The Albany Fish Traps, also known as the Oyster Harbour Fish Traps, are a series of fish traps situated in

Oyster Harbour Oyster Harbour is a permanently open estuary, north of King George Sound, which covers an area of near Albany, Western Australia. The harbour is used to shelter a fishing fleet carrying out commercial fishing and the farming of oysters and mus ...

near the mouth of the

Kalgan River The Kalgan River is a river in the Great Southern (Western Australia), Great Southern region of Western Australia. Geography The river is long and, along with the King River (Western Australia), King River, drains into Oyster Harbour. The l ...

approximately east of Albany in the Great Southern region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. The traps were constructed by the

Menang Menang is a traditional dance of the Tikar or the Semi-Bantu Semi-Bantu or Semibantu is an outdated term used for specific inhabitants of the Western grassfields of Cameroon (portions of the Adamawa, West, Northwest, and Southwest The points ...

peoples and are over 7,500 years old. The area is sacred to the Menang and was once a

corroboree A corroboree is a generic word for a meeting of Australian Aboriginal peoples. It may be a sacred ceremony, a festive celebration, or of a warlike character. A word coined by the first British settlers in the Sydney area from a word in the l ...

area that was mostly used during the warmer months. The low loose stone walls of the traps are on the northern shore of Oyster Harbour and are back by a steep hill. As the tide moved the fish would be stranded inside the courses of the stones, which were topped with brush, then collected at low tide. Arranged in a

crescent A crescent shape (, ) is a symbol or emblem used to represent the lunar phase in the first quarter (the "sickle moon"), or by extension a symbol representing the Moon itself. In Hinduism, Lord Shiva is often shown wearing a crescent moon on his ...

shape the traps are composed of eight separate weirs each consisting of thousands of stones. The area occupies an area of approximately ; excavation of a section revealed 80 stones were used in that section. Only visible at low tide the traps were described by George Vancouver in 1791.

Nicolas Baudin Nicolas Thomas Baudin (; 17 February 1754 – 16 September 1803) was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer, most notable for his explorations in Australia and the southern Pacific. Biography Early career Born a comm ...

described the traps during his expedition of 1803 as did

Philip Parker King Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna Jos ...

in 1818. All of the stones used in the traps are dark, almost black,

lateritic Laterite is both a soil and a rock type rich in iron and aluminium and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas. Nearly all laterites are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content. They develop by ...

material found naturally on the shoreline. The site was vested in the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

in the 1966, and was in the first group of sites to be declared as Protected Areas under the ''Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972'' when they were gazetted in 1973. At the request of the

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have right ...

a series of minor excavations were carried out by

archeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

s from 2000 to 2006. The site was returned to the Menang people through the Albany Heritage Reference Group Aboriginal Corporation in a ceremony in 2009. Following the discovery in 2011 that hundreds of the stones had been removed, a 170,000 project was initiated to construct a cultural shelter, boardwalk and interpretation signs adjacent to the traps. The project was completed and opened in 2015.

References

Coastline of Western Australia Heritage places in Albany, Western Australia Places of Noongar significance {{coord, 34, 56, 52.4, S, 117, 57, 38.6, E, display=title

See also

References