The former prime minister, whose death was announced early on Tuesday morning, visited Portland in August 1990 as the keynote speaker for a South West Trades and Labour Council dinner.

Mr Whitlam spoke about a range of issues including privatisation, the Pyramid Building Society collapse, East Timor and then incumbent prime minister Bob Hawke.

Ever the centralist, Mr Whitlam called for the national railway system to become a federal responsibility as the state's struggled to fund rail.

"The only real hope is to transfer railways to the federal government," the former PM told The Standard. "The simple fact is that things would be better in Mount Gambier, Portland, Hamilton and Warrnambool if you had the one railway system."

Labor supporter Gary Lucas was in the audience for Mr Whitlam's Portland speech and managed to meet the man himself.

"He was a very imposing and charismatic character," Mr Lucas said. "I'm about five foot four and Gough seemed about seven feet tall. I'd always admired his leadership but it was a great thing to seem him in person and get an understanding of what made him tick."

Mr Whitlam also visited Warrnambool and Portland in the late 1960s, shortly after he became federal opposition leader.

Labor achieved a six per cent swing at the famed "It's Time election" in Wannon in 1972, the electorate of then education minister Malcolm Fraser, who held the seat on a reduced majority.

Mr Fraser spoke with warmth about Mr Whitlam, with a friendship developing between the two former prime ministers in the early 1990s.

Mr Fraser said the late PM opened new doors in Australia and helped "to show the possibility of a new and perhaps better future" in the arts, foreign policy and other areas of Australian life.

However, Wannon turned against the Whitlam government in 1974 and again at the 1975 general election, when Mr Fraser went from caretaker to fully-fledged prime minister.

As a cabinet minister, Mr Fraser was instrumental in 1970 in setting up the Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education (WIAE) - now Deakin University.

The Whitlam government provided the funding to establish WIAE at its Sherwood Park campus, moving from Timor Street.

Deakin University vice chancellor Jane den Hollander said Mr Whitlam was instrumental in allowing generations of south-west students the opportunity to gain a tertiary education.

"Deakin takes its name from another famous Australian prime minister," she said. "But it was the Whitlam government through the expansion of distance education that enabled the establishment of our wonderful university, first in Geelong and later in Melbourne, Warrnambool and beyond."