Greetings from holiday land. Driving into Albany reminded us of driving into Nelson with its hills and large harbour with a large peninsula that almost joins the mainland again.It has many lookouts and you can see for miles in all directions with fabulous views of harbour hills and sea which gave us the impression that we could easly live here. There is lots to see and do so after settling into our motor camp ( our luck seems to be lasting again as we were able to get their last site as it's Queens birthday weekend here and also the start of the school holidays ) so we drew up a wish list of what we wanted to see. Next morning the first and by far the best attraction was the whaling station tour. It had only closed in 1978 and had been killing and processing whales up to that date and has been set up as a museum of whaling with continuous films of harvesting and processing that was very gory. The whole station/ factory was huge and took hours to see all the exhibits including a complete original ship ( now on a slipway ) that you could explore. We all had an idea of what they did but until you see the many processes that used up every part of a whale it really opened up your eyes to this barbaric slaughter of these lovely mammals. Many great white pointer sharks could be seen in the films attacking the whales as they were winched from the supply ships to the slipway on shore. The skeletons in the sheds were about 14 plus metres long and brought everything into perspective. Apart from the films and descriptions of smell in the factory unbelievably we were still able to enjoy a nice lunch in the on the water front restaurant.
Also out on the peninsula was a wind farm that you could walk around the towers and hear the constant whoosh whoosh whoosh of the blades above you that were just huge. As we walked around the board walks on the cliff tops we came across a sign that warned to be aware of snakes so with Steph leading the way and on high alert she slowly proceeded. Just to make life interesting I let out a very loud aahhhhhaa and as Steph panicked and looked down a large black tiger snake took off from less than a metre from her! It was only as I was laughing I became aware there actually was a snake and only then saw it disappearing into the bushes just beside my foot, OMG. That trick certainly back fired on me, wow what are the chances of that happening ? We were very lucky as two locals said that the tiger snakes in the area can be very aggressive after coming out of hibernation and may chase you if you get too close !
Steph's nerves were a bit frayed for the rest of the day so a visit to a wine shop for a cold bottle of her favourite wine was called for! Next morning and yes after Steph having had a good nights sleep ( and no nightmares ) we went to visit the ANZAC museum on top of the hill over looking the harbour where the NZ and Australian troop ships left from to travel to Gallipolli. They had the 100 celebrations there last year. It's an amazing and very thought provoking display with movies and displays of weapons etc from both wars. I did not realise that there was so many films of battle way back then. When you entered the museum you were given a photo of a soldier and you could touch it on many of the interactive displays that gave you information on that person. On leaving the display you again touched the photo on a pad and it told you if that soldier returned or was killed. Mine killed himself after returning because of post traumatic stress !!! Steph's was Padre White who organised the very first Dawn Parade. Very sobering. The rest of Saturday was taken up visiting a old jail and looking through a full size replica of the brig sailing ship that brought the first settlers to this coast. We then went to the movies to see Last Cab to Darwin as the weather was not very nice. It was good as we saw lots of the places we had visited.
Sunday we are going inland a bit to stay with John and Wendy who we first met in Coral Bay and invited us if we were ever in the area to stay on their farm so looking forward to that.