“It was really a hive of activity” - once upon a time

I am seconds late to catch the train to Williamstown so I jump on one going to Flinders Street instead. Don't ask why, I'm a woman, I can be random if I like. Proving the random thing even further, I got bored sitting in the train on an underground track and anyway I have already been to Flinders Street only to get lost in its maze of platforms. So when the train passed Parliament, a station in the CBD I have not yet been to, I jumped off. If all roads lead to Rome then all trains must leave from Parliament, I figure. I have saved myself no more time waiting for the next Williamstown train as I still have fifteen minutes to go but the sporadic faded photos of pomp and political circumstance on the escalator are at least distracting. The train arrives with a woosh of wind and off I am at last to...Werribee. Well Werribee at least starts with the same letter as Williamstown and I'm in no hurry, I'll get there eventually and along the way are the happy adventures of a lost traveler.

Williamstown is a sleepy village on the otherside of Hobson's Bay. If you knew what it was you were looking at you could see it from St Kilda. The effect is better the other way around however as the landmark Palais Theatre stands out at a distance. Williamstown is historic and reminds me of Akaroa. It was the first permanent settlement in Victoria in 1835 and was supposed to be the capital. A lack of fresh water however let the side down so instead its significance was as a port and transport hub to the rural areas. Today it has a fabulous Visitors Information Centre with very helpful and keen staff armed with every brochure you could imagine. And as I leave, I now am too.

I have arrived with a picnic lunch courtesy of QVM. I don't think the market people like me much. When I ask for half the smallest portion of hummus, two felafels, one olive read roll and two dolmades, their eyes roll. I don't think they care that I am going on a picnic while they are working and earning fifty cents per felafel from my purchase. But I am at the beach so I have to have a picnic despite the fact that my al fresco dining attempts here have had mixed results. I'm hoping that the forecast for today will be right, it's usually pretty accurate. It's supposed to be mostly sunny with a high of seventeen. When I told them where I was off to today, the workmen at the hostel advised me to take a drizzabone. “The wind off the sea can come up out there, you'll want something other than a sunhat, darlin'.” Oh ye of little faith, thought I optimistically but I did take my polar fleece just to please them.

As I sat on the beach then wrapped up for the Pole and staring down a magpie sitting at my picnic table scowling at me, I am glad I did. There is something staunch about toughing out an al fresco meal with the wind blowing your hair into every bite. I watched a small bug drowning in the oil of my dolmades, not knowing which of us looked sadder. But I did enjoy my trip to Williamstown apart from the fish.

I learned a bit about its history. The pier at Point Gellibrand has seen ships of all sorts come in and out. Settlers, prisoners, wheat, war. Settlers arrived in 1842 on board the Scottish ship 'Manlius'. Yellow fever had already done for forty-two on the journey. The rest were quarantined and more were buried in the makeshift cemetery. The many vessels commissioned as transport to the goldfields and later abandoned became prison hulks. It seems that England did not have exclusivity on full prisons. Convicts quarried and hand hewed bluestone used to construct many of Williamstown's buildings. Their labour built the tramway and pulled the trams from the Gellibrand Quarry to Breakwater Pier. Mrs Isabella Dalgarne believed in rehabilitation. She was temperate and known to lecture drunken sailors by poking them with her 'strong and sensible furled umbrella'. She ran one of the hulks as a rehabilitation unit called a 'sailor's rest' but having seen how many pubs were in this town, I can guess where most of them preferred to 'rest'.

Wheat and gold provided the biggest boom for the area's industry. Bags of unhulled wheat were slit open to pour the contents into the ship's hold. There they were spread out and trimmed in the confined darkness of the bowels. The trimmers had to be given milk every hour to keep their lungs clear. It was hard labour at Point Gellibrand whether you were a convict or not. And then there were the sailors. Inquests into drownings at sea were held in the pubs until the publicans objected and a morgue was built. Other sailors were those in the Corvette minesweepers in WWII. HMAS Castlemaine is berthed at Gem Pier for public inspection. Williamstown has a timeball, a botanic gardens and two fish and chipperies serving hake and flake. Four dollars eighty for one battered piece with a limp lemon that won't squeeze and I say so long Williamstown but no thanks for the fish.