Control over Albany’s Historic Whaling Station handed to community members following great work by Jaycees

Management at one of Albany’s biggest tourist attractions has declared the community “should be grateful to the Jaycees” after handing over the asset to a board of community leaders following 40 years of development. The comments came after a new era for Albany’s Historic Whaling Station officially dawned last week with the start of the new year. It signalled a change more than seven years in the making as the board managing the major tourism drawcard changed to be better represented by members of the Albany community. Since 1980, the historic station and its assets have been owned by the Jaycee Community Foundation Inc, an organisation set up by the WA Jaycees — now known as JCI — in 1976 to undertake major ongoing community projects. JCF officially changed its name to the Albany Heritage Foundation on December 22, and on January 1 its seven Perth-based board members stood down to make way for Albany’s Bruce Manning, Murray Montgomery, Glenn Russell and Graham Foster. The only remaining Perth-based board member is Peter Snow, who said he would step down as chairman of the foundation at this annual general meeting, “if not earlier”, when further appointments to the board will be made. Mr Snow said AHF was the last connection to JCI in WA after the last of its chapters ceased about 10 years ago. He said the board had an average age in the mid-70s and that there was no “source of successors with the same community ethos” which led to consideration about its future and that of the Albany Historic Whaling Station — its major project. “It was logical that responsibility should at some point be vested in the local community,” he said. “There was some unfounded scepticism over viability and motives, so for that reason, a seven-year transition process was proposed to ensure a smooth transfer of responsibility and appropriate corporate governance. “That transition has now all but concluded with competent and community-minded boards now responsible for one of the region’s major iconic tourist attractions.” The centre’s day-to-day operation is managed by the Discovery Bay Tourism Precinct, established more than seven years ago to separate operations and asset ownership. The DBTP board also had two of its four Perth-based members retire from their positions — Mr Snow and Ron Raynor — to be replaced by “well-known locals” Ian Clarke and Vicki Brown. “At the next AGM in November, the remaining JCF nominees will retire,” Mr Snow said. “They will be replaced by other locals with appropriate skills that will benefit a major tourist operation”. DBTP chairman Glenn Russell said it was always the intention of the JCF to eventually hand back control of the asset which played a “very important part” in Albany’s history. He said he was thankful to the JCF for the work done to develop the precinct and that a greater level of local control meant preventing someone else coming in who “might have tried to break it up to do whatever they wanted to do with it.” “The whole community should be grateful to the Jaycees for that because if it wasn’t for them it wouldn’t exist, it was in ruins when they took it over,” he said. “It probably would have been dismantled or rotted away, but instead of that they resurrected it from the grave so to speak and contributed more than $40 million into the local community. “It will continue to provide as a very important tangible asset for this town.” It is expected that visitors and community members would not notice any differences in how the popular historic precinct operates. Mr Russell said that given the organisation was a not-for-profit, any money it generates would continue to benefit the community. “There are some important things happening later this year as we’ll hopefully be finishing off part of the development we started back in 2009,” he said. “We’ve got provisions to put up a cover over our amphitheatre which will provide a very, very worthwhile community asset. “There’ll be nothing like it anywhere else in the Great Southern or the South West corner of Western Australia.”