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 distant wind turbine rotates and disrupts the view from the city’s main street. Rusted hulls litter boat yards.

Look too closely, and you will see the ugliness and an underbelly of disadvantage.

Portland is the cracked bitumen in the Woolies car park, barefoot children with sticky mouths sucking on Chupa Chups and lads in utes ‒ their suntanned arms dangling from the window. It’s the cigarette smoke exhaled by the young pregnant woman as she buys a bottle of wine. This is no quaint Doc Martin fishing village.

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.