Smoky Bay, South Australia

Smoky Bay is a small coastal village located on the West Coast of the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. Previously used as a port, the town is now a residential settlement and popular tourist destination known for its recreational fishing, with a boat ramp and jetty located in the town. At the 2006 census, Smoky Bay had a population of 577.

History

Smoky Bay's coastline was first sighted and mapped by Captain Matthew Flinders in 1802, who named it 'Smoky Bay' after the amount of smoke from fires lit by the area's Aboriginal people.

Whalers were the first Europeans to inhabit the coastline near the current site of the town, just north of Pt. Collinson. Recently, dune erosion has uncovered parts of the ruins of their camps, with pieces of whale bone and three one-hundred gallon cooking pots were recovered. The historic Port Collinson Whaling Station remnants are listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.

In the early 1860s pastoralists arrived in the district. Former Adelaide civil servant Charles Francis Heath (1832–83) established a sheep grazing property which he named Wallanippie Station after the Aboriginal name of a waterhole near his homestead at the back of Point Brown peninsula.