Albany 2026: How a lump of granite called Dog Rock avoided destruction and cemented its place in the city

One of Albany’s most-loved landmarks is a giant lump of granite which, when seen from its western side, looks like a dog.

Everyone in the city knows Dog Rock, with its black and white collar, looking like an aged labrador sniffing the air at the top of the road, which leads down to Woolworths.

It has become a popular attraction; there’s a motel and shopping plaza named after it, and climbing to the tip of its nose has been a challenge for the drunk and adventurous over the years.

Traffic cones, a mattress and a shopping trolley are among the items which have been dangled from its summit during the chequered history of this local landmark.

It has had an eventful life — in terms of its most recent 200 years, anyway — narrowly escaping being blown up by the council or sliced up by citizens of the city.

The first recorded threat to its existence came in 1921 when the local council proposed blowing it up in order to widen Middleton Road.

However, the plan was quashed following protests, a public gathering, petitions and an angry exchange during the council meeting in July.

The rock was then labelled by the Royal Automobile Club as a danger to traffic in 1938 and it was that branding which led to the local authorities painting its distinctive collar.

In the 1960s, an attempt by the manager of a local radio station to drum up support for its relocation to the Albany Highway-Chester Pass Road roundabout, which marks the entrance to the city, was swiftly dispatched.

His suggestion was to cut up the rock, move it and restore it in the middle of the roundabout.

The Menang Noongar people know the rock as Yacka, which means “wild dog tamed” and it is thought to have been an ancient territorial boundary.

The rock features in several Dreamtime stories, which show the dog it depicts as a central figure in the journey of mythical beings from the sea to the land.

The dog’s tail, known as Yakknint, pops up in on Aberdeen Street, in front of St Joseph’s Catholic Church.

It now goes by the dual name of Yakkan Toort/Dog Rock and, as well as being subject to local attempts to destroy it, it is also the stuff of legend.

The most cited is a story published in the Teachers Journal in May 1930 and attributed to the diary of Sir Richard Spencer (1779-1839), who arrived in Albany in 1833 to be the government resident.

His Dog Rock tale involved the death of a spaniel called Victor who belonged to the family of settler John Silverthorne and lived in an isolated cabin on Mount Clarence.

When Victor died, it is said he was buried on Mt Clarence’s western slopes, but a vicious storm washed away the grave.

The following day the granite boulder, in the shape of a spaniel’s head, mysteriously appeared.

The story has myriad holes, most notably that the rock did not suddenly appear in the 19th century, but it gained traction, and the tourist bureau even printed it in a Dog-Rock-shaped pamphlet.

The rock was finally accepted as a worthy landmark and classified by the National Trust in 1973, though it was not until 2002 that it was adopted into the municipal inventory.

The dual name came 20 years later.

Luckily for locals and visitors, the motel and the shopping centre, Dog Rock has survived all the hoo-hah and remains one of Albany’s most cherished sites.

It did not appear out of nowhere in the 19th century and it is not likely to be going anywhere now.