day during the week.

Monday we went to town to buy bread but they don’t bake ciabatta on Monday, so we did what other shopping that we needed to do and then decided on Emu Point for a coffee, a pleasant little spot that we discovered the last time we were in Albany.   Returning to the Rifle Range we were looking forward to lunch and a peaceful afternoon.    It was actually spent discussing either car or caravan problems and visiting other vans to see mods or new fittings that someone had done over the past year.

Tuesday there is a trip to the granite skywalk (used to be known as Castle Rock) organised this morning, where there is a fantastic view from a walkway constructed on the side of the rock, see blog from about this time last year.    Since we’d done it before we decide to go to the Castle Rock winery to pick up some more of their pinot which is pretty good.    When we get there, they don’t have any left!    Down the road is Abbey Creek and we know that the winemaker at Castle Rock makes their wines so we go and try the pinot there, not bad but not as good as the Castle Rock.    We join up with the others for a picnic lunch and then we all head off to the Banksia farm.

Now if anyone had told me that I would happily spend 1.5 hours or so listening to someone talking about Banksias and then another 1.5 hours walking round the property listening to someone talking some more about Banksias, I would have said something along the lines of “yeah right”!   but that’s exactly how we spent our afternoon.  What’s more it was very interesting, the guy was a good talker and his knowledge was amazing, apparently he is an acknowledged world expert on Banksias.   There are 75 species of Banksia in the world and he has an example of every single one growing on this property, I mean I’m happy to take his word for it!    I don’t know which these are but here’s a few examples.

We hadn’t expected the tour to last as long as it did and had planned to go the movies this evening.    We found a nice little cafe for tea  and then headed off to the 20.30 showing, filling up with some low priced diesel on the way.    We saw The Second Most Exotic Marigold Hotel and if you haven’t seen it, go, it is every bit as good as the first one.   Anyway, that made us fairly late back to caravan after a long but interesting day.

Wednesday was a quiet day, a bit of shopping in the morning in the morning and catching up with e-mails in the afternoon, interposed with visits from next door to talk about car seats and solar panels for charging the services battery in the troopie.

Thursday a visit to the National ANZAC memorial.   Albany was the port from which the fleets carrying Australian and New Zealand forces left to join the allied forces in Europe, they were actually diverted to Cairo initially and then to the Dardanelles where they played a significant part in the battles at Gallipoli.   The memorial hall is a very well presented history of the ANZACs and their part mainly in WWs I & II.    You are given a card and a ‘listening pen’.     The card bears the name of a soldier who took part in WW I, and at certain points round the display you can put this card on a card reader and it presents his or her service record on the computer screen.   You can page through the file and at the following posts you can keep up-to-date the soldier’s movements during the war and at the last one you find out if he / she survived. All this information is directly connected to the National War Memorial Centre in Canberra.  It is quite a moving display and the listening pens are a very good idea, you wave the ‘business end’ at a disc on the wall and via a microphone in the pen you get a commentary on that particular section of the display, all very good.    The building is built on the site of the original barracks over looking King George Sound, where the fleets formed before heading to war.    At the top of the hill behind the Memorial building are the gun emplacements that were first placed there three years after the first fleet sailed into Port Philip Bay (Sydney Harbour) 1788.    Albany was an important staging post in the days of the sailing ship and the Roaring Forties.

 

On the side of the pathway going up to the gun emplacements are display boards which name each of the 90 vessels that formed the first and second fleets.

Some views over Middleton Beach……….a selfie …………………………………and Albany itself across the bay..

This afternoon’s entertainment consisted of getting annoyed with the bank ‘cos my card is consistently refusing to accept the pin number, this has been going on for a month ……………..! Fortunately Pat’s works.  In the evening we all went into Albany for the group nosh – good food when we got it,  but there were 26 of us to serve.

Friday a leisurely start today, shopping for the barbecue tonight first then out to a woodworking place on the road to Denmark. There were some lovely pieces in the gallery but this is ‘tourist’ country and the prices reflect the ‘opportunity’.

On the way back we dropped in to the Bushfood Factory and Cafe for lunch.   We’ve been here before and they always have Witchety Grubs on the menu which I would like to try but they are never available.    Nevertheless we have an interesting lunch with a tasting plate of warrigal greens soup, smoked roo, emu, croc, and various other herbs and spices they grow there which were presented in different forms, au naturel, in muffins, pates, etc.

There’s a bbq tonight here in the camp hall so we all provide a plate and cook our own meat .   A good night all round, we won the quiz, beating the rest of the group, all dinky di Aussies, on questions that were about 80% about Australia!   Roger played Prince Charming (type casting?) in a variation on the theme of Cinderella!   Pat has a video which will be deleted – if Roger can find it!

Rain is forecast for the evening and duly arrives, together with news that the tail end of cyclone Olwyn is likely to arrive in Perth tomorrow, although it will have probably have blown itself out by then.    We pack our outside stuff away before retiring but we’re leaving tomorrow anyway.

Saturday  and we’re ready to leave by about 0930 having done the rounds and said cheerio to those still there.  They’re a good group and hopefully we will all meet up somewhere again next year.

It’s raining on and off all the way up the highway. We stop for a coffee at Mt Barker and lunch in a picnic area at Broomehill.    This afternoon we find a nice quiet spot by the dry Lake Queararup, just about to make a cup of tea when a ute turns up with a load of trail bikes and several cartons of beer on the back, we decide to move on and find ourselves an empty quarry far enough off the highway where I finally get my cup of tea.