Sealers' Oven is a man-made structure of mud and stone located on Waychinicup Inlet near Albany,

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 ...

. Believed to be a semi-permanent bread oven built by sealers around 1800, it predates European colonisation of Western Australia by over twenty years, and is therefore one of the state's oldest non- Indigenous artefacts. Built on a

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

outcrop about four metres above the high tide line, it is a roughly circular kiln about one metre high and 1.5 metres across. At the top there is an access hole about 30 centimetres across, and there are two small ventilation holes at the base on the eastern side. It is built from granite stones, broad and flat at the bottom but somewhat larger and more circular at the top, suggesting that it may have been partially rebuilt. Sealers' Oven has been known of since the early days of colonisation, but was neither used nor protected until 1973, when the

Government of Western Australia The Government of Western Australia, formally referred to as His Majesty's Government of Western Australia, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of Western Australia. It is also commonly referred to as the WA Government o ...

established a twelve square metre reserve around the oven at the request of the

National Trust of Australia The National Trust of Australia, officially the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT), is the Australian national peak body for community-based, non-government non-profit organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's Ind ...

. It was classified by the National Trust in 1977, and has been part of the

Waychinicup National Park Waychinicup National Park is in Western Australia, southeast of Perth and east of Albany, along the coast of the Southern Ocean. Location and description The park is bordered by the Southern Ocean to the south, Mount Manypeaks Nature Reserv ...

since the park's establishment in 1990. In 1997 it was placed on the

Heritage Council of Western Australia The Heritage Council of Western Australia is the Government of Western Australia agency created to identify, conserve and promote places of cultural heritage significance in the state. Prior to its creation, considerable variance in policy and ...

's Register of Heritage Places.

References

External links

*{{cite web, author=Heritage Council of Western Australia, year=2006, title=Sealers' Oven, url=http://register.heritage.wa.gov.au/viewplace.html?place_seq=3343, work=Places Database, accessdate=2006-05-13 1800s in Australia 1800s architecture State Register of Heritage Places in the City of Albany Albany, Western Australia