| Portland
and beyond |
| PORTLAND,
the last stop on the Victoria coast going west on the Princes Highway, is
a large industrial and fishing port. There’s a smattering of historic
buildings, but they don’t add up to form a coherent townscape. Despite
the best efforts of the local tourist industry to promote Portland
there’s nothing in town that would merit an extended stay unless you
wanted to explore the local industry. However, the wild coastal scenery to
the southwest around Cape Nelson and Cape Bridgewater is well worth a
detour.
Huge ships dock in Portland Bay, where a
vast heap of sandy brown bauxite sits beside the Alcoa smelter, in full
view of the Esplanade. Aluminium is one of Australia’s largest
exports, and in 1980 big business was met with Aboriginal resistance
here, when a legal battle developed over the siting of the smelter on land
that had great importance for the Gunditj Mara. There were traces of over
sixty Aboriginal campsites and workshop areas on the proposed site, and
sacred places including a burial ground. Plans for building the smelter
eventually went ahead, but Alcoa was forced to pay the Gunditj Mara $1.5
million in compensation, which was used to buy back land in the area of
the Lake Condah mission. |
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You will also find the history of Portland fascinating. Before the area was permanently settled by whites
– it’s the oldest settlement in Victoria – there had been conflict
between whalers and Aborigines that resulted in massacres and the
decimation of an entire tribe. The first squatters in Victoria, the
Hentys, came to the Portland area in 1834 to pasture sheep on vast
landholdings, and they, too, soon came into conflict with the Koories –
from 1838 clans began to use their traditional burning-off process in an
attempt to drive the Hentys away. During the 1840s a sustained guerrilla
war, known as the Eumeralla War, was fought against settlers
occupying land around Port Fairy, Mount Napier and Lake Condah. In the end
it was only the deployment of the Aboriginal Native Police Corps in
1842 that finally broke the resistance – and even they took four years.
You can understand more from the gracious homes, museums,
old inns and scenic drives, the essence of Portland. The seafront Esplanade is lined with fish and chip
shops and cafés. The tourist office is also located on the
waterfront (daily 9am–5pm; free tel 1800/035 567) which gives
information on the numerous museums and historic buildings around town
which mainly celebrate white settlement.
Sporting pursuits are well catered for with
surfing, bowls, tennis, squash, croquet, golf, diving and fishing to name
a few.
Australia's first Saint spent her childhood in
Portland and Hamilton. Stretching from Dunkeld in the east to Nelson in
the west, the Mary McKillop drive will allow pilgrims from around the
world to retrace her journeys.
Events
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- Film Festival,
Portland (August)
- Portland Jazz Festival (November)
Lake Condah Mission |
| Lake
Condah Mission is about 50km northeast of Portland, on the western edge of
Mount Eccles National Park. A
mission was established in 1867 in this traditional Aboriginal area, with
its plentiful game and fish, and surviving Aborigines from the area were
brought here but were forbidden to speak their own language or practise
their culture. At its height in 1880 there were over twenty buildings of
timber and stone. Although the mission was officially closed in 1919, a
large community remained until the 1950s, when they were gradually
dispossessed as land was given to returned soldiers under the soldier
settlement scheme. Perhaps the greatest injustice occurred when several
Aboriginal returned soldiers, who had lived on Lake Condah, applied for
land, only to be refused. With the money paid in settlement of the Alcoa
dispute, the land was finally bought back in the 1980s.
Westward of Portland |
| The road takes you around Portland Bay, site of
Victoria's first permanent settlement, to the stately city of Portland,
the only deep water port between Melbourne and Adelaide. Ships from over
50 different nations berth here and massive eight-tiered sheep vessels
depart for the Middle East, carrying livestock from the hinterlands.
Portland Aluminium exports about 320,000 tomes of aluminium ingot
annually.
Further west along the coast towards South
Australia, around craggy Cape Nelson and stormy Cape Bridgewater,
the scenery is stunning: caves, freshwater lakes close to the cliff coast,
blowholes, a petrified forest of limestone columns where ancient trees
used to stand, and the beach at Bridgewater Bay, which extends in a
wide, sandy arc from one cape to the other. The best way to explore these
features is along the walking tracks that start from the Blowholes car
park, which is signposted left off the road to Cape Bridgewater. Bring
good walking shoes, as the volcanic rocks can be very sharp, and carry
food and drink. |
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