Portland (Victoria)
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Portland is a city of about 9,800 people in the Australian state of Victoria . Portland is 360 kilometers west of Melbourne and 60 kilometers south of Hamilton . It is the seat of the administrative region (LGA) Shire of Glenelg .
The coastal city on Portland Bay is the oldest European settlement in what is now Victoria. Portland can be reached from the north via the Henty Highway and from the west via the Princes Highway .
history
The bay was named in honor of the Duke of Portland by the English navigator James Grant as early as 1800 when he sailed with the Lady Nelson along the coast of Victoria. The bay, the only natural deep-sea harbor between Adelaide and Melbourne, offers shelter from the often stormy weather in Bass Strait .
In the early 19th century, therefore, numerous whalers and seal hunters sought protection and replenished their drinking water supplies here. This created the first European base in Victoria. In 1834 the sheep farmer Edward Henty came to the area in search of good grazing land and later bought the Convincing Ground whaling station . When he arrived he settled down, although this was illegal at the time, as Victoria was not released for settlement at that time. It was not until four years later, in 1838, that the land in what is now Portland was officially released by Sydney , measured by Charles Tyers and finally auctioned. On December 4, 1841, the third post office opened in the Port Phillip District , after Melbourne and Geelong .
The Gunditjmara are the traditional inhabitants of Southwest Australia. They lived as the only known Aboriginal tribe in round stone huts and practiced a very advanced type of fishing. Remains of dams and fish traps can still be found near Lake Condah today. With the arrival of the Europeans, conflicts arose. One of the most serious was the Convincing Ground massacre that occurred at the Convincing Ground whaling station on Portland Bay. The dispute over a stranded whale escalated between the indigenous peoples and whalers, killing between 60 and 200 Aboriginal people, the exact number is unknown.
economy
In the 19th century, Portland became an important fishing port and allowed the wool industry to flourish in the Western District . In the course of time, however, the port lost its dominant position, initially to Geelong and later even to Warrnambool . Only when Alcoa started up the third largest aluminum smelter in 1987 , with a capacity of 352,000 tons per year, did the port regain importance.
The Portland Wind Project began in 2007 to install one of the largest wind turbines in the southern hemisphere. 98 wind turbines with a total output of 195 MW will be installed at a total of four locations, Cape Bridgewater , Cape Nelson , Cape Sir William Grand and Yambuk . This can cover around 7% of Victoria's total electricity needs.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Australian Bureau of Statistics : Portland (Vic.) ( English ) In: 2016 Census QuickStats . June 27, 2017. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
- ^ Premier Postal History: Post Office List . Retrieved January 8, 2011.
- ^ Convincing Ground (PDF; 99 kB), August 3, 2006, on Victorian Heritage Database Report. P. 3. (English)
- ↑ Ian D. Clark, pp17-22, Scars on the Landscape. A Register of Massacre sites in Western Victoria 1803-1859 , Aboriginal Studies Press, 1995 ISBN 0-85575-281-5 Excerpt published under Museum Victoria Website ( Memento of the original of September 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 8, 2011
- ^ Pacific Hydro: Portland Wind Project . Pacific Hydro. 2007. Archived from the original on August 29, 2007. Retrieved January 8, 2011.
