Pt. Willunga: On the South Coast of Adelaide, in South Australia

With its protective reef shelf to the south and a broad bay on Gulf St Vincent, it was once all about sailing ships bound for South Australia to pick up slate and wheat, but Port Willunga is now all sea change and holiday houses high on the clay and limestone cliffs. With a host of romantic yarns lurking beneath its sleepy exterior, the old port is an easy 50 kms south of Adelaide, placed to take advantage of a crease in the cliff line created by Willunga Creek.

This was a significant site for the Kuarna aboriginal people, as their dreaming warrior and law-giver ancestor Tjilbruke wept tears here, creating fresh water springs up the broad and sandy beach. He had paused on a mournful journey down the coast to Cape Jervis, carrying his murdered nephew’s body.

It’s well within reach for a day-trip for most Adeladians, but a summer holiday with compulsory sand castles and daily swims is a much better idea. You can no longer stay in the grand guest house that looks to the magnificent cliffs northwards because it’s a private residence - but the pole house behind it and several others on the seafront are for short-term rent. And there are a couple of new and attractive B & B’s if you want to indulge yourself.

From the top of the distinctive Willunga Hills - the range that nestles the Southern Vales and swings into the gulf at Sellicks - you can see the undulations from McLaren Vale to the South are increasingly carpeted by verdant vineyards, with splashes of olive groves and traditional almond orchards. In early colonial times, however, you’d be gazing over a sea of stubble and haystacks in high summer. This was wheat country, with a thread of drays carting mountains of wheat bags to the waiting tall ships. The Willunga slate quarries also kept Port Willunga busy, sending thousands of tones of split rock to roof the great buildings of Melbourne and Sydney. Two ships called each week to keep up. Yet, by 1889, what was once the second busiest port in South Australia was cruelly described as a “has been” settlement. Crashing crop yields and cheap galvanized iron had spelled its end as a trading port.

Next, though, came a tradition that Has Shaw and others maintain to this day. (We came across him finishing an oil painting looking down to beach framed by flat-topped cliffs arcing into the sea at Snapper Point). Artists were lured to the rolling landscape, the ochre cliffs and ever-changing sea. Now famous painters have lived here or visited and captured the essence of Port Willunga for more than a century. The recent Fleurieu Biennale Icons Exhibition brought together a beautiful collection of images, including a work by Anton Riebe depicting now defunct landmarks across Willunga Creek from the township.

While the green and blue gulf waters below the cliffs mean lazy days on the beach for most, they mean Fishing with a capital F for Jeff How. If he’s not out in his boat, he’s perched on the cliff with binoculars scanning the bay. “What are you looking for?” I asked. “Schools of whiting, preferably - or salmon,” he explained, adding that if his practiced eyes saw the right colour and movement, he’d be launching the boat and casting a net round them. “How long has your family been working this stretch?” “130 years,” was the matter of fact reply.

His grandmother gave the alarm when the Star of Greece ran aground where the cliffs rise again just north of the settlement. On Friday 13 July, 1888, the three mast iron ship ran into a one in a hundred year storm in the black of night. Loaded with wheat bound for London, it was forced ashore by fifty foot waves (more than fifteen metres), and in calm seas today scuba divers waft through the ghostly remains where the hull struck hard. All through the next day, mountainous seas broke her timber cabins apart and the twenty eight crew members anguished over how and when to leap into the foam. Seventeen drowned, from Captain to cabin boy, and there is a modest white obelish in the nearby Aldinga cemetery commemorating one of our worst maritime tragedies.

Like giant blackened and weather worn matchsticks, the cluster of pylons at the water’s edge are a constant reminder of the might of the sea. They are all that is left of jetty number two for the region’s original outlet, Port Willunga. The first extended into the sea from the Port Road up the beach, but it wasn’t long or tall enough, and so the second was built in the 1860’s to extend, amazingly, nearly 200 metres into the gulf. After it’s wheat and slate heyday, it was crowded with leisure-seekers on a summer holiday. On New Year’s Day, it was crowded with people heading for visiting steamships that would take them “round the bay for a bob.” A 1914 tempest tore a hole in it midway, and a year later, another maelstrom washed most of it away.

It’s seachange, it’s southern suburbia, and it’s even cheekily called Rundle Street South by some who’ve noted the influx of restaurateurs and fashion makers from the city precinct. These new denizens of Port Willunga don’t have to go far for a good expresso. The Star of Greece café sits high above the beach, offering drop-dead gorgeous sea views, and the seafood dishes often come from the bay. Owners John and Zanny took the name from the tragedy marked by a mooring buoy easily seen from the verandah, and turned it into a cliff top triumph that is rated nationally. It’s a change from the old icecream kiosk.

The town is used to change. There is some stylish new amongst the humble heritage in this escape from the leafy suburbs, and at today’s prices, the 1920’s subdivision price of fifteen shillings per foot, say $50 per block, made it an ideal retreat indeed. Some relics of the port days linger on, like the quaint two-storey Seaview Hotel on the Port Road. Now an umarked private dwelling, it was the haven for the Star of Greece survivors. Sadly, the Pier Hotel across the shallow gully of the creek has disappeared in the bushes. Thomas Martin built the ample two storey stone building and founded the town a century-and-a-half ago. It became known as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, while next door was the Harbormaster’s cottage, now a ruin.

But the timeless charms of this summer holiday town that began as a port still beckon, and so it is worth finding a way to get onto the beach soon at Port Willunga.

Details:

McLaren Vale and Fleurieu Visitor Centre
Main Rd, Mclaren Vale, South Australia, 5171
Ph: (08) 8323 9944
Fax: (08) 8323 9947
Email: mclarenvale@visitorcentre.com.au
Web: www.visitorcentre.com.au

National Trust of SA (Willunga Branch)
Courthouse & Police Museum
61 High St Willunga, South Australia, 5171
Post: PO Box 429, Willunga South Australia, 5172
Phone: (08) 8556 2195

B&B Cottages
Shell Cottage, Anchor Cottage
c/o Sue Brand
22 Ozone Ave, Pt. Willunga, South Australia, 5173
Web: www.portwillcott.com.au

Star of Greece Café
Esplenade, Pt. Willunga, South Australia, 5173
Ph. (08) 8557 7420 (bookings recommended)

With thanks to:
- Simmone Retallick
- Australian Studies/Cultural Tourism Undergraduate project
- Flinders University
- National Trust of SA (Willunga)

Recommended reading
The Tragic Shore
Geoffrey Manning
Published by National Trust of SA (Willunga), 1988 (available at: The Willunga National Trust Museum : Star of Greece Café, Pt Willunga.)