Portland, Victoria
Portland is a city in Victoria, Australia, and is the oldest European settlement in the state. It is also the main urban centre in the Shire of Glenelg and is located on Portland Bay. As of the 2021 census the population was 10,016, increasing from a population of 9,712 taken at the 2016 census.
History
Early history
The Gunditjmara, an Aboriginal Australian people, are the traditional owners of much of south-west Victoria, including what is now Portland, having lived there for thousands of years. They are today renowned for their early aquaculture development at nearby Lake Condah. Physical remains such as the weirs and fish traps are to be found in the Budj Bim heritage areas. The Gunditjmara were a settled people, living in small circular weather-proof stone huts about high, grouped as villages, often around eel traps and aquaculture ponds. On just one hectare of Allambie Farm, archaeologists have discovered the remains of 160 house sites.19th century European settlement
Portland was named in 1800 by the British navigator James Grant, who sailed in the Lady Nelson along the Victorian coast. "I also distinguished the Bay by the name of Portland Bay, in honour of His Grace the Duke of Portland", wrote Grant. The bay, the only deep sea port between Adelaide and Melbourne, offers a sheltered anchorage against the often wild weather of Bass Strait.By the early 19th century, whalers and sealers were working the treacherous waters of Bass Strait, and Portland Bay provided good shelter and fresh water, which enabled them to establish the first white settlement in the area. Whaling captain William Dutton is known to have been resident in the Portland Bay area when the Henty clan arrived, and is said to have provided seed potatoes for the Henty garden.
The Convincing Ground massacre, in which 20 native owners of the land were massacred by whalers, occurred in Portland Bay in 1833 or 1834, following a dispute about a beached whale between whalers and the Kilcarer gundidj clan of the Gunditjmara people.
In 1834, the year before Melbourne was founded, Edward Henty and his family, who had migrated from England to Western Australia in 1829, and then moved to Van Diemen's Land, ferried some of their stock across the Strait in search of the fine grazing land of the Western District. After a voyage of 34 days, the Thistle arrived at Portland Bay on 19 November 1834. Henty was only 24 years old, and, early in December, cultivated the land using a plough he had made himself. He was the first white man to turn a sod in Victoria. The next voyage of the Thistle brought his brother Francis, with additional stock and supplies, and in a short time houses were erected and fences put up.
In his diary entry for 3 December 1834, Henty wrote:
Arrived at 6 p.m., made the boat fast in the middle of the river, and started three days' walk in the bush accompanied by H Camfield, Wm Dutton, five men, one black woman and 14 dogs, each man with a gun and sufficient quantity of damper to last for the voyage.
In the 5 December entry Henty wrote:
On descending the hill we saw a native. He immediately ran on seeing us. He was busily employed pulling the gums from the wattle trees.
Henty sowed the first Victorian wheat crop on clifftop land, known today as "The Ploughed Field". The Henty brothers established a shore-based whaling station at Portland. They went on to own five vessels engaged in the trade.
The Hentys were "discovered" in Portland by the explorer Thomas Mitchell in 1836. The squatter settlement was illegal since, at that time, the British Colonial Office policy was to contain colonial settlements in Australia within geographic limits. It had been still considering how to deal with the rights to the land of Aboriginal Victorians. The Hentys also farmed in areas known as "Australia Felix", around Casterton.
By 1838, land auctions had been authorised from Sydney, and Charles Tyers surveyed the Portland township in 1839. "It was government policy to encourage squatters to take possession of whatever land they chose". A Post Office was opened on 4 December 1841, the third to open in the Port Phillip District after Melbourne and Geelong.
During the 1840s the Eumeralla Wars between Europeans and Gunditjmara took place in the area between Portland and Port Fairy.
At Wesleyan Mission meeting in 1841, Rev. Benjamin Hurst noted that in the Portland bay area "it was usual for some to go out in parties on the Sabbath with guns, for the ostensible purpose of kangarooing, but, in reality to hunt and kill these miserable beings".
Around 1842 a Presbyterian church and school were founded by the Rev. Alexander Laurie, who later ran the Portland Herald. His widow Janet Laurie and two sons founded The Border Watch in nearby Mount Gambier.
From the time of European settlement, the region around Melbourne was known as the Port Phillip District, and this gained some administrative status prior to separation from New South Wales and the declaration as the Colony of Victoria in 1851.
1985: Proclamation as a city
Portland was proclaimed a city on Monday 28 October 1985, in the presence of Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales.Governance and demographics
Portland is in the Victorian Legislative Assembly electoral district of South West Coast, the Western Victoria Region of the Victorian Legislative Council and the federal Division of Wannon. It is in the local government area of the Shire of Glenelg. Its postcode is 3305.On 30 March 2007, the Gunditjmara people were recognised by the Federal Court of Australia to be the native title-holders of almost of Crown land and waters in the Portland region. On 27 July 2011, together with the Eastern Maar people, the Gunditjmara People were recognised to be the native title-holders of almost of Crown land in the Yambuk region, including Lady Julia Percy Island, known to them as Deen Maar. The Gunditjmara People are represented by the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation.
, after a question raised at a council meeting by resident Shea Rotumah, who is of the kilcarer gundidj clan of the Gunditjmara people, the council is undertaking an audit of their colonial monuments, to assess the "nature and magnitude of monuments and place names across the shire". The mayor, Anita Rank, sees it as "an amazing opportunity for our community to be better educated".
At the Portland had a population of 10,016 people.
Economy
Port
Through the 19th century Portland developed to become an important fishing port providing for the town and later, with the connection of the railway, to the region as far afield as Ballarat and eventually Melbourne. Barracouta, Australian salmon and crayfish were the main catches with many fishermen working the bay, around the Lawrence Rocks and in the season, Bridgewater Bay.Portland's harbour enabled the development of the wool growing industry of the Western District, however it has since lost its primacy to facilities at Geelong. Even in western Victoria, Portland fell behind Warrnambool as the main commercial centre. In the 20th century Portland's role as a port revived, and its economy was also boosted by the tourism industry and an aluminium smelter.
The port of Portland was sold in 1996 by the State Government to a group including the listed New Zealand company Infratil & the Scott Corporation, the first privatisation of port facilities in Australia. Since then, it has been traded a number of times and is now owned by two institutional investors – the publicly listed Australian Infrastructure Fund and Utilities Trust of Australia, a private infrastructure fund – both of which are managed by Hastings Funds Management.
As new supertankers have emerged, Portland, along with Hastings in Western Port Bay was proposed as an alternative to the controversial plans for deepening of Melbourne's shallower Port Phillip. The plans are aimed at maintaining Victoria's shipping status. Due to environmental reasons, the plan to deepen Port Phillip has been heavily criticised, whereas Portland offers some of the necessary infrastructure with minimum environmental impact.
The Port of Portland has received major assistance through public funding of an A$18 million overpass which gives better access to the port for heavy traffic. In 2007, the Glenelg Shire Council adopted a plan for the redesign and development of the foreshore precinct including a new multi purpose marina in the north-west corner of the harbour.
Portland Aluminium
is Victoria's largest exporter. The Portland aluminium smelter is located in Portland in South West Victoria. The smelter was commissioned in 1987 and is managed by Alcoa World Alumina and Chemicals for Portland Aluminium, CITIC and Marubeni ).Portland is Australia's third largest aluminium smelter, with a capacity of around 352,000 tonnes of aluminium per annum. The majority of Portland's production is supplied to the export market.
The Portland Aluminium smelter, in conjunction with Alcoa's Point Henry smelter which closed in 2014, produced about 30% of Australia's total aluminium.