Port Phillip

Did You Know?

• The first Europeans to enter the bay were the crew of HMS Lady Nelson under John Murray on 15 February 1802.
• The first British settlement near Sorrento in 1803 was abandoned on 27 January 1804 due to lack of fresh water and good timber.

History

Port Phillip formed between about 8000 BCE and 6000 BCE when post-glacial sea-level rise drowned the lower Yarra River plains, wetlands and lakes, creating a closed bay over the western portion of the prehistoric Bassian Plain. Aboriginal people had inhabited the area for at least 40,000 years before the bay existed; oral history recorded by a Boonwurrung elder described ancestors hunting kangaroo and possum where the bay now lies. Shell middens around the shoreline mark sites of Aboriginal feasts, and the people used possum-skin cloaks and feathered head-dresses. A dry period combined with sand bar formation may have dried the bay out as recently as between 800 BCE and 1000 CE. The first Europeans to enter the bay were the crews of HMS Lady Nelson under John Murray and HMS Investigator under Matthew Flinders in 1802. An attempt to establish a settlement near Sorrento in 1803 was abandoned the following year. Settlers from Tasmania returned in 1835 to found Melbourne at the Yarra River mouth, and Geelong at Corio Bay in 1838.

Geography

Port Phillip lies in southern Victoria, separated from Bass Strait by the Bellarine Peninsula to the southwest and the Mornington Peninsula to the southeast. The narrow entrance, the Rip, between Point Lonsdale and Point Nepean, has strong tidal streams made turbulent by uneven seabed contours; small craft should enter at slack water, and large ships require expert local pilots. The eastern side of the bay has sandy beaches from St Kilda down the Mornington Peninsula to Portsea, with longshore drift carrying sand south to north in winter and north to south in summer. Cliff erosion control has sometimes caused sand starvation, requiring offshore dredging for beach replenishment. The western side has both sandy and sandstone rock beaches at Queenscliff, St Leonards, Indented Head, Portarlington, Altona and Geelong's Eastern Beach. Numerous sandbanks and shoals occur in the southern bay, and parts of the South Channel need occasional maintenance dredging. The region has an oceanic climate with warm summers and mild winters; annual rainfall varies from about 425 mm on the northwestern shore to 850 mm on the eastern shores. Port Phillip is often warmer than the surrounding land or ocean, which can produce a bay-effect rain that intensifies showers in Melbourne's eastern suburbs.

Ecology

Port Phillip's waters host Australian fur seals, bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins, humpback whales, and southern right whales, along with many other cetacean species that may migrate through the area. The smooth toadfish is common in muddy areas, and endemic species include the bluedevil fish and the sponge walls on the Lonsdale wall at the bay's heads. Breeding colonies of Australian fur seals are present, and occasional visitors include Australian sea lions, New Zealand fur seals, subantarctic fur seals, leopard seals, and individual southern elephant seals. Swan Bay near Queenscliff is an important feeding ground for waterbirds and migratory waders, while the Mud Islands off Sorrento provide breeding habitat for white-faced storm petrels, silver gulls, Australian pelicans and Pacific gulls. Salt marshes in the northwestern bay are part of a Ramsar-listed wetland of international importance, and the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot winters at three saltmarsh sites around the bay.

Shipping

The southern section of the bay near the Heads has extensive sand banks known as the Great Sand, and a shipping channel was dredged east–west from the Heads to near Arthur's Seat in the late nineteenth century and maintained ever since. Early shipping used piers at Sandridge (Port Melbourne), later moving to wharves along the Yarra River that form the Port of Melbourne, now Australia's busiest commercial port. The Port of Geelong handles large volumes of dry bulk and oil, and the Port of Hastings on Western Port handles steel and oil products. In 2004 the Victorian Government launched the Port Phillip Channel Deepening Project to deepen shipping channels and the lower Yarra for deeper-draft vessels; the project was opposed by the Blue Wedges group, which took action in the Federal Court in January 2008 but had its appeal dismissed. Dredging started soon after, and the government announced completion in November 2009, ahead of schedule and $200 million under budget. The South Channel, the main commercial shipping channel in the south of the bay, extends east from the Rip to off Arthurs Seat and allows vessels with a draught of 14.0 m at all tides.