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

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. 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 State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

's oldest non-

Indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

artefacts. Built on a

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, 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 coo ...

outcrop about above the high tide line, it is a roughly circular

kiln A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or Chemical Changes, chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects m ...

about high and across. At the top there is an access hole about 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 is the States and territories of Australia, Australian state democratic administrative authority of Western Australia. It is also commonly referred to as the WA Government or the Western Australian Governmen ...

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 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 p ...

's Register of Heritage Places.

General references

* * {{subject bar , auto=0 , portal1=Western Australia , portal2=Modern history 1800s in Australia 1800s architecture State Register of Heritage Places in the City of Albany Albany, Western Australia