Two months ago, we were in Albany, WA...

It's amazing how time has flown! And I still haven't written all those posts that I planned to.

Albany has a number of historical buildings and sites; we visited a few. 

A plaque honoring the centenary of the founding of Albany...

This plaque in the next photo is all about communication; it's on the site of the first telegraph pole that brought communication from the eastern states to WA.

 That plaque is in front of this lovely old building which is now part of a university.

A view of the same building taken from farther down the street...

Behind that historical building is a more modern building with an interesting roofline...

The street scene from across the street from the uni building...

And a A frame board outside a cafe...

In a previous post on Albany, I mentioned that George Vancouver 'has left his name' on a few places in this area, and the town is no longer exception.

So we went looking for this place...despite the sign, they were actually closed for the day! 🤔

And a nearby cafe had George's name on it too! 

Here's another lovely old building we saw...

And this one too!

I have a little 'game' with one of my nieces; if either one of us sees a 'big' anything, ( Aussies have a lot of things/tourist attractions such as Big Pineapple, Big Banana, Big Sheep, BigPrawn, Big RockingHorse etc etc)  we take a photo and send it to the other. So when I saw the following item outside a shop in Albany, I just had to get DH to take a photo...

I loved this artwork on a building...

Another street view...

Walking around the town builds up an appetite so we stopped at a cafe that looked very popular with locals. 

My cheese and chicken topper baked potato and salad was delish...

And DH loved that pie 😊

There is one more post I've planned to write about our visit to Albany. It will feature a particular exhibition at the Museum. 

More Ballarat...

I love Ballarat...it is the buildings there I think, that prompt me to make that statement. The city has kept the elegant old buildings of yesteryear unlike my home city of Brisbane...the 'powers that be' tore so many down here, leaving relatively few 'historically significant (and beautiful) old buildings.

This visit, DH and I stayed in the lovely George Hotel in Lydiard St...a street full of beautiful old buildings. 

  I didn't take a photo in our hotel room but all the old features had been kept...fancy cornices and ceilings, and the hallways leading to the rooms were magnificent. However I did take some photos near the entrance while DH was settling the account on the day we left...

It just so happens that the TV show Dr Blake's Mysteries is set in Ballarat and that various locations around the city are used in filming...especially buildings in Lydiard St, where we were staying!

On our walks, I snapped photos of other old buildings too of course...a repurposed building; bakery downstairs and 'executive' apartments upstairs.

Across the road from the bakery...

We found these old buildings after walking down a lane way from Lydiard St...

More repurposed buildings which form part of the Federation University Campus...

The street behind that part of the uni camous...

Across the road from Her Majesty's Theatre in Lydiard St...

This building in the right of next photo which was diagonally across the street from our hotel, is on the site of where the troopers assembled in 1854, ready to march on the miners holed up at the Stockade. 

This post only shows a tiny part of the wonderful old buildings in Ballarat. In 2012 I also wrote  post about this city where I waxed lyrical about the buildings...so nothing's changed!
Once again DH and I didn't have time to visit the wonderful Sovereign Hill at Ballarat. It is a huge open air museum devoted to the history of the area. Ideally a visit there would be over 2 days. Both of us has visited Sovereign Hill before...in my case over 37 years ago!