Spotlight: Eyre Peninsula, South Australia

For anyone craving some peace and tranquility, South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is the perfect tonic. And while you can fly to the region’s southern city of Port Lincoln with minimal fuss, we recommend a good ol’ Aussie road and camping trip to savour this massive area’s many delights to the full...

After a rough couple of years of COVID chaos, a family holiday was in order. And while many likeminded others chose to brave airport check-in queues, sky-high flight costs, and lost baggage, we played it safe with a road trip to a part of Australia I was pretty sure wouldn’t be heaving with tourists: South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.

Eyre Peninsula, or ‘EP’, as its colloquially known, is far from the madding crowds. Located roughly in the centre of South Australia’s coastline, it’s about as far as you can get from most capital cities, without going fully remote. We’re talking an area of around 170,000 square kilometres – appreciably larger than Greece – with a population of just under 60,000.

Which begs the question: why would you go? Beyond the obvious – the peace and quiet – there’s the stunning coastline, the deserted beaches, the quaint coastal towns and hamlets, and much more.

Port Lincoln is renowned as the ‘seafood capital of Australia’ and is home to Australia’s largest commercial fishing fleet. Just 50km west is Coffin Bay, famed for its Coffin Bay oysters, and there are several national parks well worth a visit. Needless to say, Eyre Peninsula is a fisho’s paradise, with excellent opportunities for camping and 4WDing too.

The driving here is stress free, with good quality main highways and long country straights for easy overtaking (of caravans mainly, along with the odd truck). The northern reaches of the peninsula are skirted by Highway 1, which stretches from Port Augusta in the east to Ceduna in the west, before continuing on to Adelaide or the Nullarbor.

The B100 largely traces the Eyre Peninsula coast; it’s known as the Flinders Highway down the west coast and the Lincoln Highway along the east coast. And there are a number of inland arterials that connect the smattering of townships throughout the peninsula’s interior, that service the EP’s farming (largely wheat, canola and sheep) and mining (iron ore) communities.

With kids and our camper trailer in tow, we loaded up our 4WD and barrelled over from Melbourne to Adelaide, before spending our first night on the peninsula at Kimba – a service town for the surrounding farms and home to some impressive silo art. Wheat silos stand like silent sentinels over much of the Eyre Peninsula, and painting these otherwise drab monoliths has become quite a thing in recent years, both here and elsewhere.

Kimba was the start of our EP tour proper, and a final chance to stock up before heading into the nearby Gawler Ranges National Park. By the way, there’s a great community campground in Kimba, with clean, modern amenities, all for a suggested gold coin donation, along with a great pub (the Kimba Gateway Hotel).

Halfway across Australia (as the crow flies), Kimba is also home to the Big Galah, and for anyone with a fascination for Australia’s ‘big’ tourist attractions I can report the Big Galah measures up by most metrics. That is, it is indeed big, and it does indeed resemble a galah. Photo snapped and box ticked, it was on to the somewhat more natural charms of the national park.

Gawler Ranges National Park has unique appeal. With low, undulating hills (‘mountains’ would be a stretch) separated by grasslands and low scrub, recent rainfall had rendered the landscape a verdant green, while the place was fairly jumping with fauna. Emus, kangaroos – even the rare yellow-footed rock wallaby – the place was bursting with life.

In contrast to the abundant wildlife, the local rock formations – in particular the ‘Organ Pipes’, were impressive in their own way. Dating back 1500 million years, which is many millions by anyone’s standards, these hexagonal lava columns are well worth checking out, and the red colouration of the rocks comes out beautifully during rain or at sunrise or sunset.

After a couple of nights in our campsite (population: us) under crystalline starry skies, we departed for the coast, stopping off at the remarkable Pildappa Rock on our way to Venus Bay. Pildappa is a giant granite monolith that soars up from otherwise flat farmland – it has a bizarre wave rock formation similar to the one near Hyden in Western Australia, if not quite on the same scale. You can camp here too, but after clambering around the edifice and admiring the view, we continued on to the coast.

Venus Bay is a sleepy little community about 80km southeast of Streaky Bay, but our destination was further south again, at Talia Beach. We would have loved to have headed from the Gawler Ranges all the way to Ceduna and Streaky Bay, but sadly time was against us – they’ll have to wait for another trip.

Setting up in a secluded spot just behind Talia Beach, again we had the entire place to ourselves – just us and the thunder of the crashing surf, with the odd wheeling gull overhead. The craggy coastline here is dotted with small caves and rock pools, but it was hard to top the experience of settling into a camp chair with a sundowner, to witness the sun slipping beneath the waves – a novelty for anyone from Australia’s east coast.

Next we pressed on to the seaside village of Elliston, past the sizeable Lake Newland, down the empty expanses of the Flinders Highway. You’re lucky to pass another vehicle every five or so minutes down here, to the extent that the rural practice of giving a wave to a fellow traveller is very much the norm. Here, the stresses of city life are indeed a world away…

The first thing you notice about the locals in Coffin Bay is their long legs, beady eyes, and sharp-looking beaks. Fortunately, the humans are a hospitable bunch, but the emus – which roam freely all over this idyllic little town – very much seem to rule the roost.

If you love seafood in general, and oysters in particular, don’t miss the oyster farm experience here. Donning waders, we set off to a distant oyster shucking station about 100m offshore, where we learnt about oyster farming and how to properly shuck (or open) this prize of the seafood industry.

Add in a chilled bottle of the local chardonnay, a couple of Bloody Mary oyster shooters, and a blazing overhead sun, and it was a superb way to spend an hour, all capped off by a spectacular seafood feast back on shore at the tour operator’s ‘Oyster HQ’ seafood restaurant. Bliss.

Coffin Bay National Park is just up the road but the weather took a turn for the worse, so we pulled stumps and headed across the bottom of the peninsula to nearby Port Lincoln.

While this compact city is pleasant enough in its own right, it’s what lies just beyond – both on land and sea – that captures most tourists’ imagination.

Famed for its cage-diving tours, where you can come face to snout with a great white shark, we opted for the milder ‘snorkelling with sea lions’ alternative, for a couple of reasons. One, we didn’t want to traumatise the kids any further (they’d only just come to terms with the Big Galah, after all), and two, there are no guarantees you’ll actually see a great white, while the sea lions are all but a dead cert.

And to be honest, seeing these ‘puppy dogs of the sea’ bounding down the beach to meet us was a sight to behold. With our boat anchored offshore next to a far-flung island in Spencer Gulf, a small tender delivered my family and I a bit closer in – and soon after as we slipped into the Gulf’s frigid waters, a gang of seven or eight sea lions was leaping and diving around us.

These beautiful animals are incredibly playful, inquisitive creatures. These tours follow strict guidelines to ensure any impact on the colony is kept to an absolute minimum, but it was an incredible encounter that we, and especially our kids, will never forget.

The next day we had intended to visit Lincoln National Park, but changed tack after a quick chat at the local tourist information centre (TIC) saw us heading to Whaler’s Way instead.

Whaler’s Way is an insanely scenic tourist drive near the very bottom of Eyre Peninsula, where towering cliffs look out over the vastness of the Southern Ocean. It’s all on private land, so you need to visit the TIC and pay a fee ($40 at the time of writing) to get the key to the entrance gate, but it’s well worth the money.

While the sandy and sometimes rocky track can be managed by 2WD vehicles in good weather, I was on occasion happy to have a higher-clearance 4WD at my disposal. A mud map provided on collecting the key gives you the history of the area and highlights the many points of interest, including Theakstone’s Crevasse, Baleen Blowhole, and Pioneer Lookout, to name just a few. The travel distances aren’t great, but bank on three or so hours to take it all in – you’ll be glad you did.

Bidding Port Lincoln farewell, the next day we pottered our way northeast up the Lincoln Highway, visiting several tiny coastal communities on our way to our next overnight stop, Whyalla.

Tumby Bay is also known for its silo art and many murals and Arno Bay has a well-constructed mangrove boardwalk for another stretch of the legs, but it was the township of Cowell that particularly caught our eye, with its many heritage buildings and a great old pub just across from the marina, on Franklin Harbour.

From there the highway turns inland as it heads north to Whyalla, the route pushing past an iron ore mine in the Middleback Range. Here the endless wheat farms further south make way for a more outback kind of feel, with red soil and saltbush replacing the agricultural landscape that characterises so much of the EP.

The inland (and appropriately named) mining town of Iron Knob lies at the northern end of the range, and it was the produce of these mines that led to the establishment of Whyalla, and the steel town that it is to this day.

In fact, most of the steel that went into Australia’s war effort during World War II came from here, making Whyalla a town of vital strategic importance – as the gun emplacements overlooking the town and steelworks attest.

It’s a pretty quiet place, despite its status as the fourth most populous centre in South Australia, with a population of around 22,000. But the relaxed vibe is complemented by some nice old buildings, sweeping vistas over Spencer Gulf, and an unhurried air in general.

This may be an industrial town, and it still has something of a frontier feel to it, but with dolphins regularly visiting the marina and pelicans ever ready to check out the local fishos’ success down by the wharf, it has plenty of natural charm too.

The following morning, the sad realisation dawned that our Eyre Peninsula exploration was nearly over. As we pushed on to Port Augusta, I reflected on how this serene and sparsely populated region had delivered on all fronts.

If you truly want to get away from it all, sample life at a slower pace, and enjoy abounding natural beauty both on and off the land, give Eyre Peninsula a go – the only certainty is you’ll return home both relaxed and refreshed…

NB: The author travelled to Eyre Peninsula and attended all tours at his own expense

Heading to Eyre Peninsula yourself? Here’s a list of highlights that made our trip so memorable…
• Coffin Bay, for seafood, learning about oyster farming, the relaxed vibe, and the nearby Coffin Bay National Park
• Port Lincoln, for seafood, cage diving with sharks, snorkelling with sea lions, Lincoln National Park, and Whaler’s Way
• Gawler Ranges National Park, for peace and solitude, interesting rock formations, heaps of wildlife, and superb stargazing
• Talia Beach, for an unspoilt and dramatic coastline and spectacular sunsets
• Pildappa Rock, for its bizarre wave rock and surrounding views (one of several examples of wave rock on the EP)
• Silo art and murals, at Kimba and Tumby Bay
• Whyalla, for an insight into its steel production and history (book ahead for tours of the steelworks, that only operate on certain days)

Highway 1 will land you at Port Augusta in the east or Ceduna in the west. The Flinders Highway runs down the EP’s western coast, while the Lincoln Highway runs down the eastern coast, with the major attractions of Coffin Bay and Port Lincoln near the very bottom of the peninsula.

By road, Port Lincoln is approximately 650km from Adelaide, 1400km from Melbourne, 1700km from Canberra, 1900km from Sydney, 2300km from Brisbane, 3000km from Darwin, and 2300km from Perth.

Port Lincoln is also serviced by airlines Regional Express and QANTAS, which operate multiple flights a day to Adelaide.