Hi all

So now we come to the most exciting part of our trip across Western Australia. Mine and Mand’s six year anniversary. Easily the longest one night stand of my life :o) But hey ho, I reckon we’re stuck with each other for the foreseeable future so it’s only right that we celebrate it when it comes round.

I, as usual, was up first and was joined whether I liked it or not by Graham who seems to be singularly incapable of taking a hint and talked at me incessantly for twenty minutes before I interrupted him and told him I was going for a shower. For one second I thought he was going to go with me.

When I came back out, Andy and Kimbers were up and around getting ready to move on, and I figured it was time to tell them that we’d changed our plans and would be heading the opposite way round to them. They took the news pretty stoically (I think they’d already kind of guessed) and I got the impression that Andy thought it was probably for the best as well. Kimbers on the other hand still blames us on some level for ruining the plan. But hey, such is life.

With me cooking Mand an anniversary fry up (I know the way to that girl’s heart, let me tell you) and chatting to a German couple (more about them in Kalgoorlie) Mand herself eventually surfaced, looking like Rip Van Winkle and in a typically huggy mood. Meaning I had to finish the breakfast with her hanging off my back like an oversized Mandy shaped rucksack. I love it. But don’t ever tell her...

Kimbers and Andy joined us and we agreed we’d meet them again in Esperance in a day or two, then we’d all head up to Kalgoorlie for a couple of days, before they headed west, back to Perth and we headed East across the Nullarbor Plain, eventually to Melbourne. With that they were off, leaving me and Mand to celebrate our day just the two of us in as romantic a way as possible. Which meant a game of table tennis and an arse kicking on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the games room. Sweet.

Eventually though we got sick of shouting ‘Cowabunga’ and ‘Totally rad, dude’ at each other (I say ‘we’, personally I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it) and headed to the office to see if we could rent a DVD and watch it in their theatre. Promptly loaded up with chips, dips and chocolate we went in and snuggled up in front of ‘Nanny MacPhee’ and gorged ourselves stupid. It’s truly amazing how much you miss the simple things when you’re living like a pikey. We enjoyed it so much we went back to the office to see if we could watch another one. Unfortunately the theatre was booked out so we were forced to actually leave the camp and head off into town to find other amusement. This turned out, bizarrely, to be buying a laptop.

Now the theory is that we were spending so much money and time on Internet access (these postcards take a minimum of two hours each to write and Mand’s pictures take a lifetime to sort and label) that we’d be better served getting a laptop and doing it as we went. Then when we went to an Internet place we could just upload the stuff and use the time for more important stuff like banking, emails and checking the football scores :o) The fact that I’m writing this in Melbourne in mid-February does negate the time thing, but money wise it’s already paid for itself. Sweet.

The problem is, that 99% of the shops in Albany close at mid-day. On Saturday. Strange but true. And not just in Albany, but in most towns and cities we’ve come across. Still, after an hour or so aimlessly wondering we did eventually find a computer shop that was about to close (it was four o’clock) and are now the proud owners of an NEC laptop. Cool.

We then sat around drinking coffee and waiting for the only half decent looking restaurant on the main drag to open. The restaurant was an Italian and when the doors opened we were in like Errol and found ourselves confronted by a six foot three Brummie with a dodgy eye. ‘Oroight are ya?’ he whined at us on entry and then proceeded to tell us that he’d got sponsorship here and was training to be a manager. Why he chose Albany as his final resting spot is beyond me. And why he wanted to work in the hospitality trade when he was so obviously inept is also something that will bother me for the rest of my days. Now I don’t mean to sound arsey, but not only was the service ridiculously slow (he even managed to forget part of the meal until we were nearly finished ‘Do you still want this?’ ‘No, not really’ ‘Well it’s made now’ as he put it on the table), the food itself was piss poor. The kind of food you just get fed up with eating before you’re actually full. Subtlety in food is something that appears to have passed most of Australia by. Quantity not quality seems to be the rule of thumb. On the plus side though, the wine was excellent and the company of course made up for everything. For the first time in a long time, we didn’t leave a tip, and headed off to what promised to be the highlight of the day. A night time tour of Albany Gaol.

By now it was dark and we pulled up outside the jail and it already looked pretty spooky. Just a few low power lights on the outside made for long shadows on the grey stonework, and Mand was already crunching the bones of my hand as we stepped over the threshold. Inside, the place was lit with a few flickering candles and we were met by our guide who gave us a brief rundown of Albany’s history.

Now Albany was the first place to be settled in Western Australia, something which still rankles with Perth. Rankles so much in fact that it’s not even taught in schools and this, we were informed by our erstwhile guide that, is just another example of rural v city grievances. But what it means is that Albany has the oldest jail in Western Australia. And is one of the most haunted. Now while he’s recounting this brief history of Albany he has his back to the door, his face lit only by a candle and behind him is blackness. Not total mind, because as we watched a figure passed slowly past. I started, and the woman next to me nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked at her husband who hadn’t seen anything, she started to say something and then thought better of it. Nobody else saw it. I knew then that this was going to be superb.

As we made our way into the next room, I looked at where the figure had gone past and it was total blackness. As the last guy came in the figure re-appeared and ‘boo’ ed him while grabbing his shoulder. Cue startled cries and the guy (a Yank) having to be prised off the ceiling. And then the ghost stories began properly. I can’t remember them all (although I do remember ninety per cent of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie theme ‘Heroes in a half shell that’s turtle power’) but the first was something about the first family to have lived there whose cat died and it was said that you could still hear it scratching to get out of the cupboard it was found in. Sure enough when you bent your head near to the cupboard it sounded like something moving around in there. The woman next to me grabbed her husband for all he was worth and was actually shaking. And this was in the first room. Quality.

Before long, after a few jumps and starts along the way, we came to the cells. By now, we were all pretty tense and having a good laugh. We looked in a few cells where they had dummies in positions of prisoners, and owing to the fact it was all barely lit by candles and some of the dummies looked real, it was getting to the point where nobody wanted to be first into a room. We go into this cell where the guide starts telling us about the appalling conditions and how people had died etc etc, and there’s a lump in the bed. The woman who’d been shaking earlier just stands there looking at it. ‘There’s someone under there’ she quivers to her husband. ‘No there’s not’ he says. And they both poke it. Nothing. They both let out sighs of relief, we all laugh nervously and turn to walk out. As we do, the woman gives it another little poke, and out jumps this huge bloke with a massive roar. Pure f***ing panic breaks out. Everyone screams. But not the way Mand does. I have never heard anything like it in my life. It was a scream of pure terror that was louder and went on longer than anyone else’s by a country mile. In the mad rush for the door, Mand is crushing people under foot, still screaming, and actually manages to get past everyone and out of the door first. No mean feat in a cell about seven feet by four when there are half a dozen people in your way. It was like when she hears last orders in the pub. By the time I got out there, she was standing shaking like a leaf and the guide was looking at her in pure fear that she might just be about to literally die of fright. She’s white as a ghost (boom boom) shivering uncontrollably, taking deep ragged breaths and when she saw me latched on like a limpet, crushing various bones in a vice like bear hug. Everyone else is in absolute hysterics, especially the guy who jumped out (who incidentally was about six foot seven, built like a shed and with a face made for horror movies). After a few seconds she calms down and starts laughing too, then has to go round and apologise shamefacedly to the three or four people she smashed in her rush to get out. It was beautiful. For the rest of the tour people kept asking her if she was alright now, and she always made sure we were closest to the door. Quality. There were a few more minor scares after that one, but nothing that even came close to repeating the gut wrenching, bowel loosening terror that over came everyone.

Instead we went into a kind of eerie atmosphere as tales of why people were incarcerated came out. For pretty much anything was the general thrust. A lot of women who needed money to survive became prostitutes and ended up there, as did people who stole to feed themselves and their families. But there were some who actually deserved to be there. One such was a man named (among others) McKeen. He came over from Liverpool in England and settled in Albany. He fell in love with a woman and rather than get a divorce thought it easier to simply kill his wife and child. He got caught for it and upon further investigation it was discovered he’d also done the same thing to his first family in Liverpool. It seems scousers have always been dodgy. Unsurprisingly, he was hanged.

Another tale, and one that sticks out for obvious reasons, was of a thirteen year old Aboriginal girl who found herself ‘owned’ by a rich English bloke. The guy took a shine to her and was sexually abusing her on a regular basis, when the unthinkable happened and she got pregnant. The bloke obviously didn’t want her around after that, and so lied telling the police that she had stolen from him. She was put in prison, where she miscarried the child after four months. Two weeks later she was dead herself after apparently ‘crying herself to death’. What makes it particularly memorable is that this is now ‘recognised’ as one of the most haunted cells in the country. There have been documentaries on it and there are stories of people running screaming from the cell when they go in on tours. One of the cleaners refuses point blank to go in and clean it such is the feeling she gets when she goes in. For my part it did feel a little strange but we were so hyped by then anyway it was difficult to tell.

After the tour had finished and we were all sat round eating cake and drinking squash one of the Yanks asked about the cell and the people who felt it most strongly in there. The guide suggested that it was mostly the British (the woman who ran out screaming for instance). This stupid fat Yank then espouses the theory that that’s ‘probably because they’re the ones with the most guilt’. I nearly f***in choked on my biscuit. There was an awkward disbelieving silence around the table. What the f*** was this dude on? Seriously. With things the way they are and have been in the world in the last sixty years thanks to the Septics, he honestly thinks that I should feel guilty over the actions of one man two hundred years ago. What an absolute f***in dick. The guide swiftly moved the conversation on to other topics and the w***y Yankee f***ed off not long after. Much to everyone’s relief. I mean seriously. What the flying f***? Once more on this trip I’ve found myself biting a hole in my tongue rather than cause a scene in public. I must be more English than I thought.

Anyway, the conversation ranged far and wide, from someone’s brother being forced to eat the delicacy of a plate pig’s anus and penis in Denmark (that’s just sausages without the skin in my book), the state of the drought (some places here have been in drought for fifteen years), to kangaroo culling (‘People must think we’re mad for killing these beautiful animals. They just don’t see the damage they can do’) and the scenes they’ve witnessed during these culls (letting a pack of dogs loose on one is the image that sticks in my mind) and the plague of locusts currently eating its way across parts of the country.

Eventually though, enough was enough and we headed home to bed and with a friendly goodbye, they waved us off. The whole tour had been absolutely superb from beginning to end. Just the right mix of history, ghost stories and frights. And the idea of everyone sitting around afterwards so they can ask questions and just chit chat was inspired. Hats off to these history geeks. Reading this though, I’ve just realised something truly amazing. This has got to be the first time me and Mand have gone out to celebrate something and not gotten drunk. Now that really is a landmark in history.

Laters all

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