Whaleworld, Albany, West Australia
WA's former whaling station that is now a museum
Sharks, blubber, engines, flensing, oil, films, storage tanks and 3D shows at the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company in Frenchman's Bay
We humans are a clever bunch, aren’t we? As soon as we stumble across something that could be of use to us, we set about trying to gather as much of it up as possible before it runs out, not even stopping to consider that the reason it is running out is because we’ve tried to take it all too quickly.
This is what happened with whales. As soon as our forefathers realized that whales could be mashed up into all sorts of useful things, men were sent out on ships, trying to slaughter as many of the giant sea mammals as possible. And then we finally realized that there weren’t many left. Wonder how that could have happened…
The last whaling to shut down was near Albany on the south coast of WA. The Cheynes Beach Whaling Company had set up in Frenchmans Bay in 1952 with the intention of harpooning as many of the aquatic Michelle McManus look-a-likes as possible. However, with the International Whaling Commission adopting increasingly strict rules on whaling (ie. You can’t do it any more, because there aren’t any whales left), it was forced to shut down in 1978.
Now the Cheynes Beach site is Whaleworld – a museum devoted to the history of whaling and the whales themselves. A lot of money has clearly gone into flash gadgetry and restoration, but our tour starts off on a particularly dull note. The engine from one of the whaling ships has been put back together, re-painted and brought inside. And lucky us, we get to watch it in action. It goes round. And round. And round. And round.
The tour guide finally gets the hint (yawns, requests for pillows), and takes us to the more interesting stuff, such as the flensing deck. Now being a flenser was a truly awful job. In fact, flensers saw working in an abattoir as a step up the career ladder. They basically had to help drag the dying whales in from the boats, then hack them to pieces with dangerously sharp knives. The smell is too horrible to even contemplate, and as for being covered in blood and blubber, well I don’t even want to think about it.
Moving on, we’re taken through the process of reducing these sea mammoths to oil, and then we’re ushered into the storage tanks. Mercifully, these have been converted into cinemas, and there are three films to watch. The first is pretty dull – it’s about the history of whaling here, but the second is about sharks, which is much more fun. Unsurprisingly, having a lot of dead whale meat in the water led to a lot of sharks coming for a feed, and there were people in the whaling company employed specifically to shoot Jaws and pals. It was one boat you certainly didn’t want to fall off, that’s for sure.
The last film is the pick of the bunch, and not just because we got to wear Elton John’s cast-off sunglasses. It’s in 3D, and you’re bombarded with whales and seals seemingly wanting to bop you on the nose.
