The shooting, burning, and dismemberment of two police officers would be shocking even in the contemporary hyper-violence of Central America; that it could happen in sleepy WA in 1926 was beyond contemplation.
Ben Harvey and Jessica Evensen
There’s a workshop on the edge of Kings Park. It may be small, but the work done inside plays a massive part in keeping alive the memory of fallen Diggers through generations.
Malcolm Quekett
Longtime Princess Royal Fortress volunteer Trish Forsyth became the first woman to undertake an official gun salute at Albany Heritage Park on Tuesday, taking her place in local history.
Jacki Elezovich
Albany’s favourite historian Malcolm Traill is marking the city’s bicentenary in his new book, called simply South.
Claire Middleton
It’s with great pleasure that Ben Harvey can deliver the news that 150 years ago (to the day, if you don’t mind) Fremantle was the scene of one of the most audacious prison escapes the world has ever seen.
Ben Harvey
When the deadly Spanish flu raced through the ranks of WWI Diggers sailing home, heroic nurses volunteered to care for them.
See the breathtakingly simple idea to use big explosions to blow up a big chunk of ocean floor to create a big harbour in WA’s north-west from which to export iron ore.
The end of whaling in Albany was a pivotal moment for many of the city’s residents in 1978, and former Albany Advertiser reporter Chris Pash says it is a time in his career he keeps coming back to reflect on.
Rooms in boarding houses were in high demand. And when they were full or too expensive, tent cities sprang up around the fringes of Perth and Fremantle.
Jo Wassell’s new exhibition Women in Whaling shines a light on a group of Albany women and their experiences with Albany’s whaling history and contributions to the city’s history.
Whaling is one of Albany’s major historical claims to fame, with the city the site of the last shore-based whaling station in Australia.
The only Australian Inland Mission hospital still standing in WA was a place for connection and celebration on Sunday, as a host of people linked to the service gathered for its centenary.
Hannah Whitehead
For most of the public, 1979 was largely a pretext to have a good time.
Hemmed into an impossibly hot, dry, dusty and dangerous slice of north Africa in World War II, the Diggers faced seemingly insurmountable odds.
Only a handful of Albany locals can say they saw the Queen not just once, but twice in Albany.
Amy Towers
St Patrick’s School in Katanning honoured its 100-year milestone at the weekend with an all-day celebration that brought students and educators past and present back to the school.
Before news was digital, Albany’s stories were formed by molten lead and Bob Selby was one of the men who built the Albany Advertiser papers by hand.
When the gold boom changed the face of WA almost overnight, a key supply chain was developed to supply the towns which were rapidly ballooning and running out of resources.
As far back as early 1941 a local paper promoted the idea of bringing in US naval firepower to Cockburn Sound.
‘We would be dropped in by helicopters, there would be no one around us so we had to do our work quickly.’
The statue of WA’s first governor has sat in storage for two years.
The stories of prominent citizens of the colony, captains of industry, and ordinary people are all nestled in the cemetary, which was built in the Swan River Colony’s infancy.
Community members took part in archaeological digs at the Pilot Station at the weekend to uncover the history of the Albany site.
Before its construction, Australia had virtually been like “two great islands — an eastern and a western”.
