History & Heritage

A variety of Aboriginal clans lived around the bay's shores for tens of thousands of years, hunting and gathering food from land and sea. Tragically, white exploration and the settlement it brought from the early 1800s abruptly ended their traditional way of life.

The first of the white exploration came in 1798 Bass sails in Intrepid explorer and ship's surgeon George Bass was the first white man to sail into Western Port. His whaleboat, with a crew of six sailors, entered the harbour in January,1798.

In his writings he said: "I have named the place from its relative situation to every other known harbour on the coast, Western Port?The land around Western Port is low but hilly. The grass and ferns grow luxuriantly and yet the country is but thinly and lightly timbered." His journey added evidence to the theory of the existence a strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. He and Flinders proved it later in 1798.

Port Western Van population. Join the navy Western Port is home to Australia's largest military training facility, HMAS Cerberus, at Sandy Point, Somers. The navy base has an extensive museum that is open to the public on Sundays and public holidays. Cerberus is named after the flagship of the Victorian colonial navy, HMVS Cerberus. At the end of its career, it was filled with concrete and scuttled on a sandbank in Port Phillip as part of a breakwater to protect the Black Rock Yacht Club's boats