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A picturesque fishing port and home to a lobster fishing fleet that has developed into a popular holiday resort town.
Beachport Jetty
Where is it?: South Australia: South east. 385 km south-east of Adelaide on South Australia's Limestone Coast.
The appeal of the town is created by a wonderful mixture of Norfolk pines, pure aquamarine waters, beautiful white sands and a sense of relaxation produced by people swimming, fishing and boating.
One of the characteristics of the area is the shallowness of the waters offshore. This accounts for the town's jetty which, at 772 metres, is one of the longest in Australia. It was commenced in 1878 and the plan was to build it nearly 1300 metres long.
Things to see and do:
Now a National Trust Museum, the Old Wool and Grain Store is located in Railway Terrace. Dating from the 1879-80 and built of local freestone and limestone quoins. The building was originally constructed as a wool and grain store. The museum has a good collection of artefacts from the town's whaling and shipping past.
Lookouts: A walk past the lighthouse reaches a lookout which has views to Penguin Island. The lighthouse, which was built in 1878, used to be on Penguin Island but was moved to the mainland in 1960. Penguin Island is characterised by 10-15 metre cliffs and is the breeding ground for silver gulls, little penguins and crested terns. There are also Australian fur seals on the island.
Surrounding area:
Woakwine Cutting: 10 km to the north is Australia's biggest engineering feat performed by just two people. It is a large trench dug by Grazier Murray McCourt and a friend over three years in the 1960s so as to convert a large area of swamp into farmland.
The Pool of Siloam, on the Scenic Drive, is about as close as Australia gets to the Dead Sea. It is fed by underground springs and has a salinity seven times that of the sea. This means that it is popular for therapeutic purposes. It also means that if you are a non-swimmer you will float. You can even lie on your back and read a book.
Brief history: Within three decades of Nicolas Baudin naming Rivoli Bay in 1802, whalers used the area as a temporary base. In 1845 Captain Emmanuel Underwood built a store from which he traded with merchants in Port Adelaide. The town and its facilities grew up around this store.
Known as 'Wirmalngrang' to the local Booandik Aborigines of the Bunganditj peoples, its original inhabitants. Contrary to what one would expect, the town was named in May 1878 for the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Michael Hicks Beach, 1st Earl St Aldwyn, and officially proclaimed a port on 21 November 1878.
Beachport is also possibly the location of the first casualties of World War 2 on Australian soil. On 12 July 1941, a local fisherman discovered and towed to Beachport a German sea mine either laid by the raider Pinguin or the minelayer Passat. The following day, two Able Seamen, Thomas Todd and William Danswan, part of a three man Rendering Mines Safe (REMS) team, were killed when a wave lifted the mine and caused it to explode on the beach while they were attempting to defuse it. A monument now stands in the town to honour them.
The Bryan Brown/Karen Allen comedy, Sweet Talker (1991), was shot in and around Beachport.
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