Port Fairy is a lovely little town, it’s not only the home to much art and craft but also has some fascinating history. Around 1828 Captain Wishart anchored in a little bay away from the storm when daybreak came he found himself in the mouth of a little river and called it Port Fairy after his cutter ‘Fairy’ as was the tradition at that time.

In 1843 two men James Atkinson and William Rutledge each 5120 acres at the cost of £1 per acre (I wish I could do this now) but their penance was to establish a town and encourage settlers. Atkinson managed this and called his town Belfast but Rutledge didn’t. The township was established under the tenant rule with tenants paying rent to the land owner.

One story we were told involved a ship of labourers arriving at the nearby town of Portland. They were meant to disembark the following day and barter for jobs but one enterprising man from Belfast/Port Fairy (it changed its name in 1887 after the death of Atkinson in 1882 and the availability of purchasing the freehold in 1886) went from Port Fairy to Portland overnight getting onto the boat in the wee hours to negotiate for these people to go to Port Fairy instead of Portland. When the good people of Portland woke up it was to find two thirds of their new labourforce decamping to Port Fairy. The early bird certainly gets the worm in this case.

We had dinner at the Caledonian Pub, fondly called The Stump by locals, on our last night. We walked outside afterwards and into the crowd gathering for the New Year’s Eve Parade, I’ll put up some photos and footage another day as it was great fun.

The Caledonian has some interesting history. It’s the oldest continually licensed hotel in Victoria. Some of the rooms weren’t completed as the workers put down their tools and went to the goldfields, the floors were completed some time later.

There’s a sign on a nearby corner showing a flood. We figured the road must have sat a little lower than it does right now, the water was lapping at the doors of the building. If the flood happened now the water would have been lapping at the windows!

I forget which house this is. You can see it’s old by the construction. Very cleverly built.

This building is in the main street just near the shops. The owner isn’t able to do what he wants so it is getting more ramshackle by the day. If you look carefully you’ll see a very modern door knob on the middle of the door on the left, I don’t understand why it looks as if the door knob should be on the inside.

Some of the blocks of land have had very little done to them for many, many years. There was one typical block we were taken past with a small house and plenty of land, I didn’t take a photo as the visitors renting it were outside and one little girl had nothing on, it didn’t seem right to put them on my blog like that. The original tenants/owners would have been reasonably self sufficient, there was enough room on this block for fruit trees, veggie gardens, chickens and possibly a cow as well as the house. Currently there’s only a couple of trees and the house.