PEOPLE entering Portland this week might have noticed that the new entrance sign welcoming visitors to the city has a new look.

The red and white handprints painted onto the stone structure, which has received plenty of criticism on its own, caught the attention of local online noticeboards and drawing comments, some supportive of the artistic merits, but also many negative comments, some labelling it as vandalism.

Local Gunditjmara man Shea Rotumah, one of the people behind the paint work, says it is best described as “a statement” made on the anniversary of the arrival of the first European settlers, Edward Henty and his brothers, in what is now Victoria in 1834.

The painting was done by Mr Rotumah and the rest of the group who had gathered at the Convincing Ground massacre site that morning for a memorial service at dawn to acknowledge the ongoing impact that the arrival had on the 59 Gunditjmara clans, most of who were wiped out, including the Ure Gunditj who lived in the area that became the Portland township.

Mr Rotumah says he is not surprised that people online seemed to have missed that their work had a message of unity.

“For the welcome to Portland sign, we had plenty of allies and supporters of what we’re doing with us, so the red handprints represent them, and the white ones are ours, to represent that agreement that we walk together, and so for the people coming into Portland they see that symbol of wanting to right the wrongs of the past,” he said.

“I’ve learnt that [on the entrance sign] the bottom layers represent the volcanic stone in the area, and the top is the sandstone, but we didn’t really hear about that when they were making it, so when it went up to me it looked like a bit of another colonial monument.”

Mr Rotumah says planning for how they have marked the day was kept to a private group to avoid the interference of “trolls”, a decision that has been validated by the vitriol that their painting has received in the days since.

“It’s a significant day for us and it’s pretty emotional obviously, we had to protect ourselves a little bit.”

“There still seems to be a lot of people around who don’t want change, or are scared of what they don’t know.

“We’re not here to just try and upset anybody, with all this damage to the country that’s going on, we’re trying to get everybody, white, black or brindle, to have a connection to this place, to understand the history, and try and look after it instead of making decisions based on dollars.”

Glenelg Shire Council has no plans to remove the work from the entrance sign, which was constructed earlier in the year.

“Council were not involved with this artwork and given the recent weather events, we anticipate the artwork will come off naturally,” said acting CEO Paul Phelan on Tuesday.

In that night’s council meeting, when a member of the public asked whether Council was going to do anything to fix what he described as graffiti, Mayor Scott Martin said that councillors were discussing it, but details were in confidence.

As well as the entrance sign, the group also left their mark on the two memorials to the Hentys in Portland, on the Ploughed Field opposite the hospital, and on the foreshore near the Cliff St stairs.

The monuments, Mr Rotumah says, are two of the most prominent reminders in Portland for Aboriginal people of Portland’s ugly past, so they wanted to show that Gunditjmara people had survived, and to remember those that hadn’t.

“There are things that I just don’t want to look at when I go into town,” he says.

“People say to get over it, but it’s jammed in our faces every day.”

Mr Rotumah says he hopes the Glenelg Shire Council takes steps in the future to address this, as well as improving the recognition of the Gunditjmara people and what they were subjected to following the arrival of the Hentys.

He suggests that the November 19 date, which was once celebrated as ‘Portland Day’, is a good opportunity for Portland to reflect on the full history of the area.

“History is history, we can’t shy away from it.

“These four blokes came over here and there’s a lot of talk and some pretty big monuments for part of the things they did here, but not much mention of the rest of it.”

“It's all a new space at the moment and there’s a lot of momentum over the last few years for something new, so we sort of create what we want out of it.”

“I work with schools around here, you ask almost any kid around about the names of the clans, the language, and they know it, they’ve learnt a bit so some of the song, know some of the stories.

“It’s definitely happening, but there’s a lot more for the older ones that they could learn about us and what happened here.

“There’s a lot of people in the Shire that probably don’t realise what this stuff means to us, the effect those reminders, monuments to those people have.

“To defend them and stick up for it, it’s just silly really, and I think it’s just because they’re uninformed.”

“We just need to own the past, this place is beautiful, the best country in the world and full of good people…we were the first place to be settled, so let’s be pioneers again and be the first place to bring about that change that we need.”