Wanderung 26

Bob:

As we often do when in a strange place, we walked over to the Tourist Information Center at the shore of the bay to get an idea what to do in town. Besides a maritime museum that looked interesting, they were offering that morning a special, once a week tour of the aluminum smelter on the peninsula at the western edge of Portland. Well, I've never seen an aluminum smelter, so I decided to take the tour and postpone some of our planned walks. That in turn meant that we would need an extra day to see what we wanted in the area, but we hoped that our hotel room would be available for another night.

Monika:

Bob:

Meanwhile, we surrendered our camera (not allowed on the tour) and climbed aboard a minibus with about 12 other folks for the tour, which started at the commercial wharf where bulk cargo such as grain and wood chips is shipped out. What is shipped in is the aluminum oxide ore from West Australia and carbon mix from the United States for making the anodes and cathodes of the smelting furnaces. The bulk cargo is carried by a really huge pipeline cum conveyor belt from the harbor about two kilometers over to the smelting plant itself.

We were driven around the huge sheds where they baked the anodes and then produced aluminum by runing huge amounts of current through "pots", essentially an electric arc furnace that separates aluminum oxide into raw aluminum, metal, and oxygen. I was surprised to learn that the furnaces operate at only 4.5 volts DC, but at 300,000 Amperes, which is an absolutely astonishing amount of current. The electricity, by the way, comes from a coal-fired plant about 450 kilometers away.

We watched the ingots of pure aluminum being formed from the molten liquid metal in huge crucibles, and then cooled by water and mechanically stacked together into pallets for shipment overseas. As almost all of the ingots go to the far Eastern markets such as China or Japan, the smelter is a big plus for Australia's exports.

After the tour we walked up to Percy street, the main commercial street in Portland, to mail our postcards at the local Post Office. Spying a Subway down the block, we stopped there to purchase two foot-long sandwiches (tuna for Bob, meatball for Monika) for lunch back at our hotel room. We also touched base with our landlord who arranged for us to stay an extra night at the same rate.

Monika:

Bob:

That took the pressure off the afternoon, so to speak, so we could explore Cape Nelson at our leisure. I drove the 13 or so kilometers out to the lighthouse at the end of the cape so that we could wander around various walks. The lighthouse itself, unfortunately, was closed for some kind of restoration or repair on the upper section, so we were unable to have a tour.

Nevertheless, we could walk along the cliff tops for a reasonable distance to the East, and we took advantage of that to get some magnificent vistas of the the rugged cliffs being slowly eroded away by the relentless pounding of the waves from the Southern Ocean. We did not, however, see any Blue Whales, which was disappointing, but apparently they had finished their summer stint off Cape Nelson and were now migrating back up the coast toward Queensland. Oh well.

Monika:

Bob:

Working our way back toward town, we stopped off to walk a short, but steep trail through an "Enchanted Forest" of moonah trees, some of which were bedecked with some kind of vine from the spinach family, of all things. It was 150 steps down to get to the level of the forest floor, but it was worth it as we saw a piece of natural Australian flora that only exists in isolated patches these days.

Monika:

Bob:

We also pulled in at a short walking trail to "Yellow Rock", which was, indeed, yellow. In fact, it was an isolated pinnacle of rock right down at the edge of the shore that had probably been eroded from the receding shoreline much as had the 12 Apostles rock formations we had seen while driving the Great Ocean Road in Victoria two years back (Wanderung 22). We declined, however, to run down another set of 150-odd steps to see the rock close up, and instead contented ourselves with viewing it from above.

Monika:

Bob:

Our final stop of the day was a fruitless attempt to see a community of gannets on the spur of the peninsula next to the aluminum smelter. The road out there was a dirt road that had been eroded into a washboard, so I had to drive quite slowly and carefully. Again we struck out, apparently due to the fact that the nesting season was over and the gannets were flying all over the Southern Ocean. At least, that's what I think was going on as there was a high fence plus special guard dogs to keep us out of the nesting area, a reasonable precaution.

That was really enough walking for the day, so we headed home to our hotel for dinner and a relaxed evening. We did venture out to the Aldi down the street to see if they had any $49 GPS units for Australia left, but they didn't. I enjoyed looking at the businesses up and down Percy street as we ambled along, but after returning to our room just at sunset, we just curled up with books and the computer for a while before hitting the sack for the night.

Monika: