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South Western WA is very different to everywhere else we have visited in Australia so far. When we set out from Perth we slowly left behind the arid deserts that we had gotten used to further north, and started driving through seemingly never ending forests and mountain ranges - it was actually really nice to see some greenery for a change! It took us about 5 hours to get down to Albany, the oldest town in WA, and we found a campsite right on the beach, we can actually hear the waves of the Southern Ocean when we go to sleep which is really nice, reminds me a bit of home! The campsite is pretty fancy too, it even has a spa which we have been making use of! For our first full day we drove out of town to go to the Torndirrup National Park. It had amazing scenery, with tall cliffs standing against the Southern Ocean, which looks pretty cold! We firstly went to visit the Gap, which is a large gap in the cliffs carved out by the sea, and Natural Bridge, which is a granite bridge rock formation standing over the sea, they were pretty cool to look at. Then we walked down to the Blowholes, which are gaps in the rock where water is spurted out when there is a large swell - unfortunately we didn't see it as the sea was much too calm, but we could hear the sea below the rocks and the views from the cliffs were awesome. Then on the way back we stopped by the Albany Wind Farm, which was set high up on the hills above the town, with amazing views over the sea and south towards Antarctica (which you can't actually see), and north over the town. For our second day we decided to explore the town itself, and we followed a town trail around the historic part of town. There are quite a few buildings here that were built in the mid 1800s, which is pretty rare for Australia! We walked through the main town, and then wandered down to the sea front where we visited the WA Albany Museum, which explained a lot about the history of the town and the stories of the aboriginal people who first lived here. Then we went onboard the Brig Amity, which is a full size replica of the ship that brought the first European settlers to Albany, it was pretty interesting really. After that we finished our historic trail, which went past the oldest house in WA as well as some churches. In the afternoon we decided to get a better view of the town, so we headed up Mount Clarence and Mount Adelaide, which are mountain peaks in the middle of the town with amazing views over the harbour, the town, the national park and the Southern Ocean. It really is a lovely, quaint town, very different to the places we have been to so far.
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