Portland Bay is a small Bay off the coast of Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. It is about 360 km west of Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

. The main town on the bay is also named Portland

Portland, Victoria

The city of Portland is the oldest European settlement in what is now the state of Victoria, Australia. It is the main urban centre of the Shire of Glenelg. It is located on Portland Bay.-History:...

.

The bay was named after the Duke of Portland

William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland

William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, KG, PC was a British Whig and Tory statesman, Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Prime Minister. He was known before 1762 by the courtesy title Marquess of Titchfield. He held a title of every degree of British nobility—Duke,...

, a Secretary of State and later Prime Minister of Great Britain, by Lieutenant James Grant

James Grant (navigator)

James Grant was a British Royal Navy officer and navigator in the early nineteenth century. He made several voyages to Australia and Tasmania, and was the first to map parts of the south coast of Australia.-Early life:...

 sailing on the Lady Nelson, on 7 December 1800.
The town of Portland later took its name from the bay.

The Convincing Ground massacre

Convincing Ground massacre

When Portland, Victoria was established as a whaling station in 1829, there was tension between the local Indigenous Australian tribe, the Kilcarer gundidj clan of the Gunditjmara people and the whalers. In 1833 or 1834 this tension turned into a full fledged conflict in a dispute over a beached...

 occurred in Portland Bay in 1833 or 1834 in a dispute about a Beached whale

Beached whale

A beached whale is a whale that has stranded itself on land, usually on a beach. Beached whales often die due to dehydration, the body collapsing under its own weight, or drowning when high tide covers the blowhole.-Species:...

 between whalers and the Kilcarer gundidj clan of the Gunditjmara

Gunditjmara

Gunditjmara, or Gundidj for short, are an Indigenous Australian group from western Victoria . Their neighbours to the west were the Buandig people, to the north the Jardwadjali and Djab wurrung peoples, and in the east the Girai wurrung people.The name may also be spelt Gournditch-Mara...

people.