Aug 21, 2025 River, Walk
Our hike today started with a long walk up to Monument Hill above town. The palm lined walkway gives a very tropical vibe!
At the top is the “Lest We Forget” war memorial, memorializing service-people in all wars and skirmishes Australia has been involved in since the Boer War from 1899. Obviously humans do forget, all too readily!
Descending from the heights of Monument Hill we passed the Botanic Garden and started along the riverwalk, past the Flying Fox colony to the Sculpture walk.
We heard, then spotted, a kookaburra! I got a quick photo as it flew to the left past us (in the right of the frame).
A better image of kookaburras along the Sculpture Walk!
Native turtles in the Murray river.
All around us were fragrant flowering native fern-leaf wattle trees. The scent in some places was incredibly overpowering!
Aug 20, 2025 River, Town
We started our first full day in Albury with a walk along the Murray river, a short distance from our B&B. It was a glorious sunny, warm day.
We came to an observation bench where we could see a colony of several hundred flying foxes hanging in a small group of trees, looking like dark pendulous fruit. The phone/camera photos did not do justice to the scene, so here is the information provided at the site.
We then backtracked into town and walked through the CBD (Central Business District) and admired the mid 19th century architechture. The lower picture is of the Albury train station.
The Albury train station has the distinction of having the longest passenger platform in Australia, due to the fact that trains had to stop there to change carriages because the railway tracks in Victoria were not the same gauge as those in New South Wales! The tracks were not synchronized to standard gauge until 1962! Even Mark Twain thought this was ludicrous;
“In his book Tramps Abroad, writer Mark Twain in 1895 wrote of the break of gauge at Albury and changing trains: “Now comes a singular thing, the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most unaccountable marvel that Australia can show. At the frontier between NSW and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern light in the morning in the biting cold to change cars. Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth, imagine the boulder it emerged from, on some petrified legislator’s shoulders.”[45]“
Aug 19, 2025 Albury
This morning we walked from our hotel to the train station past this park where it’s so cold even the trees wear sweaters!
Our almost 6 hour train ride dropped us in Albury, a town on the border between the states of New South Wales and Victoria, divided by the Murray river.
A small pond near our B&B held a flock of Australian white ibis. They were squawking as we walked by on our way back from the grocery store.
They are commonly known here as “bin chickens” or “tip turkeys” due to their spread into urban areas where they feed on the garbage left by humans!
Aug 18, 2025 Back through Canberra
We left Eden at dawn, walking to the bus stop in the breaking rays of the morning sun.
We arrived in Canberra for a long layover before our train was scheduled to Moss Vale. We had several hours to walk around the Capital sights. We met these fine gentlemen, John Curtin (14th Prime Minister of Australia, with glasses) and Ben Chifley (Treasurer during the Curtin Administration, with pipe). They led Australia through WW2 until Curtin died in 1945, a few months before the war ended, shortly after a photo was taken of them walking here on which this sculpture is based. Chifley became the 16th Prime Minister, the two of them being considered the best PM’s in Australian history.
More sightseeing as we toured Parliament House.
We ended the day by the warm woodstove, with dinner in the Pub of the Argyle Hotel where we stayed.
Aug 16, 2025 “The Law of the Tongue”
We visited the Eden Killer Whale Museum today to learn more about the unique shore-based whaling operations in Twofold Bay from the 1820’s to the 1920’s. The Europeans who established whaling operations in Twofold Bay in the 1820’s did so because humpback whales as well as southern right whales, minke and occasional blue whales migrate fairly close to shore here. However it wasn’t until the 1860’s when the Davidson family began a whaling operation that they incorporated the Aboriginal custom of utilizing killer whales in a partnership to hunt the larger whales. 
A mutually beneficial arrangement that eventually collapsed when the number of whales dropped precipitously in the early 20th century due to over harvesting (a nice way to say the whales were driven almost to extinction!). The killer whale pods that participated in this arrangement were very recognizable to the whalers and even named by them! ‘Old Tom’ was the most revered and probably the last of the pod. His body was found in 1930 and estimated to be at least 60 years old. His skeleton now hangs in the museum.
The skeleton of Old Tom. Notice the groove and missing teeth in the upper jaw. It’s said that Old Tom would be so enthusiastic during the hunt that he would grab the harpoon rope in his jaws and tow the boat or the injured whale!
The jaw bones of the largest blue whale ever killed by hand thrown harpoon from an open boat, killed in Twofold Bay in 1908. The black discoloration is whale oil that is still dripping from the bones over 100 years since death!
