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An Apollonaut travel guide
The station behind the story.
A whaling company, the coast it worked and the museum it became offer several ways into the story of Albany’s Historic Whaling Station.
On this page
Menang Noongar country
The Albany area is known in the language of the Menang Noongar people as Kinjarling.
The whaling station’s story, which begins in 1952, is one recent chapter in a much longer history of this coast and its people.
A working station
The Cheynes Beach Whaling Company processed whales at Frenchman Bay from 1952 until November 1978, when its closure marked the end of commercial whaling in Australia. Its factory, decks, oil tanks and the whale chaser Cheynes IV have been preserved and restored.
The station has been on the Western Australian State Register of Heritage Places since 1998.
From whaling station to museum
The station opened to visitors in December 1980. In 2022 the site and its assets were gifted to the Albany Heritage Foundation, and today it is run by Discovery Bay Tourism Precinct, a not-for-profit organisation.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
- Albany’s Historic Whaling Station: Whaling history
- Albany’s Historic Whaling Station: About us
- Wikipedia: Albany’s Historic Whaling Station
- Wikipedia: Whaling in Australia
Links lead to the original publishers.
