Albany Views on the way to Whale World

The marina at the main esplanade. Geoff is quite taken with the floating pontoons they have here and in WA so much better than what is available to the public in North Queensland. 

I took this picture to try and pick up the variation in the water colour.  The darker water is just a deeper channel cutting through the white sand.  The water is so clear.

Someone informed me that the crops with the pretty yellow flowers which make the fields emerald green with a gilting of yellow gold, are safflower crops used for oil.

 

We had to drive along the South Coast Highway to get out to Whale World.  On the way stopped at popular tourist destination such as 'The Gap' featured here and below.  The water rushes in and out and crashing against the rocks, and the wind contributes to this by adding its own eerie wail.

Scenes from the rocks around The Gap.

 This landslip was clearly visible even though it would have been nearly a Kilometre away from where we standing.

The Natural Bridge. Created over time by the continual battering of strong wave action eroding away at the rock. Perseverance, Perseverance, Perseverance....You can make it happen if you keep at it!

Whale World

Situated in the beautiful King George Sound is this sad reminder that whales were once killed in the thousands for the benefits that their plentiful size could bring to mankind. The last whale was killed in Australia here in the late 70's. took us that long to wake up to the fact they are more precious alive then dead!

I didn't really want to go but Geoff was interested so I decided to go in with him seeing that he'd been patient while I took multitudinous pictures of the ocean. Mind you the area Whale World is situated in is beautiful.  So I got of take lots more pictures of the ocean anyway!

This is the last of the whale fishing fleet, they have dry docked it, taken the motors out and put them on display elsewhere and now tourists can walk all over it and explore how the whalers lived and sailed.  Evidently this fleet did not go out for weeks or months at a time, but would generally get their whale quoto by the end of the day, however they would then hitch them to the boat and tow them back to land for cutting up.

 I thought this was a cute idea for the kids to play in.

Anyone wanna play Jonah in the Whale's Belly?

This is the engine from the boat on display. They start it up to demonstrate how the large pistons powered the boat. To make it convenient it had been converted to simulate the running of the engine the only really active parts being the pistons.

The flencing deck where they skinned, and cut up the whale into smaller pieces so that they would fit down these round wholes into the big boilers below. Uck!

Here they would lift the larger pieces of whale from the dock onto the flencing deck. The whale was dragged by big pullies up onto the dock area to be cut into more mangeable chunks.

The whole time during the tour they had audios of the sounds you could expect to here on a typical day at the whaling depot. Gross! But then we got to watch a lovely 3-D movie featurette about the different types of whales, which was pretty cool.

They had a whale museum demonstrating the size of some these beautiful levianthans of the sea and types of whale products such as blubber, baleen and whale oil.

I have included the information charts with some of the pictures for those who are interested. Enlarge to read.

 Sperm Whale

Remember if you want to enlarge click or double click on picture.

Humpback Whale

 The Blue Whale

 False Killer Whale

You have to admit whales don't look half as good without their skin on, do they?

Tooth and part of a jawbone of a whale that died after being stranded.  The tooth was bigger than the average cars hubcap!