Rick and Rae's Travels: Thurs, 14th to Mon, 18th April

Thursday is a very important day ... Mikayla's 13th birthday, so we make sure that we ring her as early as possible. We are 2 hours behind NSW so we don't want her to think we have forgotten her.

We leave Bremer Bay and drive towards Albany stopping into a couple of free camps along the way. The sites are not really suitable for us and one in particular was tight enough to make it very difficult to turn around with the van on the back. Fortunately, 'The Wrecker' was able to back into another area and get us out of there. We continued on to Albany which is a very pretty place with lots of lovely beaches again. We checked into a caravan park again and then drove out to several free camps further out of town to see what they are like. Because it is close to school holidays and Easter, these areas are very busy and we're not finding enough room for our big rig.

We really splurged and went to a restaurant at the beach for dinner. I thoroughly enjoyed my seafood chowder as we have been having so much roasted and BBQ'd meat since we have been travelling.

On Friday we had a huge walk around the beach and explored the vicinity of the caravan park. Later we drove out to the old Whaling Station on Cheynes Beach. The Station hasn't been in operation since around 1978. Neil and Lynne both recall driving out there one day just as a whale was being hauled onto the cutting deck.

The Cheynes IV is a whale chaser now in dry dock that can be explored all over. It really gives an insight into how tough the whalers had to be, to live in such tight and uncomfortable quarters for long stretches of time and during some really rough weather. It was quite scarey at times too, to climb the ladders to the different areas. At the rear of the Whaling Station, a small zoo is in the process of being set up. Here we were able to get really close to a Koala and give him a pat while he slept in the sun.

On leaving the Whaling Station, we drove around to some really spectacular beaches. One was called Salmon Holes, where we could see a number of young people fishing from the rocks in the distance.

Another beautiful spot we visited in the afternoon was the Gap and The Bridge and Cable Beach.

Saturday was a lovely day again ... 31 degrees. We decided to go to Albany's Farmers' Market, however we were very disappointed. The only thing we had wanted to buy was some free range eggs and they were totally out of stock! We ended up visiting K-mart and Coles instead. We also strolled the main street and had coffee while watching the world go by.

After coffee we headed over to the old brigg, Amity. We had fun exploring this old ship for quite a while, though some of the ladders to the hold were a bit rickety. We moved on then to the Old Gaol and visitors' centre before heading home for lunch and for Rick to watch the car races.

Sunday wasn't such a nice day ... cool and rainy. This time we went to the Boatshed Markets and were just as disappointed in this market as we were yesterday.

Neil contacted us and asked us to pick up 10 dozen oysters for him, so we organised those, and then drove out to Nanarup Beach. The oysters were ready to be picked up at 11:45am so we returned to the marina area and then had salt and pepper squid at the 'Squid Shack' ... hmmm ... very nice indeed!

We have decided we will leave Albany tomorrow so Rick fuels up the 'truck' in readiness.