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Coffin Bay South Australia
View down Coffin Bay Channel
Coffin Bay
Coordinates	34°37′28″S 135°28′11″E / 34.624406°S 135.469651°E / -34.624406; 135.469651
Population	667 (UCL 2021)
Established	1952 ("shack area") 1957 (private town) 2003 (locality)
Postcode(s)	5607
Time zone	ACST (UTC+9:30)
• Summer (DST)	ACST (UTC+10:30)
Location	288 km (179 mi) W of Adelaide 36 km (22 mi) W of Port Lincoln
LGA(s)	District Council of Lower Eyre Peninsula
Region	Eyre Western
County	Flinders
State electorate(s)	Flinders
Federal division(s)	Grey
Mean max temp Mean min temp Annual rainfall 21.3 °C 70 °F 11.3 °C 52 °F 389.8 mm 15.3 in
Localities around Coffin Bay: Coffin Bay (waterbody) Wangary Wangary Coffin Bay (waterbody) Ocean Coffin Bay Wangary Uley Ocean Ocean Uley Uley
Footnotes	Adjoining localities

Coffin Bay, originally Coffin's Bay, is a town at the southern extremity of the Eyre Peninsula, a wheat growing area of South Australia.

The town is situated on the western side of the southern tip of Eyre Peninsula about 46 km from Port Lincoln. The population swells during holiday seasons to more than 4,000 people due to its proximity to the Coffin Bay National Park.

It is a popular location for boating, sailing, swimming, water-skiing, skindiving and wind-surfing, as well as fishing (rock, surf, angling and boat).

The town is named after the bay formed by the Coffin Bay Peninsula and the mainland, and lies on the southeastern shore of the bay. Oyster farming is conducted in the quiet waters of Coffin Bay.

Coffin Bay is in the District Council of Lower Eyre Peninsula local government area, the state electoral district of Flinders and the federal Division of Grey.

History

The indigenous inhabitants of the Coffin Bay area are the Nauo Aboriginal people, who have lived there for tens of thousands of years. Well before the official colonisation of South Australia in 1836, the way of life of the Nauo people had been disrupted by raids carried out by seal hunters, often to kidnap Nauo women.

British naval explorer Matthew Flinders named the bay on 16 February 1802 in honour of his friend Sir Isaac Coffin, who was Resident Naval Commissioner at Sheerness, where HMS Investigator was fitted out. The same year, French explorer Nicolas Baudin provided the alternative French name of Baie Delambre.

The bay remained uncharted until it was explored in March 1839 by Captain Frederick R. Lees (d.1839), in command of the brig Nereus. Lees' thorough charts became a standard reference for mariners until the electronic era.

In November 1952, and again in October 1955, the state government surveyed a "shack area" on crown land from which allotments were available for leasing. In 1957, the private town of Coffin Bay was laid out by Stanley Germain Morgan on section 132 of the cadastral unit of the Hundred of Lake Wangary.

In 1966, BHP opened the Coffin Bay Tramway, between Port Lincoln and a site 8 kilometres (5 mi) south-east of the town, to convey lime sands. The tramway was closed in 1989, and the track was removed in 2001.

On 16 October 2003, boundaries created for the locality included the full extent of the Coffin Bay Peninsula and the land to the east, bounded in the north in part by the channel connecting to Kellidie Bay and by the Coffin Bay Road, and in the east by the eastern boundary of the Hundred of Lake Wangary. The locality, which was given the "long established name", includes the private town, the Coffin Bay Shack Site and the Coffin Bay National Park.

The historic former Coffin Bay Whaling Site at Point Sir Isaac lies within the locality and is listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.

See also

• Coffin Bay National Park
• Kellidie Bay Conservation Park
• Mount Dutton Bay Conservation Park

References

1. ^ "Search results for 'Coffin Bay, LOCB' with the following datasets selected – 'Suburbs and localities', 'Counties', 'Hundreds', 'Local Government Areas', 'SA Government Regions' and 'Gazetteer'". Location SA Map Viewer. South Australian Government. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics (28 June 2022). "Coffin Bay (urban centre and locality)". Australian Census 2021. 
3. ^ Manning, Geoffrey. "South Australian Names – C" (PDF). Manning Index of South Australian History. State Library of South Australia. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
4. ^ Weatherill, Jay (16 October 2003), "GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES ACT 1991, Notice to Assign Boundaries and Names to Places (within the District Council of Lower Eyre Peninsula and the City of Port Lincoln)" (PDF), The South Australian Government Gazette: 3796, archived from the original (PDF) on 9 April 2016, retrieved 24 October 2019
5. ^ "Postcode for Coffin Bay, South Australia". postcodes-australia.com. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
6. "District of Flinder Background Profile". Electoral Commission SA. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
7. "Federal electoral division of Grey" (PDF). Australian Electoral Commission. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
8. ^ "Monthly climate statistics: Summary statistics NORTH SHIELDS (PORT LINCOLN AWS) (nearest weather station)". Commonwealth of Australia, Bureau of Meteorology. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
9. "The Situation of the New Colony". The Sydney Monitor (NSW : 1828 – 1838). NSW. 11 April 1832. p. 4 Edition: Afternoon. Retrieved 31 July 2013 – via National Library of Australia.
10. Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
11. Delaney, Jarrad (11 February 2021). "Big increase in park visitors for December". Port Lincoln Times. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
12. ^ UBD street directory Gregory's South Australia and Northern Territory., Universal Business Directories Pty. Ltd., Universal Publishers, 2013, ISBN 978-0-7319-2696-1, OCLC 829213142{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
13. Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Nauo (SA)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.
14. "Place names of South Australia". The Manning Index of South Australian History. State Library of South Australia. Retrieved 6 May 2006.
15. Property Location Browser V2 Archived 12 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine Government of South Australia, Department of Planning, Transport & Infrastructure Archived 12 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 2014-01-01.
16. Lees, Frederick : Sailing directions for South Australia (Sydney, 1839). Mitchell Library, NSW, Call No DSM/656/L.
17. Buckland, J.L. (August 1977). "A standard gauge railway in mothballs (Coffin Bay tramway of BHP Co. Ltd.)". Australian Railway Historical Society Bulletin. 28 (478). Australian Railway Historical Society: 184–189. This mineral railway was opened in 1966 to bring lime sands 39 km from Coffin Bay to Proper Bay, near Port Lincoln. The operation was visited by an ARHS SA Div tour on 13 Nov 1976. (Citation details via the nswrail.net website)
18. "Former Coffin Bay Whaling Site (designated place of archaeological significance) Coffin Bay National Park". South Australian Heritage Register. Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. Retrieved 12 February 2016.

External links

• Coffin Bay – SMH Travel
• Coffin Bay Tourism Association
• CoffinBay.net

• Towns in South Australia
• Coastal towns in South Australia
• Eyre Peninsula
• Bays of South Australia