Portland - the pleasant surprise

We kept to our plan and were up and moving quite early, completely packed up and on the road before 8am. It was about 20 minutes to the border, it was pretty funny to see the fancy 'Welcome to South Australia' sign with lots of colour, great photos and very enticing, compared to the blue Vicorian sign. Our first stop was Portland. I only found some more info about the town on Saturday afternoon and did some googling to find out more. When originally planning, it looked like another beachy town, nothing wrong with that, but we usually go for sites or the touristy things. Google told us that there was a 1 hour return trip on the cable tram, that was dog friendly on enquiry, leaving at 10am. We had to keep in mind that we'd lose half an hour when crossing the border. We got in around 945 and Ben checked in about Pup, the lady said it's usually small laptops that's their preference, but it's pretty quiet so it'll be fine. Mentioning that he was 14 seemed to help I think. What a great find! Both the conductor and gripman (driver), are Portland locals and knew their stuff. On the first stop, we were told that there are a lot koalas in the area, often seen walking around the street, we thought 'sure'. But sure enough, there one was, just snoozing in the tree! We cruised past the botanic gardens, marina, info centre and maritime museum, caravan park (where there was another koala! In a tree on the main road!), and our final stop up at the ww2 monument and whale watching platform. There are surprisingly a lot of things to do here and the town had a lovely feel to it. We headed back and were told that the attached museum was also included, there were lots of miniature trains, local artefacts, a Santa sleigh, a Coca-Cola collection, a bit odd, but neat! And very good value. We popped into the bakery for a snack and I got stuck chatting with the lovely lady working there, then a quick stop at the info centre (gathering more info for next time), then back on the road to Port Fairy.Read more