Whaling station riding a wave in Albany 2026

Albany’s Historic Whaling Station represented WA at the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards in Fremantle last night (March 6), as a national finalist in both the cultural tourism and tourist attraction categories.

A spokespersons for the Albany attraction says: “Being recognised across two categories reflects the significance of the site as both a major visitor destination and a place of cultural and historical storytelling.”

Its status as a national finalist follows a double win at the 2025 Perth Airport WA Tourism Awards, where it was named WA’s top cultural tourism experience and tourist attraction.

Here, Stephen Scourfield looks at the background and present, during Albany’s bicentenary year...

WHALES & WELCOME

Humpbacks stream past, migrating to northern waters, but southern right whales come to King George Sound, and the Albany coast, to calve. A rare blue whale might just turn up, too.

The whale watching season in waters around Albany begins in late May, as the migrating mammals come from very cold waters far south to their breeding grounds.

By the peak of the migration in September, we can spot them from Albany’s shores or, (closer still, of course) on whale watching cruises. Boats leave Albany Waterfront Marina, in Princess Royal Harbour, and sail out through its narrow entrance and into King George Sound.

For humpbacks, this might be a stopover on their way further north, but southern rights like a shorter migration route, have more blubber, and come to King George Sound specifically to calve in its colder waters.

From September to November, whale watching adds to the Albany experience and is part of its modern tourism industry.

Just as is Albany’s Historic Whaling Station (which some might still think of as “Whale World”), which is part of Discovery Bay, along with the Australian Wildlife Park and Regional Wildflower Garden.

It’s a twist, isn’t it, that whales are still part of Albany’s story — but in a different way. For, in the town’s relatively recent past, Albany was a whaling town.

Whaling here pre-dates settlement. It was WA’s first revenue-earning industry.

Whaling Cove, the other side of Princess Royal Harbour, at Quaranup, on the Vancouver Peninsula, was the first permanent whaling site, though whalers and sealers had been coming and going long before it was established in 1835. (The last remains of whale chaser boat Cheynes II, which broke free in a storm in 1990, linger here.)

Whaling ships from many countries (from Norway to America) called for water and provisions. Albany was an international hub, and Aboriginal men — hunters by tradition — worked with Europeans as part of whaleboat crews.

Until petroleum was developed, whale oil was the main machine lubricant and preferred lamp oil of Europe and North America.

HA “Buzz” Farmer was a famous Australian Second World War correspondent, who gave up journalism in 1946 when he became involved in the Albany Whaling Company. It had a 10-tonne whale chaser called Wadjemup.

In a newspaper report that year, it was stated that Buzz thought the most exciting and dangerous form of big game hunt was war, when man was tracking man, but he was equally convinced that whaling came next.

Tourists visiting Albany were taken out to see whales hunted and kills.

A story written in the Albany Advertiser in 1948 reported: “The last two bus-loads of tourists from Perth have had whale hunts and calvings added unexpectedly to the list of attractions, and they have lapped it up.

“As the only place in Australia that can offer this thrill to tourists, Albany should be in a fair way to cash in on the natural curiosity of the human race.”

Harry Ward, who ran what was then the London Hotel, later reported that “a large slab of whale meat” was brought back on the bus, to be cooked and served to the tourists.

The Albany Advertiser commented that Albany’s whaling industry could become a considerable influence on the tourist trade.

Cheynes Beach Whaling Company sailed whale chasers out of Frenchman Bay from 1952 until its closure in 1978. At the industry’s peak, Albany supplied 60 per cent of the world’s sperm whale oil.

In the beginning, the whaling company hunted only humpbacks, but southern rights got their name for being the “right” whales because they were slow and easy to spot, tended to float after being killed, and yielded a lot of valuable oil and baleen (whalebone). They were hunted almost to extinction.

This story is told at Albany’s Historic Whaling Station. The company had three whale chaser boats, and Cheynes IV is the main attraction. It is parked up on the land, its stern hanging towards the sparkling turquoise waters of Frenchman Bay.

Visitors can board the boat, step past a row of harpoons and stand in the gunner’s spot at the bow. Inside, I pass the captain’s cabin, the mess and crew room, and then dive into the engine room before seeing the crew cabins.

For, while there are oil tanks and lots of smartly presented machinery at the whaling station, its story is that of local people, albeit in a different time, of different demands.

It is the story of Len Guppy, who started as a “deck boy” on whale chaser Cheynes II in 1966 — four days before his 17th birthday. He was promoted to deckhand when he was 17, and eventually captained all three vessels until the company closed.

It is the story of Axel Christensen, who starting his career in the whaling industry with the Nor’ West Whaling Company at Carnarvon, but came to Albany in 1953. He was involved in bringing Cheynes IV from South Africa and skippered it until 1978.

Axel then became the live-in caretaker on Cheynes IV until it was dry-docked at the whaling station, for me to wander round today.

And the story of Irish born, Paddy Hart, who went to sea at the age of 15 as a ship’s cook, jumped ship in Albany in 1959, started work at the whaling station and became the relieving skipper and gunner on the company’s three whale catchers.

I’m thinking of them as I leave Cheynes IV’s wooden ship’s wheel and walk the high gangway forward to the gunner position — just as Paddy would have done.

Well, not quite as Paddy would have done, of course. For he would have been out in the rolling, rollicking Southern Ocean.

I am here on a still, sunny, colourful day. It is in such contrast to the dangerous black-and-white scenes in my friend Ed Smidt’s photographs, which are exhibited here. They are from another time. A different world.

But the whales are back in Albany, in numbers. They are safe in its clear, clean waters, and celebrated.

I leave Albany’s Historic Whaling Station through its Gift Shop, of course, and my eye is caught by the colourful rows of toy mermaids. It occurs to me that mermaids must be as safe in Albany as whales are now, particularly when they wash up for the Maritime Festival in July. But that’s another tale . . .

+ Read our Albany 2026 colour magazine as a free flipbook. Just hold your phone or iPad over the QR code.

+ To visit Albany’s Historic Whaling Station, visit discoverybay.com.au