Port Lincoln: On the West Coast in Eyre Peninsula Region of South Australia
The distinctive mallee and seascapes of a peninsula-long national park, sailing and swimming in protected Boston Bay and a thriving country town with all the comforts on the edge of it all - it is no wonder that Port Lincoln is such a traveller magnet. We began our Postcards tour with a magnificant overview from high amongst the granite outcrops of Winter Hill. It was named after Mr. Benjamin Winter, who did the survey work for the pioneer settlers below, but the Barngala and Nauo people at the temperate end of Eyre Peninsula had seen quite a bit of white people already.
Navigator Matthew Flinders and the crew of Investigator spent ten days in the bay gathering seventy tons of precious water in February, 1802. His charts of this “ unknown coast” soon brought whalers and sealers to shelter. Today, Pt. Loncoln’s 14000 or so residents revel in their surrounds, but they might have been increased a hundred-fold if South Australia’s first Governor, Captain John Hindmarsh, had prevailed. He had called in here on HMS Buffalo and was keen for the harbour to become the infant colony’s capital.
Col. Light rejected it - not enough water or good soil he concluded but within three years, three boats full of pioneer settlers landed a kilometre or so north of today’s jetty. The aboriginal people called the site “Kallinyalla” or “beautiful water”, and a little shoreline spring still bubbles there to this day. For the European founders of Pt. Lincoln, it was “Happy Valley”, and a monument and boardwalk next to the Axel Stenross Maritime Museum mark the start.
The oldest intact structure on Boston Bay it The Old Mill, built of limestone in 1846, but perhaps there wasn’t enough grain grown locally then, because it never saw its windsails above or grinders below. It gets plenty of use now, however, as a town lookout with a deep sea harbour view dominated by its gleaming white temples to agriculture. In a good year, the silos will send more than a million tonnes of grain to the other side of the world.
Meanwhile, the tourists head this way, stocking up in town for day trips to die for. Coffin Bay National Park offers unique images of mallee and limestone cliffs and of tea tree and lovely beaches, the Koppio Smithing National Trust Museum houses an eclectic farm community collection and Lincoln National Park (with permit and key access) invites contemplation of the tragedy that beset Flinders two centuries ago. He lost eight good men, drowned on a fresh-water-seeking foray in a cutter near Memory Cove. The scrub and beach inlet are much as he left it.
Back in Lincoln, twenty first century comforts abound in everything from bayside caravan parks to marina apartments and shoreline hotel/motels. In January, there might be another six or seven thousand people joining the lucky locals… some of whom have made a statement about how many fishing millionaires there are here. “Dallas,” “Dynasty” and other palatial numbers overlook the bay where they do business from the dress-circle section that is cheekily referred to as “Rotten Row”.
You still can’t take the “port” out of Port Lincoln, and it was the old windjammer wharf that brought one of the town’s most loved identities. He liked what he saw and stayed to establish a boatyard on the shores of Boston Bay, and on the way into town today we can visit what is now called in his memory the Axel Stenos Maritime Museum. For more than fifty years he built and repaired boats here. Long time enthusiast Tom Bascombe took the Postcards team into his jampacked shed to soak up the flavour.
“He was born in Finland and went to sea when he was twelve. He was a trained boatbuilder and sailed on the windjammers for years.”
“He came to Pt. Lincoln a couple of times, didn’t he?”
“And the second time - in 1927 - he stayed. His first yard was closer to town and then in 1940 he brought this one and shifted his little galvanised iron shack here on a barge. You can see the picture of it on the wall.”
Axel and his Finnish seafaring mate Frank Laakso made 250 dinghies and more than 40 boats, including his beloved Rio Rita that it is now in dry dock at the museum. The small cabin cruises-work boat went to the rescue of many an ailing ship, and with Axel as Vice Commodore it always led the sail past of the sailing club. Another prized piece sits high and dry above the tide. The last wooden ketch to operate in South Australian waters, “Hecla” was built in Port Adelaide in 1903, and by the 1960’s it was supplying Thistle Island’s sheep station in Spencer Gulf. Her unique bush windmill-driven builge pump failed and she sank at the island jetty twenty years back only to be floated and acquired for this marine collection.
Inside the display and boat-busy shed, Tom showed us an invaluable legacy.
“This is his own set of boat building tools,” he told us proudly, waving an adze from a wall and bench array that would make a cabinet maker drool. “Some of these came from his grandfather in Finland, and so they are 150 years old.”
“Axel worked everyday until he fell ill at 84, and reluctantly left his house to die in hospital.”
Fortunately, his friends rallied to save this heritage gem and create a museum that salutes not only Axel Stenross but also the great sailing ship era that saw the windjammers calling into the port along the bay until half way through the twentieth century. Thanks to a team of volunteers it is a seven-days-a-week highlight for visitors. Check with the Visitors Centre for opening times.
Until 1986, the extensive Lincoln Cove Marina was all mudflats and mozzies behind the town, but then they let the water into a deep-dredged safe harbour for the dozens of ocean going fishing boats that help make this a prosperous place to live. With crayboats and prawn trawlers, the largest tuna-boat fleet in Australia adds colour to Lincoln Cove for much of the year, because their season now consists of a few weeks towing their quota back to dozens of floating fish cages behind Boston Island. For tourists, they add busy boat traffic to the seemingly land locked seascape, and to for the town exports to Japan mean this 1990’s phenomenon brings in as much as a quarter-billion dollars each year.
Of course, you can get on to the water too. Novice boaties through to old salts will tell round here there is some of the best blue-water sailing anywhere. Charter operators will take you from Lincoln Cove or pick you up from the robust old town jetty that protrudes from the esplanade, Tasman Terrace, and take you cruising round the tuna farms or out into Spencer Gulf to enjoy island hopping for days on end. They are mostly as Flinders found them - exhilarating.
Mind you, the cafes and bakeries along the Terrace beckon aswell, and so a beach-strolling and paddling lazy holiday is very much in order too. Whichever way you wish, you have to “take the fresh Eyre” in Port Linclon soon.
Details:
Port Lincoln Visitor Information Centre
3 Adelaide Place
Port Lincoln, South Australia, 5606Freecall: 1800 629 911
Phone/Fax: 08 8683 3544
Web: www.visitportlincoln.net
Email: info@visitportlincoln.netAxel Stenross Maritime Museum
97 Lincoln Highway
Port Lincoln, South Australia, 5606Phone: 08 8682 2963
Email: axelstenross@centralonline.com.auOpening Times: (at September 2002)
September to April: Tues. Thurs. Sat. Sun and public holidays, 1:00pm to 5:00pm
May to August: please check in advance
Other openings by appointment.
