Albany Historic Whaling Station

 Wednesday 16 September - 181767

Today we visited Albany Historic Whaling Station - the last whaling station to operate in Australia. This is a heritage listed site with a lot of information about whales and the whaling industry. There is a restored whale chaser ship that we were able to thoroughly explore, as well as the processing factory that has been renovated. I was surprised to learn that this had been a tourist attraction while it was operational. It was also interesting to learn that several of the whaling captains became involved in whale conservation, one even joined Greenpeace. 

Discovery Bay     Albany Historic Whaling Station

We also visited the adjoins Regional Wildflower Garden and had a tour of local wildflowers with the head gardener.    Regional Wildflower Garden

Last up with visited pretty Frenchman Bay and looked at King George Sound from a different perspective.

Frenchman Bay

Meelup Trail

 Tuesday 11 August – 180823

This morning I saw a rabbit near the caravan park toilets at dawn.  After breakfast and showers, we packed down. It was a cold morning, but thankfully not raining.

Today we walked some of the Meelup Trail from Dunsborough to Eagle Bay and back. Meelup Trail This was pretty coastal scenery. We saw a lot of black cockatoos, galahs, Australian Ring Neck Parrots and lots of small birds.  We could hear a lot more birds than we could see. We saw plenty of wildflowers and saw a whale from Sail Rock. 14.75km, 4h 5m

After a very late lunch we drove to Augusta, we are staying at Turner Holiday Park. Turner Holiday Park This is a lovely and well-maintained park. We finalised our gear for tomorrow and set our alarms for an early start to make our transfers.

Bibbulmun Track Food Organisation

 Monday 10 August - 180823

Began the day with a long run along the foreshore of Geographe Bay, past the Busselton Jetty and back in what turned out to be the best weather of the day – moderate wind and minimal rain. The day got progressively wetter and colder – in the middle of the day I had on long thermals top and bottom, a T-shirt, long sleeve shirt, long pants, puffer vest, winter jumper and a beanie! We spent most of the day sorting the food we had purchased yesterday into resupply bags for the Bibbulmun Track. We also sorted our food and packed our packs ready for the Cape-to-Cape Track.

 

Nannup Flower and Garden Festival and a BIG grocery shop

 Sunday 9 August - 180660

While it was a cold night, it wasn’t much colder than the day. Bluff knoll reported snow and hail yesterday, we were about 100km north of this when it was 6 degrees at 2pm yesterday. I explored the river and campground – there are rapids upstream which cause clouds of bubbles on the water surface.

Driving toward Nannup we saw rabbits crossing the dirt road, sheep country, free range chicken farming and large-scale tree farming. We crossed the Bibbulmun track on the Brockman Highway between Bridgetown and Nannup, north of Donnelly River. We arrived in Nannup just after 10am and had morning tea. We then set off to explore the Nannup Flower and Garden Festival. Despite the cold drizzly weather there were plenty of people and the tulips were beautifully mass planted. Nannup Flower and Garden Festival

We drove to Busselton and have booked into Discovery Parks Busselton for two nights. After setting up and a late lunch, we set out to purchase supplies for the Cape-to-Cape Track and Bibbulmun Track. We went to Anaconda, Woolworths, Coles and Aldi – we still need a few more things for the Bibbulmun which we will get after the Cape-to-Cape.

Dinner in the camp kitchen with a lovely travelling family from Tasmania.