On Saturday morning Glen and I took our time getting up and getting going, somehow managing to watch all of Black Swan in the morning before heading into town. Saturday was the reschedules Albany Pride Fair Day, which we’d partially arranged our trip around so we could attend.

It was held on the square next to Town Hall and was a small town affair with stalls (mostly from local MPs), the US Consulate General for some reason, some products, as well as drag performances, drag queen story time and a dog show.

We caught up with our friend Lupo at the main stall, where Glen bought a lot of merchandise. Their logo of whale with a rainbow is really cute and works well on socks, towels, pins, and the like. We said hello to a few people we knew, including the drag queens from Perth. The rain started to fall during Alexis’s number but, like a trooper, she worked with it and continued to put on a great show.

Glen and I stayed for about an hour before heading up to the National ANZAC Centre, which opened in 2014 on top of the hill where all the other war paraphernalia sits. The First and Second convoys departed King George Sound in World War One so it’s a significant story for the area.

I’m pretty sure the centre won some awards after it first opened, and in fairness, it deserved too. It’s an extremely well-thought out exhibition space with an interesting device, whereby you’re given the card of a soldier when you enter and you then discover more about them at a number of stops throughout the exhibition.

The main things that I remember about my guy (Medcalf) were that he was from Swanbourne and survived the war.

There’s also an audioguide which can be used at intermittent stops to hear from people in their own words. Plus the usual panels and objects that go into the various nightmares of World War I. The building also has a killer view.

My only criticisms of it are that it’s too small and the amount of text is too much for the space. The cramped nature of it could help with the claustrophobia of being stuck in the trenches, but with so much text and panels right next to each other, I quickly became fatigued and later cherry-picked. A bigger space with more time/distance between one display and the next would have allowed for more reflection and introspection.

But, having said that, it was great and well worth a visit.

Glen didn’t come in with me and instead played Pokemon. After the centre, I went up Convoy Hill to check out the view, and then we left. If you really like war stuff, there’s plenty of other things to see, but Glen and I had decided we’d had enough so went back down the hill and home for a lie down.

In the evening we went to the Albany Pride Quizmania, held at the Middleton Beach Bowling Club. Fortunately, our friend had two spare tickets so we could join his table for this sold-out event.

We had a table right near the hosts (BarbieQ, Alexis and Veronica – drag queens from Perth) and close to the bar. We met a whole bunch of Albany gays who were all very friendly and welcoming. And fortunately they knew stuff about Albany, which helped us rocket to the lead early on.

We managed to hold onto our lead throughout the night and came first with something like 65 out of 80. I was extremely stoked! We’re looking forward to returning next year and continuing our winning streak.

The night wrapped up at 10:30 or so and despite offers to kick on with more drinks we were a bit too wiped out and took the half our drive to our accommodation and get an earlyish night’s sleep.