Mount Gambier behind us

we rejoined the coast road taking us along to Portland, a busy port exporting ore and cattle. A tram along the front took people into the shopping area, from the many attractive homes along the shoreline. 

The coastline itself was mainly concealed behind sand dunes, but occasionally we would catch a glimpse of lovely beaches.

A few miles further on took us to Port Fairy, an extremely attactive fishing port nestling along a busy riverside,  it's Norfolk pine-lined streets fronting whitewashed cottages. Settled by whalers and sealers in 1835, it still has a large fishing fleet. We had just missed by a week the Port Fairy Folk Festival, one of the biggest and best in Oz, but we probably would not have been able to get near the place anyway!

Our target for the day was a larger town called Warrnambool, we had read about a maritime village there that we wished to visit.

Flagstaff Hill is a recreation of an 19th century colonial village, modelled on an early Aussie port. It contains a large collection of maritime artifacts,, but in particular the Loch Ard Peacock, rescued after the ship of that name went down further along the coast after striking rocks. The Peacocock is porcelain, standing about 5ft high, worth around $5m  and quite exquisite.

Among the buildings are an early bank, a newspaper office and printing presses, a sailmakers loft and an Inn.

The harbour had two ships in- one a coaster that served the area under sail fror many years, athe other a steam packet that oringinally brough tourists out from Melbourne for day trips to the many beaches of the Great Ocean Road.

After dark we returned to the Village for a presentation of "Shipwrecked", an amazing sound and light presentation of the wrecking of the Loch Ard, quite amazing the way the action was projected onto a spray of water over the harbour.

Only two young people survived the disaster, one young apprentice crewman and one Irish Girl, and of course the aforementioned Peacock, which was so well packaged it floated ashore undamaged.

Earlier I took the opportunity to take a photo of the sunset over the promenade of Warrnanbool, well I thought it was quite good.......