Stenhouse Bay, South Australia

A ghost port at the foot of Yorke Peninsula through which locally mined gypsum was exported. Windjammers once loaded limestone which was quarried inland at Inneston. The village of Marion Bay is near the bay.
Location: 328 km west of Adelaide.
Origin of name: named after Andrew Stenhouse, who in the 1920's operated the Permascite Manufacturing Company. He helped start the gypsum industry here.
Brief history: William Innes discovered huge deposits of gypsum near Stenhouse Bay. The town grew from an isolated backwater to a busy port when a major mining venture began in 1913. In the early 1980s, the Waratah Gypsum Company closed its works and the town was sold to the South Australian Government which demolished the town except for the few houses required for the rangers of the National Parks and Wildlife Organisation who look after Innes National Park.
Natural features: Stenhouse Bay; Innes National Park; Pondalowie Bay; Jolleys Beach; Chinamans Hat; Cable Bay; Cape Spencer; West Cape; Royston Head; Browns Beach; Althorpe Islands; Investigator Strait; Gulf St Vincent; Gypsum Lake District; Warrenben Conservation Park; Althorpe Islands Conservation Park (includes Althorpe, Haystack and Seal Islands).
Built features: village of Marion Bay (8 km north on the southern tip of Yorke Peninsula); Cape Spencer Lighthouse (1974); West Cape Lighthouse
Heritage features: The Maritime Trail (shipwrecks Ethel, Hugomont and Ferrett); Althorpe Island lighthouse (1879) and Lighthousekeeper's cottage; Althorpe Islands Conservation Park; Stenhouse Bay jetty; historic ghost town of Inneston, first settled in the late 1880s when gypsum was first discovered in the area.