Day 86 Tuesday 6th September

Day 86 Tuesday 6th September

After another delicious breakfast Ray and Hanna took us on a driving tour of some of the  spectacular coastal areas just out of the town of Albany. We drove around the large hill that separates one bay from another and stopped at a lookout. There is alot of ANZAC history around Albany because many of the WW1 troop ships left from here. The small entrance into the bay in which the Port of Albany is in, is called Atuturk Entrance named after the famous Turkish leader who fought against the Australians at Gallipoli then assisted them after the war with locating lost soldiers and united his country. We had a look at the large port area where a ship was in being loaded up with wood chips. There are many lovely old buildings near the port and also in the old part of the town. They have been heritage listed and well looked after. From here we drove out to a national park that had two very spectacular natural features, called The Gap and Natural Bridge. A brilliantly designed path and platforms that people in wheel chairs could access had been built out to these natural features. I cannot do the veiws from the platforms justice. Huge, smooth, shear cliffs of granite, dropping into a swirling whirlpool of crashing waves greeted us at the The Gap and across the other side of the path was The Natural  bridge with water crashing in and out, under it. We visited another lovely spot called Salmon Holes, where fishermen take their lives into their own hands fishing from the dangerous rocks. We then went to &Whaleworld& which is on the old site of the last whaling station in Australia. It closed in 1978. Lyn, Paul, Heather, Rob and I visited the centre and had a wonderful and informative tour of the site with many good interactive attractions. Rob, Jas and I had visited this attraction back in 2000 and really enjoyed it but there had been  many great improvements and it was well worth the money. On our way back into town we stopped at a whiskey distillery  called &Limeburners&, where Heather and Paul enjoyed tasting some of the very expensive, award winning whiskey. After returning to Ray and Hanna's for lunch, Paul and Rob had an enjoyable game of golf at the beautiful Albany public golf  course and Hanna took Heather, Lyn and myself to the Mt Romance Sandalwood factory. We had visited one of these before on this trip at Kununurra as that is where most of the sandalwood is grown but it is all processed here in Albany. Of course we could not resist spending more money on some of the beautiful products. Back at Hanna's and Ray's another scrumptious dinner was followed by some of playing &May I& once again.