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Fowlers Bay South Australia
Town of Fowlers Bay
Fowlers Bay
Coordinates	31°59′25″S 132°26′09″E / 31.990142°S 132.435748°E / -31.990142; 132.435748
Population	51 (SAL 2016)
Established	10 July 1890 (town) 8 February 2001 (locality)
Postcode(s)	5690
Elevation	3 m (10 ft)
Time zone	ACST (UTC+9:30)
• Summer (DST)	ACST (UTC+10:30)
Location	658 km (409 mi) NW of Adelaide 500 km (311 mi) W of Port Augusta 118 km (73 mi) W of Ceduna
LGA(s)	Pastoral Unincorporated Area
Region	Eyre Western
County	Hopetoun
State electorate(s)	Flinders
Federal division(s)	Grey
Mean max temp Mean min temp Annual rainfall 21.5 °C 71 °F 12.3 °C 54 °F 300.2 mm 11.8 in
Localities around Fowlers Bay: Yalata Yalata Yalata Mitchidy Moola Coorabie Fowlers Bay Mitchidy Moola Bookabie Great Australian Bight Great Australian Bight Great Australian Bight
Footnotes	Locations Adjoining localities

Fowlers Bay, formerly known as Yalata, is a bay, town and locality in the Australian state of South Australia located about 658 kilometres (409 mi) north-west of the state capital, Adelaide. The town is located on Port Eyre, at the western end of the larger Fowlers Bay. It was named Yalata after Yalata station, established in the 1860s and stretching from the Nullarbor Plain across to near Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula, whose homestead was located on the hill nearby. The name Yalata now belongs to a small Aboriginal community further west, which was also situated on station land.

Situated on the Nullarbor Plain, Fowlers Bay was once an active port and a gateway to the western reaches of the continent, but fell into decline in the 1960s and 1970s. However a revitalised tourist industry started bringing more tourists to the town from the 1980s onwards. The southern right whales that frequent the Great Australian Bight were a target of whalers in the past, but now bring sightseers. Large sand dunes are prominent on the southern side of the town, and have been migrating to cover parts of the town over the past century.

History

Aboriginal connections

The town site of Fowlers Bay lies on the traditional lands of the Wirangu people. The Mirning, Kokatha, and Maralinga Tjarutja people, some of whom lived at the Yalata Mission during the 1950s after being displaced, also have spiritual connections to the country. The Mirning people have dreaming stories connected with the whales, in which the people call the whales from the edges of the bight.

The word yalata is said to be from an Aboriginal language, meaning "oyster place" (or "shellfish").

European exploration

The coastline around Fowlers Bay was first mapped in 1627 by François Thijssen, a Dutch sea captain, on his ship 't Gulden Zeepard (Golden Seahorse). The bay was named on 28 January 1802 by Matthew Flinders after his first lieutenant, Robert Fowler, as he was reconfirming the Dutch mapping of the coast and naming features along the way, in the Investigator. He found a couple of islands charted by Thijssen and named the group Nuyts Archipelago.

Edward John Eyre set up base camp here from November 1840 during his epic journeys across the Nullarbor Plain, receiving supplies at Eyre's Landing. By this time the area was well known to American and French whaling ships; Eyre documents seeing whalers in the area. A government ship landed at the bay to bring him supplies.

Whaling ships visited the port in the 1800s, and whales were brought onto the beach for processing.

Settlement and naming

In the 1860s, the first pastoral leases were established by William Swan and Robert Barr Smith, forming Yalata station (they called it Yatala run), a farming property whose boundaries extended from the Head of the Bight (Nullarbor Plain) in the west to Point Brown near Streaky Bay in the east. The station's first buildings were on the beach at Port Eyre. The 5,000 ha (12,000-acre) sheep station's homestead, now a ruin, was built in 1880 on a high hill around 10 km (6.2 mi) inland from Fowlers Bay. The huge sheep station ran up to 120,000 sheep at times.

An unofficial post office was opened in 1865, and the first three postmasters were also policemen. The town was first surveyed in 1867, and resurveyed in March 1890 and proclaimed as the "Town of Yalata" on 10 July 1890. The Nomenclature Committee recommended its renaming to "Tarombo", the name used by local Aboriginal people for a nearby well, to avoid confusion, but its name was changed to Fowler's Bay on 19 September 1940 to agree with the bay and to prevent dual naming. (Yalata now refers to a nearby township.)

Telegraph line and expansion

From 1875 to 1877, three sections of the East-West Telegraph Line were built: from Port Augusta to Port Lincoln; from there to Fowlers Bay, and from Fowlers Bay to near the WA border at Eucla. The third section was undertaken by the Posts and Telegraph Department itself and supervised by R. R. Knuckey. A supply base was built at Fowlers Bay to provide equipment and provisions along the line, and the line between Adelaide and Perth became operational on 8 December 1877, spanning 1,986 mi (3,196 km).

Sometime in the late 19th century a kangaroo hunter named Tom Kent, son of Benjamin Archer Kent, after whom the Adelaide suburb of Kent Town is named, created a cluster of cottages which was informally named "Kent Town". The families of fellow hunters lived there, but there were only ruins left by 1892, and all of the houses were later covered by sand (see below).

In 1910–1911 additional allotments were added, bringing the number from 42 to 62 and in 1990, a further ten allotments were created from reclaimed samphire swampland.

In 1927 the telegraph line was closed, and in 1967 the post office was shut down, contributing to the decline of the town. Some houses were abandoned.

Renaming

Boundaries for the locality of Fowlers Bay which include the town were created on 8 February 2001.

Recent upgrades

The jetty (built in 1896 and extended in 1907, 1914 and 1948) was upgraded in 2002, with solar lighting added in 2003.

Location, governance and demographics

The town is located on Port Eyre, at the western end of the larger Fowlers Bay.

It is located within the federal Division of Grey, the state electoral district of Flinders and the Pastoral Unincorporated Area of South Australia. In the absence of a local government authority, the community in Fowlers Bay receives municipal services from a state government agency, the Outback Communities Authority.

At the 2016 census, the localities of Fowlers Bay and Coorabie shared a population of 51.

Facilities and attractions

Fowlers Bay does not receive reticulated power or water and there are few services; there are solar panels on every roof, residents use rainwater and water piped from a source in the adjacent sand dune, and manage the town's rubbish themselves.

Visually the town is dominated by large sand dunes on its southern side, which have become higher in recent years. After a very quiet period in the 1960s and 70s, the town has become so popular that over 8,000 visitors stay at the caravan park each year, and numbers are boosted by around the same number of day-trippers who often come to watch the southern right whales in the bay over winter. The old police station and courthouse, dating from 1883, has been converted into holiday apartments.

The ruins of the homestead of the Yalata station can be found several kilometres from the town.

There is a small cemetery on the outskirts of the town.

Heritage listings

Fowlers Bay contains one place listed on the South Australian Heritage Register, the Whale Bone Area and the Point Fowler Structure.

There are also some other restored historic buildings, such as the courthouse, the Fowlers Bay Institute, and the harbour master's house.

Sand encroachment

The large sand dunes near Fowlers Bay have been moving closer to the town, and had already by the 1970s covered the Kent Town dwellings up to the last chimney top. By the 21st century, both Kent Town and the High Street have been covered. The dunes have moved approximately 75 m (246 ft) towards the new main road into the town in the decade preceding 2021.

It is feared that climate change might be exacerbating their movement owing to the added stress on the vegetation caused by aridity. The CSIRO has estimated that rainfall will decline by around 30 per cent in the region by 2100, which will impact the plant life significantly and affect their ability to hold the dunes.

For several years before and including 2021, residents of the town have been working to stabilise the dunes by planting new vegetation such as boobialla trees and other native plants, and the government of South Australia approved funds to help pay for the revegetation of the ridge that causes the greatest risk to the town.

Climate

Fowlers Bay has a cool semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk), with moderating influences from the Great Australian Bight. Summers are typically warm to very warm and almost rainless, although when hot northerly winds from the interior occur extreme heat may result. Winters are pleasant, although often windy, and damp though not wet. Three-fifths of the meagre annual rainfall of around 300 millimetres or 12 inches typically occurs between May and August, but only three months have ever exceeded 115 millimetres or 4.53 inches: June 1890 with 169.1 millimetres (6.66 in), August 1915 with 122.5 millimetres (4.82 in) and May 1956 with 130.8 millimetres (5.15 in). The wettest year has been 1890 with 505.8 millimetres (19.91 in) and the driest 1959 with 89.1 millimetres (3.51 in). The highest recorded temperature was 48.4 °C (119.1 °F) and the lowest −3.2 °C (26.2 °F).

See also

• Fowlers Bay Conservation Park

References

Notes

1. Yatala Reef lies off Fowlers Bay, named after the Yatala, a schooner used to deliver supplies to the west coast in the late 1830s and early 1840s.

Citations

1. ^ "Search results for 'Fowlers 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 27 January 2019.
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics (27 June 2017). "Fowlers Bay (suburb and locality)". Australian Census 2016. 
3. ^ Cockburn, John A. (10 July 1890). "untitled proclamation re the Town of Yalata" (PDF). The South Australian Government Gazette. Government of South Australia. p. 56. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
4. ^ Lawson, Robert (8 February 2001). "GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES ACT 1991 Notice to Assign Names and Boundaries to Places" (PDF). The South Australian Government Gazette. Government of South Australia. p. 516. Retrieved 27 January 2019. ...assign the boundaries LYNDHURST, LEIGH CREEK, COPLEY, PARACHILNA, MARLA, NEPABUNNA, OODNADATTA, ANDAMOOKA, PENONG, COORABIE and FOWLERS BAY...
5. ^ "Fowlers Bay, South Australia (Postcode)". postcodes-australia.com. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
6. ^ "Climate Statistics for Fowlers Bay, South Australia". Retrieved 20 January 2012.
7. "Eyre and Western South Australian Government Region" (PDF). Government of South Australia. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
8. ^ "District of Flinders Background Profile". Electoral Commission SA. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
9. ^ "Federal electoral division of Grey" (PDF). Australian Electoral Commission. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
10. Horton, David R. (1996). "Map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
11. ^ Leckie, Evelyn (22 September 2021). "A line in the sand". Australia: ABC News. Retrieved 19 October 2021.
12. ^ Manning, Geoffrey H. (2012). "Y" (PDF). A Compendium of the Place Names of South Australia: From Aaron Creek to Zion Hill, with 54 Complementary Appendices (Revised ed.). Retrieved 18 October 2021 – via State Library of South Australia. Originally published as The place names of our land: a South Australian anthology, Modbury, South Australia : Gould Genealogy & History, 2010.
13. Manning, Geoffrey H. (July 2002). "Yabmana – Yarandale". Manning Index of South Australian History: Place Names of South Australia – XYZ. Retrieved 18 October 2021 – via State Library of South Australia.
14. ^ "The Names of Adelaide, South Australia". Pocket Oz Guide to Australia. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
15. ^ "Fowlers Bay, South Australia". 23 November 2007. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
16. Flinders, Matthew (1966) . A Voyage to Terra Australis : undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803 in His Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland Schooner; with an account of the shipwreck of the Porpoise, arrival of the Cumberland at Mauritius, and imprisonment of the commander during six years and a half in that island (Facsimile ed.). Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia. p. 211. Retrieved 3 January 2014.
17. ^ "Fowlers Bay History". Fowlers Bay. Fowlers Bay Holiday Flats. Archived from the original on 1 December 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021.
18. Edward John Eyre. "Book 2. – Australian Discovery by Land – XV Eyre's journey from Fowler's Bay to Albany in 1841".
19. ^ "Old Yalata Homestead Ruins – SA". ExplorOz. 24 October 2017. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
20. McEwin, A. Lyell (19 September 1940). "Alteration of names of towns" (PDF). The South Australian Government Gazette. Government of South Australia. pp. 569–570. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
21. "Placename Details: Port Eyre". Property Location Browser. Government of South Australia. 1 March 2010. SA0023421. Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
22. "Communities (serviced by the Outback Communities Authority)". Outback Communities Authority. Archived from the original on 2 March 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
23. Australian Bureau of Statistics (27 June 2017). "Fowlers Bay (State Suburb)". 2016 Census QuickStats. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
24. "Fowlers Bay, SA". Retrieved 18 October 2021.
25. "Whale Bone Area and the Point Fowler Structure, Fowlers Bay Conservation Reserve (designated places of archaeological significance)". South Australian Heritage Register. Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources – State Heritage Branch. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
26. ^ Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Monthly rainfall – Fowlers Bay

External links

• Fowlers Bay (Nullarbor Net)
• "The dunes that ate a town" (Video). Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021 – via YouTube.

• Towns in South Australia
• Coastal towns in South Australia
• Bays of South Australia
• Places in the unincorporated areas of South Australia
• Great Australian Bight