The small plaster white elephant, just eight centrimetres high, was given to Portland’s chairman of commissioners, Keith Stirling Anderson, by Portland’s chief engineer after many ‘powers that be’ who inspected the works to create Portland harbour in the late 1950s described the project as a white elephant.

Mr Anderson used the doubts about the project to spur on his fighting spirit and that of the Portland community to make the project a success after it opened in 1960.

The plaster elephant sat on Mr Anderson’s desk at his port office throughout the 1950s and was recently donated to Glenelg Shire Council’s Cultural Collection by his nephew, Alan Anderson of East Fremantle. 

The council’s cultural collections officer Trevor Smith said “K.S. Anderson’s white elephant is a significant artefact in how Portland became what it is today - a modern harbour.”

Mr Smith said the elephant “not only represents a key period in time for Portland, but also the fighting spirit of our local people.”

“It is very exciting to be able to showcase this in Portland’s History House and to allow the community to see and reflect on how different our region would be today if we didn’t have the advocacy of someone like K.S. Anderson,” he said. 

The elephant will go on display at Portland’s History House in November 2017.