Albany, Australia - A Day of Sun and Rain in Western Australia

Five inches of snow in Chicago a few days ago?  That’s the story we heard on the ship….  Sailing the seas below “Down Under” (south of Australia), there wasn’t a snowflake to be seen here!  After a couple rocky days crossing the Australian Bight after leaving Kangaroo Island, we were happy to be on solid ground again!  Never having crossed to Western Australia by any means of transportation, we had no idea that the waters might be as  rough as they were.  Barb had wondered on Saturday if she might be getting sick as her stomach was “off”, but with the high swells and rocking ship, she concluded that it was probably a touch of sea sickness instead.  Many others were showing symptoms as well, so she certainly wasn’t alone. We learned that many Aussies think of the Australian “Bight” as the Australian “Bite”.  If Australia looks like a kidney bean, it also looks like a hamburger sandwich with a “bite” taken out of the bottom portion.  That’s where we have been the last few days.

As we sailed into Albany (pronounced like the man’s nickname, “Al”, rather than the way New Yorkers pronounced the capital of the state).  So here, it’s “Albany” with the flat Western New York and Chicago “a”, rather than “All – bany”, the skies were bright blue and a good day looked to be in store.  Despite the fact that it has been a pretty hot summer in Western Australia, it was pleasantly cool.  We passed several pretty islands as we approached the mainland and before we arrived in port, several people were along the shore waving their welcomes.

Albany, a city of about 35,000 today, is located near the southwestern corner of Australia.  It’s the oldest permanent settlement in Western Australia, originally settled in 1827 as a military outpost for New South Wales (Sydney) to stop French efforts in that area.  As the only deep water port in the remote western part of Australia, Albany thrived.  For much of the early 20^th century, Albany was a major whaling center but by 1978, the whaling industry was ended.  Presently Albany touts its heritage with a large whaling museum; many of the people we know on the ship visited the museum.  Today, Albany depends upon tourism, fishing, and agriculture.  In fact a huge complex for shipping grain is located at the port and is every bit as dominant in Albany as logging and timber was in most New Zealand ports.

Although the whaling museum is supposed to be the thing to see around Albany, Barb and I tend to avoid tours that focus largely on museums (and wineries).  Rather, as readers may have noticed, we prefer wildlife and scenery.  It works out well as Barb’s first choice is a focus on wildlife with scenery a second choice.  For me it is the reverse, but they are both 1 – 2 for each of us. Occasionally a museum or winery slips into our itinerary because there are other features of the tour we like.  This time it was another wine tasting event, our third of the cruise, but much briefer than our other experiences.

In Albany, instead of doing the Holland America excursion which we normally select, we opted to do one through a fellow Cruise Critic member, Karen Deacon, from Florida.  Karen has taken time in quite a few ports to check out local vendors, prices and logistics.  It takes substantial effort and the appeal is that they normally are less expensive than the ones sponsored by Holland America.  However, the ship excursions, while more highly priced, include assurance that if something happens that we don’t get back by the final boarding time, the ship will wait or will get guests to the next port.  That actually happened to us on Kangaroo Island as our trip ran longer than anticipated and we did get back after the time we were supposed to be on board; the ship of course waited and it was no issue for us.  In Albany, the tour was to return several hours before we needed to board and we liked the itinerary, so did what was called Harbor Boat Ride. The ship actually offered no nearly identical tour to what we and nearly 30 others did.

Karen arranged for us to be met by three van cabs to take us the approximately 15 minute drive to the harbor where we boarded the Kalgan Queen boat, captained by owner, “Captain Kalgan”, aka Captain Jack.  Although it could accommodate about 38 passengers, there were less than 30 of us, most of whom sat in seats along the perimeter of the boat, facing the opposite side.  Captain Jack explained that the boat would be traveling in very shallow waters, some of which would be no more than waist deep. We would never be far from shore but would have a different perspective than if we were on a form of land transportation.  Some of the time, we would be traveling on the Kalgan River, the oldest river in the world.  It’s not well know and is rather short, but using criteria to determine age of the rivers, it is older than the Nile though less famous, obviously!  But this river is said to be 3.28 billion years old, with a “b” years old.  (I kept wondering if maybe it could have been 3.27 years old…)

As we began to pull out from the small dock, there were all kinds of large Australian pelicans in the water near the boat.  They are much larger than the pelicans we typically see in North America and, as Barb said, their eyes almost look like they aren’t real.  They look like they are pasted on their faces until they blink and let us know that’s just the way the eyes are.  Captain Jack had some favorite pelicans that perform for him, and if they perform as he expects, they get a reward of some fish.  One in particular, “Pav”, a female that Captain Jack had originally thought was male, was taught to respond to the command, “Dance,” to turn in a circle in order to be rewarded with the fish.  Pav’s mom Percy had been entangled in some fencing and Captain Jack had cared for the weak bird until it was ready to be returned to its natural environment.  He used the circling exercise as a means of building the strength back and then taught Pav the same trick.

Captain Jack also rewards some white breasted sea eagles with fish and attempts to throw the fish into the water so that the sea eagle can retrieve it with its talons before the more numerous greedy pelicans can snap it up.  He regaled the tour members with stories, self-written poems, and history of the area as well as a commentary of the economy and politics of the river and of Albany.  He pointed out various birds and noted that changes in the climate have brought some birds back to the area sooner in the season than even in the recent past.  We saw black swans, mallards, a giant stingray, darters and some aggressive fish that snapped up bread scraps he threw in the water.  We even saw a very interesting large bird on a tree branch.  It has an exceptionally long neck and in that sense, resembled a loon or crane.   Captain Jack gave the unfamiliar name and Barb and I tried to retain it, but we couldn’t.  We have a picture with our Picasa pictures.  If anyone with knowledge of birds is able to enlighten us, please let us know.

As we rode in the open boat, with the plastic flaps rolled up, the once blue skies became dark and a bit of rain came.  We put the flaps down and secured them but the shower was brief and up went the flaps again.  As we reached a certain spot in the river, we pulled up to a small remote dock for the winery we were to visit.  A short, steep, but manageable hike up took us to a place where the owner, Murray Montgomery, met us and took us for a five minute ride by small bus to Montgomery’s Hill Winery where most people enjoyed the wine tasting.  Barb and I waited it out with views of the landscape and attractive scenery as well as conversation with several others.  We met a couple from Western Springs, IL, who for a few years had lived in Country Club Hills, one of the communities to our east.  The rain came in earnest but abated sufficiently to let us get back on the boat before heavy rain commenced.  We were concerned that the rain might turn the sharp descent to the boat muddy, but fortunately it didn’t happen and there were no mishaps!

Back on the boat, Captain Jack had prepared some hot coffee and tea in metal cups.  His wife had prepared bread loaf, called Hot Damper.   Apparently in Aussie lingo, the tea is called “billy” and together they are referred to as “tucker”.  The iconic Australian song, a favorite for Americans, “Waltzing Matilda” is full of slang which is barely understandable to us, but when the terms are understood, it tells a story of life on the Outback.  In short, the “tucker bag” in the song contained the tea and bread.  Damper is a type of bread that Aussies eat if they are hungry and away from home.  It’s prepared with different recipes but everyone raved about how delicious the Hot Damper was. In addition to the usual ingredients for bread, it had been soaked in olive oil and some other “secret” ingredient that gave it a special good taste.  Captain Jack willingly told his guests that the secret was to use sour milk.  Sour milk?  Yes, but we all agreed that whatever it was, the bread was wonderful.  He told us that someone had asked how to get sour milk? Duh, even a non cook like me could answer THAT question!  Captain Jack told the person to just leave the milk on the counter for four days and he would have the sour milk!  He heated the bread on the boat oven so it was fresh and hot when we ate.  When he brought another loaf out for seconds, one lady picked up two pieces for herself and her husband, but dropped it fast because it was so piping hot. 

By now, the rain was pouring down and all the plastic flaps were pulled down and once again secured.  Fortunately it was at the end of the tour, so our return to the boat dock was purely functional and we returned as Captain Jack told a few more stories¸ poems, and even gave some expression derivations for popular slang terms in the English language.

The vans were waiting for us as we arrived at the dock and quickly, after a brief tour of Albany, we were back at the ship.  I might comment that places like Albany and most other cities in Australia, with the exception of Adelaide, look more like American cities and towns than virtually any other place in the world.  Personally I think you could put a blindfolded person into many of the cities of Australia (definitely excluding the bush and Outback areas) and a person might think they were in the US.

Having enough time before the ship sailed, I took the short shuttle ride to the shopping area of Albany and browsed a few of the stores that were open on a Sunday afternoon.  Back on the ship in plenty of time, we sailed out of the attractive harbor areas, maneuvered through a few small islands, and out to the open sea and headed, sadly, toward our final Aussie port, Fremantle (for the larger city of Perth)! 

It has been nice to skip the winter snows of Chicago, the constant stories of political corruption there with Jesse and Sandi Jackson making news here too, and the Chicago-style politics in Washington, but just a few days short of halfway through our cruise, we know we will be home to reality before we know it.  And the reality is that there IS no place like home and we do think of family and friends every day.  But we have loved New Zealand and Australia and we don’t want this segment of the cruise to end!!!

CT

P.S. As we post this in Fremantle before setting out toward our next destination of Bali, Indonesia, we have heard rumor of  a large cyclone that is heading across the Indian Ocean toward northwest Australia.  We are not yet sure if this will affect our travels.   Stay tuned…