CRISSCROSSING AUSTRALIA- DAY SIX-ALBANY

THE IMPOSING ANZAC MEMORIAL, ALBANY, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Australia and New Zealand, Amazon.com)

The seaport town of Albany, located in the southwest portion of Western Australia,near where the great Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean, is about as far as one can get "to be far away" without falling off of the edge of the world. By the way, Australians pronounce the name AL as in the mans name and Beny. The city is notable as a former whaling port of some importance, the main point of departure for the WWI ANZAC Armada, a terminal for Australia's timber exports from its abundant forests which provided railroad ties (sleepers in Australia) for English railroads being built throughout the British Empire in its glory days.

At the time of its founding in 1826 there were no settlements anywhere in what is today Western Australia, which amounts to almost half of the continent. Governor Darling sent a military detachment and fifty convicts to establish a lawful presence to contest the use of the area by escaped convicts from Tasmania, and drive out Yankee sealers who were living a renegade lifestyle with captured aborigine women. After five years he withdrew the forces concluding that the area was to inhospitable to attract permanent settlers. Also, Albany was was about to be eclipsed by a more ambitious project on the west coast, Perth, founded two years later. Some struggled on and today the city has about 25,000 residents, a natural port that is thriving, along with a robust tourist trade during the summer months, drawing Western Australians from further north to its cooler climate.

It was at Albany that the ANZAC fleet assembled, sailing off to meet their ill fated destiny on November 2, 1914. It was here that a chaplain from the ANZAC Corps held the first sunrise memorial service commemorating the fateful day of the landing at Gallipoli, April 25, 1915. A solemn dawn service is now held throughout Australia and New Zealand every year on the anniversary of that landing. While the United States has its Veterans Day and Memorial Day to commemorate its service men and women, they have become more holidays, than national days of remembering. Not so in either Australia and New Zealnd, where April 25 each year is taken very seriously and with a greater degree of national participation and respect.(More to follow on the whaling and forest industry.)