Importantly, first up today was getting a new tyre on the car. A few days ago, I noticed a slight bulge on the side of one of the rear tyres. It wasn’t losing air thankfully – but I didn’t want to drive on it much longer than we had to. So I rang a few tyre places ahead to try find someone with who had the right tyre in stock – and thankfully a place in Portland came through with the goods. And they were able to just do it in 15 mins while we waited this morning.
With the car all done by about 9am, we headed over to the Portland Cable Trams Museum for most of today’s fun. The museum has a bunch of info about cable trams in general, and also some model railways. But it is also the depot for a restored tram that runs on a 7km loop through the town a few times a day! The first tram ride didn’t leave until 10am, so that gave us some time to explore the museum section and look at some of the displays there.
We jumped onto the tram ready for our trip at 10am. The tram in use has been immaculately restored! It’s an old cable tram, but obviously with the cable grips underneath the main car replaced by a diesel engine to get around town on the tracks. The kids absolutely adored the ride! You could see it on their faces the whole time. The ticket collector on the tram also spent most of the trip telling us some great and interesting things about the town as we rode around.
Once we finished the loop and arrived back at the Depot, we decided we’d head down to the Powerhouse Motor & Car Museum. It was one of the stops on the tram trip, and so we waited the 15 minutes for the next tram trip and then hopped off at the Powerhouse. Heading here wasn’t really on our radar, but it was mentioned by the tram guide as being the home of the Portland Car Club, with a lot of their members’ cars on display, along with plenty of other historic other motor styles. Like a lot of these fun things in Portland, it was also run solely by volunteers, with only a small entry fee. And it was great fun to wander through and look at some amazing machines – a lot of incredible things from as early as the 1920s there, including a couple of cars, but also a couple of tractors, and some immaculate old tools as well.
The kids were still buzzing from the tram ride and wanting to go again. Given our ticket was an all day ticket, they wanted to take the next tram ride back up through town to hop off right near our place! So that’s what they did with Debbie while I took the car back home and got some lunch started.
After lunch, we decided we wanted to head up to the top of Portland’s hill to look at the Water Tower Museum. Again, this was something on the tram route that was mentioned that really hadn’t come up on our list of things to do. It was an old water tower that had been converted into a WWII local museum, with stairs all the way to the top of the 25m tower to look out over the bay and the region. Again, because the tram essentially drives past our place, and the water tower is at the top of the loop, the kids wanted to jump back on the tram for that tiny little 5 minute ride up the hill! More interesting activities, run solely by volunteers, and just a tiny entry fee. It was really interesting to read a local perspective on some WWII history, and the view from the top of the tower was brilliant.
Dinner tonight was just an easy couple of pizzas – picked a place by chance, and they turned out to be amazing! Starting to pack up things again tonight before we head off tomorrow. After nearly two weeks doing a lot of travelling along the south-east coast, we turn right and head into central Victoria!
Portland has been an interesting town! We came into it not know anything about it. I honestly don’t think I’d really even heard of it before spotting it on a map, and thinking that it looked like a nice place to stay at the end of the Great Ocean Rd. But we’ve learnt so much about this town, and the people here have also been truly wonderful. And I think it’s been great to roll into a town not having heaps and heaps planned, and just letting the town decide what we should spend our time doing!
“just letting the town decide what we should spend our time doing” – I like this idea