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Portland
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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. 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. The seafront Esplanade is lined with fish-and-chip shops and cafes. The Visitor Information Centre is located in the Portland Maritime Discovery Centre (daily 9am-5pm; tel 03/5523 2671 or free call 1800 035 567), and gives out information on the numerous museums and historic buildings around town, which mainly celebrate white settlement. Should you wish to stay, there's haphazard accommodation available at Portland Backpackers , 14-16 Gawler St (tel 03/5523 6390; under $20), and at the Cape Nelson Lightstation (tel 03/5523 5100, www.lightstation.com.au ; rooms $90-115, eight-bedroom cottage $290), just outside Portland. The on-site licensed cafe is open for lunch and dinner daily and hosts regular live events and entertainment.
Along the coast to the southwest, 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. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Australia,
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