PORT MACDONNELL, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

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A small fishing and former trading port on the western shores of Discovery Bay, Port MacDonnell southernmost town in South Australia. The town prides itself on being the The Southern Rock Lobster Capital of Australia. Bay, Port MacDonnell is also the western gateway to the Great Ocean Road. The town is used as a base for the region, its activities including surfing at and nature walks at Cape Northumberland.
Location: 467 km south east of Adelaide; 28 km south of Mt. Gambier.
Origin of name: recalls Sir Richard Graves Macdonnell, Governor of South Australia from 1855-1862 when the town was proclaimed (4th April 1860).
Brief history: the Bungandidj Aborigines occupied the area prior to the arrival of Europeans. Cape Northumberland and Mt. Gambier (28 km inland) were sighted and named by Lieut., James Grant, sailing HMS Lady Nelson on 3rd December 1800 on his way from England to Sydney. The town developed as the major port for the south east corner of South Australia in the 1840s. It gained a reputation second only to Port Adelaide as the state's busiest port, shipping wheat and wool from the local area around the world on clippers. All that changed when the new road and railway between Adelaide and Melbourne bypassed the town in the 1880s. It remained a busy port but the focus has shifted to the local fishing and lobster industries and tourism.
Natural features: Southern Ocean; Cape Northumberland Park; Discovery Bay; Petrified Forest (Frog Rock, Rhino Rock, Captains Head Rock); Mount Schank (crater of the dormant volcano, 10 km north); Piccaninnie Ponds Conservation Park; Douglas Point Conservation Park; Ewens Ponds Conservation Park (6 km north east); Buck's Lake Game Reserve; Nene Valley Conservation Park
Heritage features: Victoria Hotel (1860s); Dingley Dell, home of poet, mounted policeman, drover and horse breaker, Adam Lindsay Gordon, between 1864 and 1866; Cape Northumberland lighthouse (1882); Cape Banks Lighthouse (1882); Public Buildings Complex (police station, courthouse, telegraph station and customs house, 1862-75); Port MacDonnell & District Maritime Museum; Wagon tracks of 19th century bullock wagons scar the limestone flats at low water.