Albany, Western Australia

“ Besides being endowed with beauty and richness of soil, Albany is likely to become famous as a coal- and gold-producing district, for coal has recently been found, and a company which will make further researches formed. Timber also is abundant, and copper has recently been found at the Phillips River, about 180 miles away. Thousands of people who have gone direct to the goldfields have no idea of the beauty of this place. They only think of Western Australia as a place in which, to look for gold, and when that has been obtained in sufficiency, to be left behind as quickly as possible. ”

“ In spite of the following paragraph from the same source: "Western Australia has emerged into the full glare of the world's light and renown, and not to know its golden wonders is to argue oneself unknown," I determined to remain in obscurity.
The guide-books assure us Albany deserves more than "passing notice." This is true enough, but travellers do not always get a chance of giving the place its deserts. This was particularly the case with me on my first visit. Quarantine was then in force, and, with my fellow-passengers, I was forbidden to land. ”

“ It is perhaps necessary that a man should visit such a colony as Western Australia before he can realise the need of roads. The distance from Albany to Perth is 258 miles. Perth is the capital of the colony, and Albany is the port from and to which is made the only communication by steamboat with the outside world which the colony possesses. ”

“ The principal ports of Western Australia are—on the south Albany and Esperance Bay, on the west Bunbury, Fremantle, and Geraldtown, and on the northwest Cossack and Broome. The most important of these are Albany, a fine natural harbour, which is the point of call of the ocean liners, and Fremantle, the port of Perth. ”

“ It was therefore settled that Mabelle, Tab, and Mr. Pemberton should stay, and Mr. des Graz and I return to Albany. A black boy was despatched on horseback to Mount Barker with sundry telegrams to make arrangements for staying at Albany over next Monday night, when it is proposed to give a ball in our honour. Posts are so few and far between in Western Australia, and indeed in many other parts of the continent, that telegrams generally take the place of letters. The cost of a message is very moderate within the limits of each colony, but terribly dear when once those limits are passed. ”

“ One hundred and eighteen miles from Albany one comes across a settlement which is not only the sample one on the West Australian Land Company's concession, but is destined, it is to be hoped, to be the model for many such another all over South-western Western Australia. Katanning is not only the central station of the Great Southern line, but it is the centre of what bids fair to be in the near future a splendid agricultural district, supplying any amount of corn for conversion into flour at the newly erected roller mills, which are the boast and pride of the township. ”

“ The trade of Western Australia is now most important, and sums up to the big figure of £12,000,000 a year; 50,000 people travel between here and the eastern colonies every year, and millions of pounds worth of gold produced in the colony have been taken away by sea. The mail-steamers now put in at Fremantle in place of Albany as heretofore, thus giving great dissatisfaction to the Albanians. ”

“ He had a stout heart, and though his worldly possessions were swept away, he resolved to begin life anew in a fresh land. Sailing for Western Australia from Melbourne, he reached Albany in October, 1894. ”

“ In 1826 Major Lockyer was sent from Sydney, with troops and a party of convicts, to occupy King George’s Sound on the south coast, where the Port of Albany stands to-day, and a few years later the Swan River Settlement was formed in the neighbourhood of Fremantle and Perth; but these first beginnings of the colony were33 unpropitious, and it languished till the discovery of gold brought the first great influx of population, and with it the consequent demand for agricultural produce, which at last gave an impetus to Western Australian development. ”

“ Having travelled all over Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia (now United Australia) , I one day made up my mind to set out for the land of gold, Western Australia, that has created such a furore in these last few years. Accordingly I took my passage from Sydney in the mail-steamer Omrah and, after a very charming voyage on board that splendid vessel, landed at Albany. ”

“ Alfred Hillman, a surveyor in the employ of the Government, explored the South coast from Albany as far as Nornalup inlet. In 1834, Mr. G. F. Moore made the junction of the Avon and Swan; Mr. Thomas Turner ascended the Blackwood; Mr. John Butler explored the Lake district to the North of Perth; Mr. C R. B. Norcott, Superintendent of Police, the Murray River valley; Mr. F. Ludlow traversed the country between Augusta and the Swan River; and Mr. W, K, Shenton, a draughtsman attached to the office of the Surveyor General, examined the Collie River. ”

“ However, the change of port is not only necessary for trade, as Fremantle is the principal port of the colony, but will also give people travelling from the other side of the world a better opportunity of seeing the metropolis and goldfields of Western Australia, which they were often deterred from doing by the journey from Albany to Perth, a distance of 338 miles, so it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. ”

“ The population, exclusive of the military, is variously given as seventeen persons and six respectively. One acre of land was under cultivation, and the only stock represented were three horses, three cows, and a few poultry. Sir Richard Spencer is looked upon as the founder of Albany ”

“ It is the chief health resort of the state, and its climate is one of the finest in Australia; it has a mean annual temperature of 58·6° F., and the summer heat is never excessive. One of the features of the town is the Marine Drive, some 51/2 m. in circuit around the hills overlooking the harbour. Albany has several flourishing industries, of which the chief are brewing, coach-building, printing and tanning. In addition it has the finest harbour in West Australia. ”

“ No part of the world could boast finer or more easily grown grapes. The south-west corner of the colony is rich in timber. A very good opening exists for immigrants at Albany. The Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamers touch at Albany once a week on their way to or from Ceylon, this being their first and last port of call in Australia. ”

“ It has joined Perth to Albany by a good railway, and several branch railways have been constructed, as well as a large number of telegraph lines; and at Albany, the town on King George’s Sound, it has established a coaling depôt for the mail steamers on their way to Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. But West Australia is still what it was called twenty years ago, “the giant skeleton of a colony,” consisting of about forty thousand people, scattered over a hundred thousand square miles of territory, behind which stretches a vast region of unexplored wilderness. ”

“ The Perth-Fremantle road was six inches deep in sand. Most of the houses in the capital still stood alone, often surrounded by luxuriant fruit gardens. The town of Albany probably suffered from the depression more than any other part of the colony. An air of despondency pervaded the community there, which was only relieved by occasional successful exploits in whaling. York, Toodyay, and Northam became more important, and Bunbury also made excellent progress, and what with a church and a school, began to surround herself with the conveniences of civilisation. ”

“ Thus Albany is a real capital,—a typical Southern county town, the centre of the life of ten thousand souls; their point of contact with the outer world, their centre of news and gossip, their market for buying and selling, borrowing and lending, their fountain of justice and law. Once upon a time we knew country life so well and city life so little, that we illustrated city life as that of a closely crowded country district. ”

“ Albany lives in continual fear of being superseded, as a port of call for the mail steamer, by Fremantle; and indeed it cannot be looked on, at present, as offering a favourable field for the investor in corner allotments.
To reach Perth, the capital city of the colony, a railway journey of some thirty hours in a north-westerly direction is necessary. This line was constructed by the West Australian Land Company, and was opened in 1889. ”

“ Thus, seeing crowds of the most distinguished and delightful people, receiving piles of the most interesting and adoring letters, happy, self-satisfied, Mme. d'Albany grew into an old woman. Every evening until ten, the rooms of the Casa Alfieri were thrown open; the servants in the Stuart liveries ushered in the guests, the tea was served in those famous services emblazoned with the royal arms of England. ”

“ We Butte smoke-eaters do not get our fruit that way. Albany is supplied with a woolen mill and flour mills, an iron foundry, and is an important railway center, besides considerable shipping being done on the river. It is no dream that the citizens of Albany are the most sociable, happy, and contented people that I have had the pleasure of meeting on the continent, and the town is a paradise for any one wishing to make a life-long home. ”

“ Englishmen who know very little of Australian geography and Australians who know very little of the westernmost colony of their own continent, are pretty well acquainted with Albany, which as the first port of call on the way out to Australia, and the last port of call on the way home to England, is much better known to globe-trotters than even the capital of the colony. ”

“ Only a man who in his youth has come at last in sight of some great city he had dreamed of all his life and longed to see, can enter into Rolf's feelings as they swept around the big bend, and Albany—Albany, hove in view. Albany, the first chartered city of the United States; Albany, the capital of all the Empire State; Albany, the thriving metropolis with nearly six thousand living human souls; Albany with its State House, beautiful and dignified, looking down the mighty Hudson highway that led to the open sea. ”

“ The scenery along the shores is diversified and beautiful, and no more charming place of call could be found for the ocean mail steamers, which anchor there regularly every fortnight. The little town of Albany is situated upon the rising boulders of granite at the head of the sound; but its isolated position has told against the prosperity of the place. The harbour has been aptly stated to be the front gate of the colony, with a blank wall behind it. That blank wall consists of the long tract of dismal country lying between Albany and Perth ”

“ The Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited Albany in 1749. He has left to us a very full account of Albany food and fashions of serving at that time. He found the Albanians faring as did their great grandfathers in the Netherlands, who were sneeringly called “milk and cheese men,” and he found them rasping their cheese as had their far-away forbears in Holland, and as do their descendants in Holland to this day. He writes thus:—
“The inhabitants of Albany are much more sparing than the English. ”

“ Julia, these are moments of awful romance; how the soul longs for the consolations of friendship. Albany is one of the most picturesque places in the world; situated most delightfully on the banks of the Hudson, which here meanders in sylvan beauty through meadows of ever-green and desert islands. Words are wanting to paint the melancholy beauties of the ride to Schenectady, through gloomy forests, where the silvery pine waves in solemn grandeur to the sighings of Eolus, while Boreas threatens in vain their firm-rooted trunks. ”

“ As for any riding in the parks or streets in Albany for pleasure, it is quite impossible. The only possible runs are direct from Albany out to some neighboring town and back, and of these the run to Newtonville, Latham Corners, Centre, and Watervliet is the best. ”

“ But what can the mere littérateur do, walled up to heaven in a world of mathematical mystery and machinery! Your own city of Albany is a paradise compared to the metropolis: you are really very fortunate—very, very happy to be able to live at home. ”

“ So we have a coast belt associated with timber, and a parallel belt inland where agriculture is developing along the track of the railway. The southern terminus 44 of the railway is Albany, on King George’s Sound, one of the best harbours of the Australian continent. 45 Albany is a fortified coaling port, and is likely to grow in importance with the organisation of Australian defence in the future. This seems a small corner on the map, yet the area available for agriculture is considerably larger than the total area under cultivation in Great Britain ”

“ Travellers from the North, when accompanied by their families and baggage, usually stop at Troy, and take a canal boat there, for the West.
The ancient city of Albany has the appearance of much business and wealth; and some portions of it are pleasant, especially in the region of the State House and other public buildings. From the river, the ground rapidly rises, so that the city stands upon the side of a hill, and makes a fine appearance, when viewed from the opposite shore. ”

“ It may, indeed, be assumed that Albion, or Albany, was the original name of Britain among its Celtic population, and that it only became restricted to the northwest provinces of Scotland when the Celts had for the most part become confined to the same region. The modern use of the name Albany may be said to have taken its rise in an act of a Scottish council, held at Scone, in June, 1398, when the title of Duke of Albany was conferred on the brother of King Robert III., then acting as regent of the kingdom. ”