Albany - Day 2 - Torndirrup National Park & the Old Whaling Station

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Another day, another national park. This morning, we headed into our fifth park, Torndirrup National Park, which is situated just 11 kilometres outside Albany. We had looked last night at the website and learnt that the access road to Bald Head is currently closed. That’s OK the Bald Head Walk Trail is a Class 4 bush walk that is 12.5 kilometres long. That would take all day so happy to give that one a miss. Shame not to be able to drive to the trail head to see what the view is like there, but if it’s closed, it’s closed.

Instead, we set the SatNav for Stony Hill where we completed a short circuit walk with fabulous views. We then drove the short distance to the trail head for Peak Head Track. This is also a Class 4 bush walk but a much more reasonable 4.8 kilometres return. It is a sandy track that is quite steep in places so not an easy walk!

Bernie led the group and was first to the summit, of course, but the rest of us were not (very) far behind. The track was rocky near the summit and it’s hard to say whether the sand or the rock was more challenging?? Certainly, the large steps in parts of the sandy trail were difficult.

After taking shocking selfies of ourselves at the summit with the Southern Ocean behind us we set out to return to the car park. Since we finished uphill at least we started out downhill before we returned to the section with the very steep steps … going up now since we had descended those near the start of the walk. Bernie was as fresh on the return walk as he had been walking out to Peak Head. He just kept on going like the Energizer Bunny!

I guess the three times he has completed the 100-kilometre Oxfam Challenge provided him with plenty of practice at completing challenging walks? At just 4.8-kilometres he wasn’t even warmed up while the rest of us were collapsing with exhaustion. But we all made it back to the car park within a reasonable time. The trail info says to allow between one and three hours and we were back at the car park in a little over two hours. Pretty good effort for old folk.

After our walk we drove to the Old Whaling Station keen for toilets and food! After an early lunch – it hadn’t even gone noon, but we were starving! – we paid our entry fees to go into the Whaling Station. The Albany Whaling Station operated until 1978. All other whaling in Australia ceased in 1963 when Humpback whales were designated a protected species. Albany was able to continue because its southern position meant the whalers had access to the Sperm Whale’s habitat. We were surprised to learn that it was as late as 1978 that ALL whaling ceased in Australia. Thank goodness.

What a gruesome industry it was. The Old Whaling Station has been preserved to provide people with an insight into the whaling industry that was so important to Albany’s economy for nearly three decades. Today the infrastructure has been cleaned up and sanitized for a tourist experience. Rather unbelievably the station attracted visitors even when it was operating. There is no way we would have wanted to have seen that. Ugh!

As unpleasant as we might find the history of whaling in Albany, it IS part of its history, and the story deserves to be told. Not all of history is pleasant and we cannot whitewash it or re-write the narrative to be more palatable to spare people’s sensibilities. It would be my hope that in remembering the atrocities of whaling that the human race will not resume whaling at some point in the future simply because whale populations have recovered. Let’s hope that people will continue to be more interested in going on whale watching tours than killing them … even though there a several nations who continue to harvest whales … in the interests of ‘scientific research’ of course.

At the end of our visit, it was declared ice-cream o’clock … even though there were not many ice-creams to choose from in their fridge! Hopefully somewhere soon we will be able to purchase proper ice-cream or better still, gelato, in a cone rather than these packaged ice-creams.

Then we headed off back along Frenchman Bay Road to visit everything else that we missed this morning before our walk. First stop Salmon Holes, where anglers can fish for salmon running west between late January and early May. We were unable to pull into Misery Beach due to another road closure for car park upgrading. Voted WA’s best beach in 2022 it would have been interesting to have a look. We had been thinking it was weird that 2022’s Best Beach is called Misery Beach. At the Whaling Station we were told that it was named back in the days when it ran red with whale’s blood, so sad! That’s a big turnaround to now be amongst Western Australia’s best beaches.

Onwards to Jimmy Newell’s Harbour Lookout. Just a 100-metre walk to the viewing platform with an impressive view of the harbour. The story goes that local fisherman James (Jimmy) Newell was caught in an unexpected storm and luckily driven into the shelter of the natural harbour.

Our next stop was at the Blowholes. The staff at the Whaling Station had told us it should be a good day for the blowholes. Hmmn, we walked the 800 metres (with 78 steps! Not more steps!) to the blowholes. We could certainly hear the air being pushed through the cracks in the granite headland BUT there was no spray being forced out of the crevasse, so it was quite disappointing.

We turned left at The Gap Road to visit the park’s premier attractions The Gap and Natural Bridge. Located adjacent to each other these two features have had some seriously engineered infrastructure built around them to allow all abilities viewing. Impressive indeed.

One final stop at Cave Point Light House and Cable Beach and it was definitely time to head ‘home’. We were out and about for nine hours today, and we were flagging.

Tracey and Bernie prepared another home-cooked meal this evening. On our arrival in Albany when we popped into the Dog Rock Boulevard, we spotted the chicken Kievs at the Lenards store. Chicken Kiev’s tonight with roasted vegetables, snow peas and corn on the cob. Yum!



Steps: 18,571 (11.66kms)

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