Portland

Took a Sunday spin today. Portland is about 80 minutes west of Warrnambool and was the first inhabited settlement in Victoria. The whalers got there before the regular settlers who arrived about 1830. So Portland was settled before Melbourne. It now has a population of just less than ten thousand, whereas Melbourne had all of five million. It is a typical fishing village and there seemed to be a fishing competition on. Loads of boat trailers around the harbour and boats coming in at regular intervals. I followed the crowd to the weighing area to see what one bloke caught. It was apparently a pretty big tuna (see slide show) and everyone was repeating '137' which seemed significant. After being weighed it was then filleted. Quite a few monuments to the first settlers and even the first doctor who lived there, not forgetting the Aboriginal people who were displaced. Had a nice cup of coffee and a hedgehog (what we used to call 'chocolate biscuit cake' growing up) and read my book in the autumn sunshine. On the way home I stopped at Codrington Wind Farm which when it was built in 2001 was the largest in Australia. At least here the place is so vast it did not seem to be built in some one's back yard.