The township of Port Fairy Virtual Tour
Come along with our Port Fairy Visitor Information Centre (VIC) Tour Guide and enjoy one of the many picturesque walks around historic Port Fairy!
Let the virtual tour begin!
The old township of Port Fairy, located near the Moyne River and with many historic buildings, is worthy of exploration.
The main thoroughfares of the town are Sackville and Bank Streets. Because Port Fairy is primarily a tourist town you won’t be surprised to see many of these streets’ shops catering to the thousands of tourists that come to visit and stay each year. And yes, you could spend your time dawdling along the streets, gazing at the shop windows and browsing inside, enjoying the cafe culture. Or admiring the many beautifully restored heritage dwellings with their well-manicured gardens and lolling around the spectacular, panoramic beaches.
But there’s a popular saying at the VIC — “Don’t just visit Port Fairy, visit Port Fairy’s history!” So why don’t you ask yourself one question: “Why was Port Fairy once called Belfast?”
If you want to explore this question and find answers – read on! But before you do there’s one caveat — Port Fairy’s history is a rich tapestry of people, events and buildings. This tour is an informative (hopefully!) and humorous (maybe!) take of only a small portion of them.
Interspersed amongst recently taken photographs of the town is a selection of old photographs and postcards kindly provided by the Port Fairy Historical Society. They’ll help you visualise the comings and goings in the town in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here’s an example – a shop in Sackville Street, circa 1880. Quotes from the times will also be incorporated into the narrative to help “colour in” the scenes being described.
The tour starts outside the Port Fairy VIC. The area next to the VIC is called Railway Place and it’s where the railway station was once located. Of course, you don’t have to start here — you can join the walk anywhere along one of the streets you’ll be visiting.
Let’s clear up one aspect of that question posed before — where did the name Belfast come from? Read the signage near the VIC and you’ll discover that a wealthy Irishman, James Atkinson, purchased 5,120 acres of land here in 1843.
Guess what type of establishment was one of the first in Atkinson’s Belfast? No surprises really — it was a pub. The first of many. The building shown in the photograph, which is located across Bank street and diagonally opposite the VIC, operated as the Commercial Hotel from 1865 until the 1990s. It was originally called the Royal Oak Hotel. A verandah was later added to the front of the building, as shown in the next photograph.
The Royal Oak was built in 1857. Today the building is being used by businesses and as boutique apartments. However, in the early years the hotel provided accommodation, food, grog and entertainment for the mainly male population of the young town. Entertainment included music, magicians and fire-eating wizards. And Madam Eva Evans brought her entourage of young ladies to the hotel — their “performances” were wildly popular.
The Star of the West was described as the “largest and most commodious in the Western District”. Its ballroom was “decorated with flags, flowers … tables liberally spread with the finest delicacies of the season … after justice had been done to the supper, dancing was resumed until ‘daylight did appear’ … there was a desire amongst the Port Fairyites to give a ‘right good welcome’ to their guests”. While the Commercial Hotel tended to cater to the blue-collar workers, like fishermen, farm labourers, shop assistants and the like, the Star of the West entertained the Establishment, principally the Squattocracy.
And squatters loved mucking around on the upstairs verandah which was described as a “wide and capacious balcony commanding views of the finest scenery and is frequently the scene of acrobatic performances by funny squatters on the burst”.
Speaking of horses the Star of the West was also a staging post for the Cobb and Co stagecoaches, shown here (could they take colour photographs in those days?). Today we take it for granted that we can drive to Melbourne from Port Fairy in about four hours. But a Cobb and Co stagecoach to Geelong and connecting train to Melbourne took the best part of two days for the same journey.
Today there are only two other pubs in the town. The Caledonian Hotel, or The Stump, is shown here in an early photograph, circa 1861. The hotel is situated further up Bank Street, at the intersection with James Street. Operating circa 1844, the Caledonian Hotel claims to be the oldest continuously licensed hotel in Victoria.
On the southeast corner of the intersection of Bank Street and Sackville Street is Fiddlers Green, shown here. The term “Fiddlers Green” means “a place where people can enjoy music, dancing, mirth and have fun”. Fiddlers Green provides a great venue for having fun in a wide variety of outdoor activities in Port Fairy throughout the year.
What was Sackville Street like, in the early days of the town? Here’s a quote describing the shops along the street: “a miserable unsightly row of shanties”. At that time building materials were in short supply and so merchants constructed their shops out of any bits and pieces of timber they could find and few shops had verandas, as shown in the photograph. Not surprisingly a lot of them didn’t look great.
In the days before gas and electricity people depended on open fires for cooking, heating and lighting. The only problem was that many homes and shops were made out of wood. Consequently, they were prone to catching fire and burning down. A major fire in 1880 destroyed a large section of the shops you’ve just walked past. The Commonwealth Bank was built on land on which a warehouse was destroyed by fire, like many of the shops along the street. Being without a reticulated water supply meant no fire brigade. Buckets of water were the go-to. Eventually a fire brigade was formed, as shown in this photograph.
One of the oldest shops on Sackville Street is across the street opposite the Commonwealth Bank. It was built in 1868. Can you recognize it from the windows in this photograph? Thomas Osborne published the Belfast Gazette here after establishing the paper in 1849. The local newspaper was very important as the only media within the town in those early years before the advent of the telegraph and telephone. The paper was published until 1989.
Walk to the intersection of Sackville Street and Cox Street. Looking at the surface of Sackville Street in this next photograph it’s not hard to imagine it being dusty in summer and boggy in winter with multiple puddles of water.
The surface of the street was once described as “dangerous to the limbs if not lives of the public … persons are liable to fall down large quarry-holes or break their legs over heaps of stones”.
One of the redeeming features of Cox Street was, and still is today, the impressive buildings on each corner of this intersection with Sackville Street. Let’s start with Seacombe House, also known as the Stag Hotel, shown here. It was built in 1847 so it’s one of the few surviving buildings from the earliest days of the town.
The impressive bluestone building, opposite Seacombe House and shown here, was built in 1857. It was the Bank of Australasia – described as “the handsomest house in the town — universally admired for its taste”. The bank eventually became the ANZ Bank. It was designed by Nathanial Billing.
Billing also designed St John’s Church of England, shown here, which was built in 1856. The church is located on Regent Street between Sackville Street and James Street.
By 1828 the first “letter carriers” on horseback started delivering the mail over vast areas of the Australian countryside, travelling thousands of kilometres each week. This imposing Post Office building on the northeast corner of the intersection was built in 1881. In those days Government architects built enormous Post Offices in major provincial towns as statements of the authority and presence of the government. It ceased being a Post Office in 2007.
The bluestone dwelling at 11 Cox Street was built in 1858. It was the town’s first Telegraph Office. The social impact of the arrival of the telegraph in Australia was revolutionary. It had a similar effect to when electronic mail became available in 1993. What form did the messages take when transmitted? (Morse Code) Exchanging messages between the cities and towns of Australia took days. The local Victorian Electric telegraph reduced this to minutes.
Built in 1852 this dwelling is the oldest in the street and is shown here. It was built for Captain Lewis Grant who ran a lightering business on the Moyne River. In 1846 the population of Belfast was recorded by a census as 601. The ratio of single men to single women was about 2:1. So, it was very difficult for a single man to find and marry a single woman in Belfast.
Stop at the corner of Campbell Street and Gipps Street.Look to your right.
Across Campbell Street you can see the Merrijig Inn, built in 1846-51. This early photograph of the Merrijig (circa 1861) shows just how big it used to be.
The Merrijig Inn is one of oldest stone buildings in Port Fairy (made of limestone, not bluestone). Its size changed a number of times over the years as did its owners. The Merrijig had many functions other than as an inn. It was a court house, municipal offices, police headquarters and police barracks where fourteen “foot and horse” constables were lodged — hence the extension out the back.
Turn left and walk along Gipps Street.
You’ll see two bluestone buildings — the Customs House on the corner and the Court House next door. An early photograph of these two buildings is shown here, circa 1861. Note the windmill to the right. Windmills were a common sight in the town and were used for pumping water.
The Court House, shown here, was built in 1859/60 as a Supreme Court and a County Court. A veranda was added in 1869 – people got sick of standing outside in the rain. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial court in Victoria. The last sitting as a Supreme Court was in 1915 but minor courts and administrative hearings continued. It closed as a Court House in 1988.
Mills Cottage is one of the oldest dwellings of its type in Victoria. Look down the side of the cottage and identify the three sections, shown here. The rear section, to the right in the photograph, was probably erected prior to 1841, as was the centre weatherboard section, and the front section — an imported prefabricated structure — in 1853. Rare wallpapers (59 layers) survived. Bluestone stables were built on the northern boundary in 1859.
John Mills (on the left) and his brother Charles (on the right) grew up in Launceston. The Mills brothers hunted seals and then whales in Portland before coming to Port Fairy in the 1830s. They hunted whales in Port Fairy Bay with John Griffiths off Griffiths Island. John Mills is also famous for possibly having seen the fabled “Mahogany Ship”. Some people believe that if it exists the “Mahogany Ship” may have been a 16th century Spanish or Portuguese caravel or galleon possibly laden with treasure. The wreck may be located somewhere between Port Fairy and Warrnambool.
Speaking of the oldest dwellings in the town, the second oldest dwelling in Port Fairy is Motts Cottage, located at 5 Sackville Street, shown here. It was built in 1842. The front section is a low ceiling two-room wooden cottage. The two-storey rear section was added in 1851 and is made of limestone.
Did you know that Port Fairy once had a Royal Family? (not really) Their “castle” was, and still is today, called “Emoh” (spell it backwards). It survives along with the outbuildings as the local youth hostel, shown here. Originally “Emoh” was the home of the so-called “King of Belfast” — William Rutledge.
Next door to “Emoh” was the Bank of Victoria, shown here. It was built in 1870. There are only three Bank of Victoria buildings with this “French rustic style” in Victoria — here, Numurkah and Nathalia. The bank operated until 1942 when it became a Semco textile (cotton) factory then a restaurant and a private home. It became part of the Moyne Shire headquarters in 1994. Run your hand along the fence — it’s not an iron fence but is made of wood and is called a “broomstick fence”.
Over the years there were many schools established in Belfast – large and small and run privately or by different denominations. Shown here is one of the most well-known schools from the early years in Belfast, the Consolidated School, built in 1874. It assumed the name Consolidated School in 1949. The bluestone it’s made from was quarried on the site. Ironically the land the school is built on was earmarked to be the site of the town’s jail.
Dr. Thomas Braim was invited to establish a school in Belfast by James Atkinson in 1848. Braim House (shown on the left in this photograph, circa 1861) was built in James Street in circa 1854 as a boys’ boarding school and later became the Belfast Grammar School in 1856. Dr. Braim was the first Anglican minister in Belfast and one of the town’s first school teachers. As with many heritage buildings in Port Fairy today, Braim House is now a privately-owned dwelling. Next door to the school is the Uniting Church. It was built in 1855 as a Wesleyan Church.
What were the students like in Belfast? Look at the photograph of a group of Belfast school children. They appear to be a quiet, refined and well behaved group. However, this quote describing some of the students in Belfast at the time seems to suggest otherwise: “wild and unbroken colts … some full of vice … some had the reputation of being able to smoke and drink and swear with any of the toughest bullock drivers”.
We’re back to where we started — we’ve come to the end of the line. Because in a railway sense we have indeed come to the end of the line. The Port Fairy railway was opened in 1890. The railway complex here in Railway Place included a station, a goods shed and a station master’s residence as well as the platform and tracks, as shown in the photograph. The station lines and station were removed after the railway closed in 1977. You can still see the Railway Goods Shed. The extinct railway line has become the Port Fairy to Warrnambool bike track — the Rail Trail. The trail goes via Koroit.
The narrative, descriptions, historical information and recent photographs supplied by Glen Foster, Volunteer Tour Guide at the Port Fairy & Region Visitor Information Centre. Historical photographs and postcards supplied by the Port Fairy Historical Society. Further reading: “Port Fairy — The First Fifty Years” by J. W. Powling; “The Belfast Fantasy” and “Port Fairy — The Town That Kept Its Character” by Marten A Syme.