A privately funded freight and livestock terminal on Victoria’s coast is about to test whether the cost of shipping to and from small remote islands can be cut in half simply by changing where the ship goes and where it is based.
Bass Strait Freight is building the terminal at Port Anthony, a privately owned port at Corner Inlet in Victoria’s South Gippsland region, to carry cattle from King and Flinders islands straight to the Australian mainland without routing them through Tasmania. The terminal is expected to open at the end of October, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia’s public broadcaster, reported on 24 September 2026.
The operator, David Harris, told the broadcaster he was responding to farmer demand and that bypassing mainland Tasmania would let him cut the cost price of cattle and general freight by about 50 per cent — a projection no independent body has tested. He described the project to the ABC as “a make-or-break for our company”.
Key facts
- Where: Port Anthony, a privately owned Victorian port at Corner Inlet, South Gippsland.
- When: expected to open at the end of October, according to the ABC.
- Crossing: about 15 hours direct from King and Flinders islands.
- Capacity: up to 40,000 cattle a year from the two islands.
- Cost claim: about 50 per cent off the cost price of cattle and general freight — Harris’s figure, attributed to him by the ABC, with no published costing.
- Who pays: the port is co-investing in the berth and livestock facilities alongside Harris.
- Vessel: the modified Matthew Flinders IV, to be permanently based at Port Anthony rather than in Tasmania.
Why it matters in Tasmania
The ABC reports that farmers on King and Flinders islands produce roughly half of Tasmania’s total cattle herd, so where those animals are shipped affects a large slice of the state’s beef trade. If a meaningful share starts leaving eastward to Victoria instead of southward to Tasmania, the volume moving through Tasmanian saleyards, feedlots and processors changes with it. That is why the project is contested rather than merely commercial.
Why the route is changing
Farmers are already sending stock north
According to the ABC, the terminal follows beef producers on the two islands diversifying into live cattle markets interstate, expanding herds, buying more land locally and finishing some stock on farms and feedlots on the mainland. Harris said the movement of animals north was already under way and his company simply had to respond.
Bass Strait Freight has been pushing for a regular direct route to Victoria for years, the broadcaster reports — including an unsuccessful bid to reinstate port access at Apollo Bay, a service that ran for more than a decade until 2022, and a continuing service into Port Welshpool that Harris says does not allow freight to be consolidated.
The Bridport channel
The new service is also expected to reduce reliance on the company’s home port at Bridport, in northern Tasmania, and what the ABC describes as the headaches caused by its shallow channel — so shallow that most large boats have only a half-hour window either side of high tide to cross it. Harris said the Matthew Flinders IV is much more vulnerable to running aground there.
He told the ABC his company had bought two excavators to better maintain the channel but conceded that was not a permanent fix: after 32 years of operations, with sand building up outside the entrance, he said there would not be a regular Bridport–Flinders Island service unless the channel could be realigned. On his account, the binding constraint is the shore infrastructure, not the vessel or the market.
The cost claim, and what the report does not show
The 50 per cent figure is the headline and the weakest-supported element of the report. The broadcaster publishes no current freight rates, no expected new rates and no assessment from an independent industry or government body.
There is also a subsidy layer the report does not address. Sea freight between Tasmania — including King and Flinders islands — and the Australian mainland is supported by the Commonwealth’s Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme, a long-standing federal programme administered by Services Australia that pays assistance on eligible goods moved across Bass Strait. What the new route changes for a farmer’s bottom line depends partly on how it interacts with that assistance, and the ABC does not say.
The ABC also records that Harris’s plan has critics within the local beef industry, but does not name them or set out their objections. What is on the record is the shape of the anxiety: Flinders Island farmer Nick Campion, who supports the plan, told the broadcaster the change would add to Tasmania rather than take away from it, and that larger producers had already built their markets around taking stock north. Campion also made the operational case, saying the vessel could be turned around straight away and sent back, and putting the crossing at 16 hours against eight hours to Tasmania.
Analysis: a familiar problem for Fiji
The section below is Fiji News analysis, clearly separated from the reporting above. The ABC report does not mention Fiji or the Pacific, and we did not obtain comment from Fiji Ports, the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji or an outer-island operator for this article.
Fiji is a country of more than 300 islands, and communities on the outer groups depend on sea services that are infrequent, expensive and shared between passengers and cargo, with most cargo routed through the main ports on Viti Levu. Successive Fijian governments have used a shipping franchise arrangement to pay operators to serve routes that do not pay for themselves — an official acknowledgement that thin, distant routes are not commercially self-supporting.
Port Anthony poses three questions worth putting to Fijian operators and regulators, rather than three conclusions. Does cutting out a transhipment leg — Harris’s stated source of savings — produce comparable savings on Fijian routes, where cargo commonly breaks bulk at Suva or Lautoka? Does basing a vessel at the mainland end, as Bass Strait Freight intends, change turnaround economics enough to matter on a franchise route? And can a private port be persuaded to co-fund a berth, as Port Anthony has, where no single anchor cargo underwrites the volume?
The differences are real: Bass Strait is one crossing with a high-value commodity behind it and a standing federal freight subsidy, while Fiji’s network is many destinations, many small parcels, cyclone exposure and reef-constrained approaches. Fiji’s shore infrastructure spending is also shaped by external financing and its conditions — the terms attached to the Asian Development Bank’s $210m package for Fiji are a recent example.
Australia is nonetheless part of Fiji’s operating environment, not foreign trivia: Australian visitors spent about $3.7 billion in Fiji, on figures Fiji News has reported previously, and the relationship also runs through development finance and defence, including the debate in Suva over how fast to sign security treaties with Canberra.
What to watch next
The milestone named by the ABC is the terminal’s opening at the end of October. Three tests follow: published freight rates that confirm or deflate the operator’s cost claim; whether the stated annual capacity is actually filled in the first full season; and whether the Bridport channel is realigned or the northern Tasmanian service lapses, as Harris has warned it may. Harris also flagged potential to source cattle from northern Tasmania, which would make Port Anthony a competitor for Tasmanian throughput rather than only an island lifeline.
How we reported this
The factual account of the Port Anthony project, the quotes from David Harris and Nick Campion, the crossing time, the capacity and cost figures and the Bridport channel description all come from a single source: the ABC report of 24 September 2026, linked above. Fiji News has not independently verified those figures and has not obtained a second account of the project. The reference to the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme is drawn from the Australian government’s own long-standing programme and is included to identify a gap in the reporting, not to quantify it. The Fiji comparison is our analysis, is labelled as such, and is not sourced to the broadcaster.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the 50 per cent cost saving independently verified?
No. The figure comes from Bass Strait Freight operator David Harris and is reported by the ABC as his claim, made before the terminal has opened. The broadcaster does not publish a cost breakdown, a comparison of current and future freight rates, or an assessment from an industry body or government agency. Nor does the report say whether the new route changes what shippers can claim under the Australian government’s Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme, the federal programme that pays assistance on eligible goods moved across Bass Strait. Until a rate card or an independent costing is published, the figure should be read as an operator’s projection.
What happens to the existing Bridport service in northern Tasmania?
Harris told the ABC his company had bought two excavators to better maintain the Bridport channel, but admitted that was not a permanent solution. He said that after 32 years of operations, with sand building up outside the existing entrance, there would not be a regular shipping service from Bridport to Flinders Island if the channel could not be realigned.
Has the company tried other Victorian ports before Port Anthony?
Yes. According to the ABC, Harris has already been running services from King and Flinders islands to Port Welshpool, not far from Port Anthony, but he said that facility does not allow freight to be consolidated. The company’s bid to reinstate port access at Apollo Bay, a service that ran for more than a decade until 2022, was unsuccessful.
Could cattle from mainland Tasmania also use the new terminal?
Harris told the ABC there was also potential to source cattle from northern Tasmania for the new service. The ABC reports that pricing and seasonal conditions dictate where island cattle end up each year, and that some producers are finishing stock on farms and feedlots interstate.
Why is an Australian cattle shipping story relevant to Fiji readers?
The cargo is different, the economics rhyme. Fiji’s outer islands depend on infrequent sea services routed through the main ports on Viti Levu, and the Fijian government has for years run a shipping franchise scheme that pays operators to serve routes the market will not. Port Anthony tests a different answer to the same problem: privately co-funded shore infrastructure, a direct route and a vessel based at the mainland end. That comparison is Fiji News analysis and is labelled as such in the article; the ABC report does not mention Fiji or the Pacific, and we did not obtain comment from Fijian maritime authorities for this report.
