Fifty-four miles from Melbourne, by sea or land, with access by steamers several times in the day, is Geelong, the western arm of Port Phillip, which "opens on the larboard hand of a vessel immediately upon clearing the shoals at the entrance of the Great Lake, standing between the miniature Bay of Corio with its picturesque green hills and sheltered water, and the River Barwon, which flows into the Lake Connemarra."
The situation, in the centre of one of the best grazing and agricultural districts, near a gold-field, will probably render it an important town. A bar at the mouth of the harbour at present restricts the entry of vessels drawing more than ten feet water; but this, it is thought, may be removed by dredging. Should this be the case, the province of Victoria will enjoy the advantage of two excellent available ports, and have two great towns. In the other provinces there seems no probability of any rival competing with Sydney or Port Adelaide.
Forty miles from Geelong the Buninyong range forms part of the second series of mountains, after the termination of the Australian Alps. At Ballarat, one of the spurs of Buninyong, in the midst of plains of unequalled fertility, the first gold-field in Victoria was worked.
In proceeding along the coast to the point where an imaginary line divides Victoria from South Australia, the whole coast line of the former being about 600 miles, the most important harbour is found in Portland Bay, 255 miles from Melbourne. Three streams, none of them navigable, fall into this bay, which is little better than a roadstead, and very dangerous when the south-easterly gales, which prevail during the summer months, are blowing. The government has been compelled to pay one pound a ton more chartering for vessels to Portland Bay than to Hobson's Bay. The north shore is low; the western rises in bold cliffs, upwards of 150 feet.
It was at Portland Bay that one of the earliest settlements was formed by one of Messrs. Henty's whaling parties, on which the land explorers came, to their great surprise, after many weeks' journey through an unknown, uninhabited country.
The Portland Bay district receives streams from the Grampians, a range running to the northward, of which Mount William, the extreme eastern point, is 4,500 feet in height. Mitchell ascended Mount Abrupt, on the south-eastern extremity of the Grampian range, and beheld from the edge of an almost perpendicular precipice, 1,700 feet in height, vast open plains, bordered with forests and studded with lakes. "Certainly a land more favourable could not be found. Flocks might be turned out upon its hills, or the plough at once set agoing
