Albany's HistoricWhaling Station

The Cheynes Beach Whaling Company worked this station on Frenchman Bay until 1978, when it became the last whaling station to close in Australia and in the English-speaking world. Rather than being demolished, it was kept — the factory floor, the flensing deck, the try-works, and Cheynes IV, one of the chaser ships, now in dry dock and open to walk through. It is the only complete whaling station left intact anywhere, preserved as a museum of an industry the country chose to end. The site holds Australia's largest collection of marine-mammal skeletons, and the grounds around it have since been given over to the opposite of what happened here: a native wildlife park and a regional wildflower garden with wetland boardwalks. On Menang Noongar Country at Torndirrup, near The Gap, twenty minutes south of Albany.