The Bay Trail from St Kilda north to Port Melbourne was about five-kilometres one way. Far in the distance sat the Spirit of Tasmania which was where I was headed. This was one of the passenger liners that travelled across Bass Straight every day to Tasmania. I was drawn to the destination like spectators to a fight. It was a twenty-five degree day and people were biking or walking and lapping up the final autumn days before Melbourne’s unpredictable weather set in.
Port Phillip Bay stretched around on its eastern side with one perfect beach after another. After Albert Park Beach, was Middle Park Beach. In the 1900s when men and women were not permitted to swim together, there were public baths along the shoreline to cater to this law. The building extended right into sea so that during the gusty winters, sections of the baths required annual repairs. With an end to the law, the baths were torn down.
Port Melbourne’s Beach was next with Station Pier Cruise Ship Terminal coming into sight. The Queen Elizabeth was docked and cars crawled past to enter the ferry that would later sail to Devonport, a journey I’d taken in my late teens. Back then, it had been a different terminal—Princes Pier. A couple of hundred metres ahead was the old terminal where pylons stretched into the bay, but only a part of the pier remained along with the original building I had once walked through to head to Tasmania.
Port Melbourne had been inhabited by the Yalukit-Willam Clan for thousands of years before Europeans had invaded. They thought of the area as a silent wilderness until thousands of immigrants arrived during the gold rush era. Princes Pier, then Railway Pier, was constructed in the 1850s with a railway line that extended into the bay for loading and unloading imports and exports. It was renamed in the 1920s after a visit by Edward, Prince of Wales.
Not far past this point, I turned back. I’d calculated that by the time I returned, I would complete my quota of steps for the day.
From here to there 