Albany - Culture and History

As Henry Lawson, who lived in the town for six months in 1890, put it: 'Albany will never change much - it is a pretty town, but vague. It seems to exist only in a far-away-on-the-horizon sort of way; I like it all the better for that.'

Located 406 km south of Perth, Albany is the major centre on the Western Australian south coast and the oldest European settlement in the state. It is hard to imagine a more ideal harbour. The seas of the Southern Ocean can lash this coast with wild storms and the notorious southern wind, 'the Albany Doctor', can blow the ocean into a fury. Yet the sailor can enter King George Sound and then, through a narrow channel between Point King and Point Possession, enter the quiet waters of Princess Royal Harbour.

Unlike nearly all of Western Australia, Albany is cool and wet. It receives an average of 942 mm of rainfall per annum and its average summer temperature is only 22.4°C.

Albany was established as a penal colony. The coastline had been sighted by Europeans as early as 1627 when Pieter Nuyts had sailed across the Great Australian Bight in the ship Gulden Zeepaardt. Nuyts' report of the land was such that the Dutch showed no interest in settlement.

It was on the basis of the maps drawn by Nuyts that Jonathan Swift, when writing Gulliver's Travels, located the land of the Houyhnhnms almost exactly at the present site of Albany. With some kind of extraordinary vision Swift had Gulliver land on the coastline, eat oysters and be chased by Aborigines. He could not have known that George Vancouver, 65 years later, would enter one of the bays of King George Sound and name it Oyster Harbour because of the abundance of oysters he found in the area.

The second European to visit the area was George Vancouver who entered King George Sound in 1791. Vancouver spent two weeks in the area during which time he named Bald Head, Breaksea Island, Michaelmas Island, Oyster Harbour, Seal Island, took possession of the area at Point Possession and declared 'This port, the first which we had discovered, I honoured with the name of King George the Third's Sound, and this day being the anniversary of Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte Augusta Matilda's birth, the harbour behind point Possession I called Princess Royal Harbour.'

Vancouver's report on the area was not good. He suggested that the soil was poor and the local Aborigines (he had not seen any of them) were extremely primitive.

The next explorer to visit the area was Matthew Flinders who arrived at King George Sound in July 1801 and he was followed by Nicholas Baudin who stopped in the sound on 11 February 1803 and stayed until 1 March noting the poor soils of the region but fascinated by the seemingly endless wildflowers. By the 1820s the area was being visited with some regularity by explorers and the whalers and sealers who worked in the Southern Ocean.

The turning point for Albany came on Christmas Day 1826 when the brig Amity entered King George Sound. The brig brought Major Edmund Lockyer and some troops and convicts. It had been decided some years earlier, partly to protect Australia against possible French settlement and partly because the British Government wanted to close the penal colony at Port Macquarie and open the surrounding area to free settlers, to establish Western Australia's first penal colony. Lockyer chose the site of present day Albany (a small stream ran into Princess Royal Harbour near where the replica of the Amity now stands) and it was officially proclaimed on 21 January 1827. At the time it was named Fredericks Town after Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, the second son of King George III.

Lockyer reported on the town site in April 1827. He made the observation that it was extremely difficult to sail from Sydney to Albany. He did however point out that, being the only deep water harbour on the south western coast it was very important strategically. Events overtook these limitations when, in 1829, a colony was established on the Swan River and its location, being superior to that of Albany, ensured its continuing existence and growing prosperity.