Port Fairy

So we’ve hitched up Matilda and off we go. For those new to Ken’s & Bet’s travels, Matilda is our 20’6” Galaxy caravan, where we rough it in comfort. An easy four and half hour drive along the Princes Highway, including a roadside stop at Winchelsea for lunch, finds us at our first destination – Port Fairy.

The Southcombe Caravan park has nearly 500 sites, and at this time of the year, the caravanners and campers are spread thinly, leaving plenty of room for all. This is in contrast to the March Labour Day long weekend, where this park alone hosts 4000 visitors to the Port Fairy Folk Festival.

Once one of Australia’s busiest ports, Port Fairy has transformed from a thriving whaling industry to agriculture, fishing and tourism. 

During the three days here, we have taken the historic buildings walk around the town, gone swimming and snorkeling at the nearby Pea Soup Beach. The beach is a short walk over the dunes from the caravan  park, and has also been the location where Betty has tried her hand at fishing. She has not been able to catch anything but two small sand mullet, which will be kept for bait when she gets to the crabbing waters. Conversations with other fisherpersons reinforces the fact that there is not much being caught around here at the moment.

We made the one hour interpretive walk around the nearby Griffiths Island, the island being the centre of the whaling industry in the 1830s, and the site of a lighthouse since 1859. The island is now the home to a large mutton bird (short-tail shearwater) colony. The sand is riddled with their burrows, but during our late morning walk all the adult birds would have been out to sea gathering food, and the youngsters well hidden inside the burrows.

That’s it. Time for a bourbon.