Bonzer Words!: Albany to Esperance, Western Australia
Paul Newbury introduces us to two historic towns in Western Australia.
Albany and Esperance are historic towns on the southern coast of Western Australia. In 1826, the brig, Amity, sailed from Sydney under the command of Major Edmund Lockyer with orders to establish a settlement at Albany.
The party comprised 23 convicts, mostly ticket-of-leave tradesmen, 20 soldiers and a surgeon. In 1845, the Amity was wrecked in Bass Strait. In 1972, the city of Albany built a full-size replica to celebrate its sesquicentenary. The brig is now the city's major tourist attraction.
Albany is surrounded on the seaward side by Princess Royal Harbour and King George Sound and it is renowned for its whales and spectacular coastline. The visitor can enjoy breathtaking views from nearby Mount Clarence and spot Humpback and Southern Right whales as they migrate south. We saw four whales frolicking close-by on Middleton Bay in the early morning.
The names Esperance, Cape D'Entrecasteaux, Recherche Archipelago, La Perouse Rocks, Cape Le Grande and many others are the legacy of French exploration of the Esperance area. In 1791, D'Entrecasteaux led an expedition in search of the explorer La Perouse and his crew who disappeared after leaving Botany Bay in March 1788. L'Esperance and Recherche were vessels from that expedition.
D'Entrecasteaux traveled to the Pacific Islands via southern Australia. When he failed to find La Perouse, D'Entrecasteaux decided to circumnavigate Australia. Consequently, the French visited Esperance a second time and they explored and named the islands while looking for water.
Matthew Flinders was a superb cartographer and Admiralty appointed him to complete the charting of the Australian coast. He visited the area in 1801 in the Investigator. The botanist, Robert Brown, who traveled with Flinders, collected over 3000 specimens around Australia of which two-thirds were unknown to science. This is a measure of the unique quality of Terra Australis. Brown added a hundred plants to his collection from King George Sound.
Esperance Bay is lovely, it is framed by golden islands set in a sparkling viridian sea. Recherche Archipelago has over a hundred islands stretching over 200 km. They offer a chain of unending bays, white sand beaches and coastal scenery. The wildflowers are spectacular in springtime. An attraction is Pink Lake. The action of algae and bacteria turn the water pink in summer.
The local wildlife includes whales, dolphins, sea lions and rare Western Cape Barren geese. There are nine National Parks and Nature Reserves from Albany to Esperance and they give commanding views of the coastline and the Southern Ocean.
Some of the French sailors ate nuts from the Macrozamia Palm that made them extremely ill. The local Aboriginal people render the nuts edible by soaking them in the river for several weeks to leach out the poison and they then ferment them. This explains why up to a million native people survived quite well in Australia yet overland explorers everywhere fell exhausted, dry-mouthed and starving.
In 1840-41, the explorer John Eyre led an expedition from Adelaide to Albany around the Great Australian Bight. He recruited an Albany native named Wylie to travel with him. Eyre nearly died and only Wylie's hunting and gathering skills kept the party alive. Wylie was received in Albany as a hero by black and white alike.
The indigenous people of Albany are the Minang people while at Esperance, they are the Wudjari. The Nyoongars of the south-west of Western Australia speak dialects of the same language. Nyoongar is the name the people of this part of the country use to refer to themselves.
In native title deliberations, the South-West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council represent the Aboriginal people of the area. In September 2006, the Council was successful in having the Federal Court rule that the Nyoongar people of the area including Perth hold title to 9000 sq kms of their lands.
This outcome should make Australians proud. As usual, those who protest the loudest are those who know least about it. It is not a bonanza for Aborigines or a disaster for non-Aboriginal people. In fact, the decision doesn't affect anyone economically, as mining executives point out. Nonetheless, return of land is a boost to Nyoongar self-esteem.
Esperance and Albany would be the most beautiful towns in Australia but for the wind that comes over the Southern Ocean. The wind is harvested at Albany Wind Farm, six kilometres from Albany. It is one of Australia's biggest with twelve of the largest wind turbines in the Southern Hemisphere. Wind can supply 20% of Australia's energy needs in the future, given the political will.
© Paul W Newbury
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Paul writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
