Emu Point has been, both by turn and all at once, one of Albany’s most desirable residential zones, a haven for picnics and paddling and an area at-risk of disappearing altogether through erosion.
It’s currently home to Kalgan Queen boat tours, Twiggy Forrest’s oyster business, the Squid Shack and, just up the road, the Emu Point Cafe — the businesses and recreational activities operating side-by-side along the waterfront.
The harbour is a lovely vista, lots of boats waiting for their sailors, the fish cleaning shed with the pelicans ready for action, and Sammy the seal’s bronze statue looking mournfully inland. But more of him later.
Named Emu Point in 1815 by a survey ship, it is a promontory which connects Oyster Harbour and King George Sound.
The first European settlers used Green Island on the other side of the channel as their vegetable garden, employing a boatman to tend to it regularly, with the aim of protecting their crops from the bandicoots which were in plague proportions at the time.
In fact when George Vancouver arrived in 1798, naming places but not claiming them, he said while it was a beautiful spot, there would be no chance of growing food there.
Modern methods, of course, have changed that view.
Nowadays, visitors can park in the harbour carpark and walk around the front or drive onto the beach and take in the view across the water.
On a calm day it’s a super spot beloved by Albany locals who still come to wander but used to drive in their hundreds onto the beach, especially at Christmas time.
However, when the wind blows and the storms come it can bear the brunt of the weather with major events destroying homes there as early as the early 1900s.
In more recent times, sand and coastal management schemes have come to grief as major swells lashed the coastline.
Identified as an “erosion hotspot” by the State Government in 2019, a report outlined that footpaths would be vulnerable within five years, with roads, access paths and the caravan park under threat within five to 25 years.
Then-MLA Rebecca Stephens told State Parliament in June 2021 that infrastructure in the area was at-risk, with a grant of $230,000 awarded to complete the groyne field.
“The well-used bike path is close to falling into the ocean and . . . the beach has become dangerous, with waves surging in and hitting the temporary sandbag groynes,” she said.
“The need for urgent action has recently been highlighted by acute ongoing erosion at the site . . . during April 2021, which has damaged existing infrastructure such as footpaths and created safety risks for visitors to the area.”
Major storms between 1984-86 ripped away protective seagrasses and sand dunes, and several houses were demolished to prevent them from being washed into the ocean.
The events around that time prompted the building of a rock wall, against the wishes of many locals who felt that these sorts of installations simply moved the problem along the coast.
A training wall, a detached breakwater, and rock and sand revetments were also put in place but even so, the debate has been ongoing between government, the City of Albany, environmentalists, residents and visitors as to the best way to manage the problem.
Sammy the seal, meanwhile takes stock from his stone base, now out of harm’s way.
A popular visitor to the Emu Point boat pens, the 120kg New Zealand fur seal would greet Kalgan Queen captain Jonathan Jones’ cheery good morning with a grunt.
Due to the care of Mr Jones and his son the popular seal survived a stray bullet to the tail, probably fired by a shark hunter, and a bout of tuberculosis.
However, on February 11, 2014 came the devastating news that Sammy had been killed, attacked by someone wielding a long-bladed instrument on a beach where he usually rested.
Mr Jones spread his ashes in the harbour and commissioned the statue.
The plaque reads: “Sam the Seal, now a legend who befriended all people to be betrayed by one.”
Maybe the storms are Sammy’s revenge.
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