Y
ou already know the Great Southern
region. This stretch of Western
Australia’s coastline is Summer Bay,
Bonnie Doon and a collage of
Australian childhood memories rolled
into one. It’s surfboard wax and
sunburnt noses and family camping trips in station
wagons – as much a state of nostalgia as a place of
rugged beauty. The beaches are empty, the people
unpretentious, the surf’s up. It fairly screams
“Australian summer” in long flattened vowels.
The Menang Noongar, the Great Southern’s
first people, believe Porongurup, a mountain range
50 kilometres inland and 1,200 million years in the
making, is home to the Wagyl or Rainbow Serpent,
so powerful it created the Swan and Canning rivers
and a handful of other WA landmarks. The early
European settlers weren’t exaggerating when they
called the area “great”. Stretching from the town of
Kojonup in the west to Ravensthorpe in the east and
south to Hopetoun and Walpole, the region spans
about 250 kilometres of coastline and some 39,000
square kilometres predominantly planted with wheat.
There’s a handful of towns scattered throughout
the Great Southern but much of the population and
tourism is concentrated in the regional centres of
Albany and Denmark. They’re both about five hours’
drive from Perth, but a Rex flight from the city to
Albany takes just over an hour, and this is how my trip
begins. I’m planning a scenic zigzag in a hire car
between the towns, meeting a few of the region’s
dreamers and schemers along the way.
While Albany, population 37,000, has the kind
of attractions found in similar-sized regional centres
around the nation – an entertainment centre of
incongruously angular design, an annual food festival,
Tinder (though not yet Uber) – its calling cards are
nostalgia and nature. I’m powerfully drawn to both.
The gentle downhill descent of York Street, Albany’s
main street, has sightlines to Princess Royal Harbour
and a direct dial into memories of Veenhuyzen family
caravan trips. For a moment I’m back in the back seat
with my brother, trying to ignore the saccharine ballads
of Hong Kong pop star Francis Yip on my parents’
favourite tape.
Cruising the leafy streets of Albany is a treat for
lovers of classic Australiana. A stroll through Patrick
Taylor Cottage, built in 1832 and Western Australia’s
oldest dwelling, and a drive-by of Federation gems
along Grey Street are essential Albany moments,
followed by a leisurely rummage through an Aladdin’s
cave of second-hand books, souvenir spoons and
vintage bric-a-brac at Albany Drive-in Mart. A good
many of the Renée Geyer 45s in my collection were
unearthed in this gold mine.I might have made a picnic of the local produce
assembled in my room by Sally and Craig Pullin
at Beach House at Bayside, their boutique B&B,
arguably Albany’s best lodgings. But I’m heading
Due South, a cavernous pub with a 500-seat dining
room dotted by TV screens and sleeve tattoos. The
menu is pub-standard, yet, like much about Albany,
first impressions are deceiving. Flour is milled in-house
and used to make bread, burger buns and pizze. The
steaks are aged in the restaurant’s own beef-ageing
facility; I had a 120-day dry-aged Angus rump with
sides for less than $50. The quality of charcuterie by
butcher Martin Morgan is remarkable to behold in a
pub: a nutty 24-month jamón from chestnut-fed pigs,
fatty discs of coppa, piquant chorizo. And the pub’s
bottle shop champions wines from the Great
Southern’s 70-plus producers.
Just as deceiving is the unremarkable building on the
outskirts of town with a pyramid of barrels by the road
to catch motorists’ attention. Founded in 2004 by local
lawyer-turned-distiller Cameron Syme, Limeburners has
become a national standard-bearer for craft distilling,
making some of the country’s most exciting whisky.
Syme’s Darkest Winter single malt was awarded best
international craft whisky by the American Distilling
Institute in April last year and best whisky in the
southern hemisphere in the 2018 edition ofWhisky
Bible. Syme pours a dram and lists the reasons he chose
the site with views to Frenchman Bay for his venture:
good water, peat bogs, access to grain and a climate not
dissimilar to that of whisky’s spiritual home. “If you➤PREVIOUS PAGES
Greens Pool,
Denmark (left), and
The Gap, Albany.
Above: mural in
Albany. Opposite:
the view from
Mount Shadforth
Road, Albany.142 GOURMET TRAVELLER