HASTINGS, Australia -- Fifty years ago, the Port of Hastings was at the center of Australia's energy ambitions as the country's first oil and gas fields began production in Bass Strait between the mainland and Tasmania.
The extraction of fossil fuels from the seabeds south of Gippsland in the state of Victoria was heralded in 1970 as a "giant stride towards Australia's destiny" by Prime Minister John Gorton at the opening of a gas-processing plant at the port, 70 kilometers southeast of Melbourne.
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