September 17, 2018 - Reading time: 2 minutes

We had a great spot at Albany Gardens, plenty of space opposite the Camp Kitchen ( complete with TV for the AFL finals) and no one next to us at all. It was superb, because as an extra it was behind a huge hill which was a great windbreak to the 50 kph winds.

On the drive here we stopped in at West Cape Howe winery for a wonderful pizza lunch, warm fire and some excellent Riesling and Malbec. The fire was most welcome because it was both cold and blowing a gale most of our time in Albany. Indeed this was the first time that we cooked in the camp kitchen ( due to the wind protection and heaters) and used our diesel heater each night!

That paints a fairly depressing picture of Albany but really nothing could be further from the truth. We visited the whaling station, wildflower and wildlife parks as can be seen in the photos below We had a great coffee at the whaling station and you can see by the flat water that they chose a protected harbour for its location Natural Bridge is an amazing landform, created by the ocean over thousand of years.

We drove inland a few kilometres to visit Porongurup National Park and the Castle Rock granite walk. It was a fairly easy walk over 5 kms in length, slowly rising to a height of over 500 metres, providing spectacular views over the surrounding countryside.