PORT CLINTON, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

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Port Clinton is the northern most town on the Yorke Peninsula facing the St Vincent Gulf, with wide sandy beaches that are perfect for crabbing, fishing or just doing nothing. Once a port, it is now a quiet holiday and retirement village. The mangroves that surround Port Clinton are full of crabs and provide plenty of shelter, making it the perfect nursery for fish.
Location: 126 km north west of Adelaide; 21 km north of Ardrossan.
Origin of name: named by Governor Sir Dominick Daly after the town of Clinton in Canada where he had held the office of Chief Secretary.
Brief history: in 1869 the Wastelands Amendment Act, or as it was more popularly known - The Strangways Act - was passed, and this took the land form the squatters, who had leased it for a nominal amount, and made it available for farmers for agricultural purposes. The land was to be surveyed into Hundreds. The Hundred of Clinton was proclaimed in 1862. In its early days it was the shipping centre of farmers in the area. It was here where many of the miners for Moonta and Wallaroo were landed by ketch after their journey from Port Adelaide. After the completion of the railway form Adelaide to Wallaroo in 1878 the jetty at Port Clinton fell into disuse and disrepair. In 1900, James Barton discovered a deposit of phosphate rock to the west of Port Clinton on Yararoo Estate but the deposit was soon exhausted.
Natural features: Between Port Clinton and Port Price large deposits of brown coal have been discovered. In 1923 drilling tests revealed an estimated 32 million tonnes lying at a depth of 89 metres in a 6.4 metre seam. Since then further investigation has revealed that the deposit extends under the waters of St. Vincent Gulf and forms part of the deposit at Bowmans.