Thierings on Tour

We started the day with a family stroll along the beach, which was lovely and helped motivate everyone for the first day back at school. Of course the girls had another play at the playground…

Once we had eaten brekkie back at camp and packed some snacks for the day we were off to explore Frenchman’s Bay, a stunning coastline off Albany. Our first stop along the way was the Gap & Natural Bridge, which are very accurate descriptions for both natural phenomena.

The Gap includes a suspended platform over a very narrow gap in the rocks which forces so much water to shoot up and the sound is quite defeating. This makes the whitewash so strong and it is both mesmerising and terrifying to watch! 

The Natural Bridge is a perfect rock formation over an otherwise rocky, washed away gap in the coastline. It’s easy to stare at it for too long, waiting for the next big wave to really blow through and make a big splash…

You can see while so many people lose their lives here if they venture beyond the designated paths!

From there we headed off to the historic Albany whaling station, an important part of history in the area with a very confronting truth. Whilst it hasn’t been working since 1976, during its time it had harpooned some 16,000 whales. On display was the last whaling boat and it was interesting to explore all the different sections.

The interactive audio experience took you through the different sections of the whaling process and talked in detail about how the whales were treated once onshore. I won’t go into detail, but it was very confronting for the big kids and certainly made me feel queasy, Scarly was luckily oblivious. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like for those working here back in the days, the smell would have been awful….

We moved on to more whale education & conservation focused displays and the skeleton room was incredible! To see a Pygmy whale exhibit, meaning that full sized whales would be at least 20% bigger is quite mind-boggling! The girls loved all the interactive questions and learnt so much about whales. I for one am still fascinated that we have Orcas in Australia.

We had heard that Misery Beach had been voted as one of the most beautiful beaches in Australia and so had to see this for ourselves… it was very pretty and I even decided on a quick dip (absolutely freezing!) but the rest of the crew dipped their feet only. It was a very pretty beach, but I think we have been spoilt with so much beauty on this trip that it’s hard not to be judgy these days…

The last of the nature stops for today was the Blowholes and it turned out to be a very long walk down to see them. You could actually hear them before you could see them and I couldn’t seem to time my photos right, but it was cool to explore.

We were also lucky to see a number of humpback whales breaching out of the water. I never get tired of seeing that…

Back at camp and after showers we hit up the games room for some more air hockey, racing car arcade games and a general play. I’m surprised anyone had energy for it after a huge day!

Kms travelled – 72