Portland runs on interchange ‒ it’s a place of transfer, a port which loads and unloads ‒ empties and fills. Maritime export and import drive this city. Her vistas are hard. Logs piled in endless rows and high castles of industrial sand. A mini-me of Geelong’s wharf, look too closely, and you will see the ugliness of this work.

Portland is the cracked bitumen in the Woolies car park, barefoot children with sticky mouths sucking on Chupa Chups and lads in Utes ‒ their hairy arms dangling from the window. It’s the cigarette smoke exhaled by the young pregnant woman and the distant rotation of a wind turbine seen from the city’s main drag.

Yet, down on the foreshore is a mosaicked throne worthy of a mermaid queen. Rolling shell-like curves dance with pattern and call to come and sit a spell.