12 Feb. The Forgotten Sailors: Portland.

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Just behind our camp was a lookout and an old lighthouse. I'd become so blase about old lighthouses that I didn't find out anything about it, but it did provide a vantage point from which to watch a sunrise which was marginally more exciting than the Camperdown fiasco. 

Good Morning, Sunshine.

We caught the tram to town and learned all about the cable trams of Melbourne and how they ended up here in Portland, not using cables and chugging up and down the hill carrying tourists and the occasional local.

We can catch the tram from the Caravan Park entry?  Good!  We need exact cash because the volunteer is scared of the EFTPOS machine?  We turned our camp and car inside out and borrowed a paltry dollar to get exact cash.  Jumped on the tram.  What's that?  Cash?  Goodness me no, just jump on anyhoo and you can pay when we get down to the depot.  You mean we trashed our camp for nothing?  Well, for a tram ride I guess. We coughed up the cash anyway.
 

Out in the bay the big ships came and went, one swinging at anchor with no indication of going anywhere. 'That's the forgotten ship' said our tram volunteer casually. 'Its been there for months'.

This is what maritime limbo looks like.

One would think it very difficult to 'forget' a full size live animal carrier, but turns out it's quite easy to do so if said boat is found to have a big crack in the hull and oopsies, you don't have enough money to fix it, let alone pay your sailors and send them home. 

The  Yangtze Fortune, abandoned by her owners, was in dock until her insurance ran out in December, at which point she was considered persona non grata by the dock authorities and sent to anchor in the bay, and there she stays with 16 personnel still on board. The Admiralty Marshall has taken control of her and she went to auction on Feb 10 with no results that I can find. Thus she continues to sit out in the bay at Portland with 16 crew in limbo aboard.

In the afternoon we caught the tram up to the old water tower, repurposed by Portland's enterprising Historical Society as a lookout. 

 

Sadly there was a $4/pp charge to climb to the top and between us we couldn't scratch up that much cash (I wonder why?) so we had to be satisfied with a walk back to camp along the cliff top, with views of the evening light over the port.

And the sunset over town.






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