Port Campbell

This coast is the traditional country of Aboriginal peoples of Victoria's Western District, who lived along the limestone cliffs and the creek mouths long before Europeans arrived, and middens and other sites survive in the heathland above the sea. Sealers and whalers worked the shore from the 1830s, and the bay — the only sheltered landing for many kilometres — took the name of Captain Alexander Campbell, a whaler based at Port Fairy. A fishing and farming settlement grew around the inlet in the second half of the 19th century, with a jetty for shipping produce out when the roads inland were little more than tracks.

The cliffs gave the coast its other name. Ships bound for Melbourne from Britain had to find the narrow entrance to Bass Strait, and dozens came to grief between Cape Otway and Port Fairy on what became known as the Shipwreck Coast. The most remembered is the Loch Ard, a clipper carrying immigrants from England that ran aground on a reef in the dark on 1 June 1878; only two of those aboard survived, and the gorge where they came ashore still carries the ship's name. The Falls of Halladale ran aground near Peterborough in 1908.

Tourism arrived with the Great Ocean Road, built between 1919 and 1932 largely by returned First World War soldiers as a memorial to the dead. The cliffs were protected as Port Campbell National Park in the 1960s, and as coach tours and then hire cars multiplied, the lookouts east of the town became among the most visited places in Victoria. The town has stayed small while the traffic past it has grown enormously.

Port Campbell lives with a scale of visitor numbers far beyond its size, and local culture is shaped by that contrast. Residents talk about the coast in terms of weather and swell rather than sights, and the rhythm of the year is a crowded summer followed by a long, windy off-season when the town belongs to itself again. Helicopters working the Apostles and tour coaches on the highway are part of the background.

Volunteer institutions hold the place together. The surf life saving club patrols the bay beach, the Country Fire Authority brigade and the State Emergency Service turn out to fires, storms and road crashes, and the marine rescue crew launches into a coast with no other harbour. Their sausage sizzles, raffles and dinners are the main social events, along with the Anzac Day dawn service and the local football and netball clubs, which draw players from the farms inland.

The shipwrecks are the town's shared story, retold in the cemeteries and memorials along the cliffs and at the maritime museum in Warrnambool. In recent decades Aboriginal heritage has become more visible in interpretation along the coast, with traditional owners involved in managing the national park. Manners are informal — first names, casual clothes, a nod or a raised finger from a car — and questions about the best lookout are answered readily, usually with the advice to go early or late.

Fewer than a thousand people live in Port Campbell year-round, and the number in the town can multiply many times over on a January weekend. Tourism is the main employer: motels, caravan parks, cafés, the general store, tour operators and the national park. Inland, the country is dairy, beef and potatoes, and some households combine farm work with a job in town. A number of residents commute to Timboon, Cobden or Warrnambool for work or school.

The practical side of a small coastal town shapes the day. There is a school, a few shops, a medical service and a community centre; anything more — a supermarket shop, a hospital, a hardware store — means a drive of half an hour or more. Mobile coverage and internet speeds vary along the cliffs, water supply matters in dry summers, and tradespeople are booked well ahead.

Housing is the pressing issue, as it is in holiday towns along the whole coast. Many houses stand empty for much of the year or are let to visitors, which leaves little for the people who staff the cafés and cabins, and workers are sometimes housed well inland. Coastal erosion is the other constant subject: the cliffs and stacks that bring the visitors are wearing back, and tracks, stairs and lookouts are rebuilt or moved as the sea takes the rock.

Seafood and dairy define the table here. Boats from the small ports along this coast land southern rock lobster — known locally as crayfish — along with flathead, whiting and snapper, and abalone divers work the reefs offshore. Fish and chips eaten on the foreshore is the town's standard meal, and the pub kitchen turns out a chicken parma, steak and the catch of the day.

Inland the country is some of the best dairy land in Australia, and the produce of the Western District is easy to find: milk and cream, cheddar and washed-rind cheeses, butter and thick ice cream made close to where the cows graze. Timboon, about 20 kilometres north, has built a small food reputation on cheese, dairy produce and a whisky distillery in the old railway goods shed, and the district's beef and lamb appear on menus along the coast. Roadside stalls and honesty boxes sell potatoes, apples and eggs in season.

Otherwise the food is straightforward Australian country cooking. Bakeries sell meat pies, sausage rolls, lamington slices and vanilla slices; morning coffee is taken seriously even in a town this size, a Victorian habit that reaches well beyond Melbourne; and the barbecue plates on the foreshore reserves get heavy use on summer evenings. Beer and cool-climate wines from further along the coast and from the ranges inland fill out the drinks list.