Albany

We packed up as fast as we could this morning and towed the van into Denmark.  We were aiming for the 9.30am service at the Family Church, but realised we were too late when we got there, so went to the 10am Baptist service across the road.

Everyone was very friendly and shook hands and introduced themselves.  The organist played very well and we sang all the old blue and brown book choruses.  They had a guest speaker, Andrew, from the challenge magazine, and Grant and the older three heard his message from Exodus 14:10-14 on keeping our eyes fixed on God, not our situation or our past. Nadine, Oskar, Cooper and I helped the Sunday school paint animals for their Christmas nativity.  It was lots of fun.

After the service, we headed off to Albany, where we had lunch, and walked around the historic buildings of this first WA British settlement. We looked over the exact replica boat of the Brig Amity, for which Amity Point at Stradbroke Island was named, but it's also the boat that brought the first convicts  and Captain Lockyer to Albany in 1826 to develop a settlement here.  It wasn't successful as a convict settlement, they moved everyone to Perth on the swan river, but it did remain a town and was opened to free settlers.  The oldest house in Western Australia is here, built in 1832.

We really enjoyed wandering all over the Amity, getting a feel for the size of the sleeping quarters and steering the ship.  It was not very big!  The replica was made by a third generation ship builder from Albany, who travelled to Europe to research shipbuilding techniques so that he could  accurately reproduce this old ship.  They even used the old tools  (which they made first) and you can see all the marks the axes etc made in shaping the huge timbers inside the hull.

After our walking tour, past the old churches and houses in Albany, smelling the roses that are all over the place, we drove up the hill that overlooks the three bays, King George Sound, Princess Royal Bay and Oyster Bay, to the Anzac memorial.  The first ships of Anzacs to Egypt left from this harbor on 1 November 1914.  There was a great view.  

We drove around Oyster bay to Emu Point, then on out of Albany and to nearby Mt Manypeaks to a little beach called Norman's beach in two person bay.  There is one other caravan here, and at first we thought it was just a melaleuca mangrove swamp, but Grant and the boys walked up and over a big sand dune to a beautiful beach, I will look at it in the morning. 

Clouds have come over this evening, but apart from that, the weather today was perfect. There are all these very noisy frogs here - I didn't know you got frogs in the beach.

Katie went to the drop toilet earlier, and came out declaring, 'that's the most disgusting toilet I've ever been to. When you sit down it wobbles all over the place, but I think it's a new hole, because it goes splat and not splosh.'

And I think that's quite enough for now...
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Vicki