A small coastal town which is a fishing port and the centre for a cereal growing and mixed farming agricultural district. It is known for its rugged, scenic coastline. Set between rolling and pleasant sheep and wheat country and some of the most interesting and dramatic coastline on the Eyre Peninsula the town has little of historical interest but is a pleasant place for fishing, swimming, surfing and walking along the rugged sandstone cliffs.

Where is it?: Eyre Peninsula. 169 km northwest of Port Lincoln; 641 km west of Adelaide via the Princes and Eyre Highways.




Elliston stands on the shores of Waterloo Bay which, although it was used to ship out local produce and bring in supplies, has a hair-raisingly dangerous entry with reefs lying between the two headlands - Wellington and Wellesley Points. It is on these headlands that the unusual clog-shaped fossilised cocoons of the weevil Leptopius duponti, which are reputed to be over 100,000 years old, can be seen.

The Investigator Group
The Investigator Group is an archipelago that consists of Flinders Island and five island groups located off the western coast of the Eyre Peninsula. It is named after HMS Investigator by her commander, Matthew Flinders. He named the island group after William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock on Wednesday, 10 February 1802. Waldegrave was the Governor of Newfoundland and an Admiral in the Royal Navy. It is a coincidence that there is also a town named Ellison on Canada's Newfoumndland coast, which is known for its wildlife, including seals, puffins and fairy penguins.

The Group lies within the Great Australian Bight. All the islands except Flinders Island are within the Investigator Group Wilderness Protection Area and the Waldegrave Islands Conservation Park.

The northernmost group - the Waldegrave Islands - lies 3 km offshore near the small town of Elliston. The Waldegrave Islands Conservation Park occupies Waldegrave Island, Little Waldegrave Island and the Watchers. They have calcarenite soils and were grazed by sheep until 1967. Waldegrave Islands Conservation Park is a sanctuary for Cape Barren gees, fairy penguins, sea lions and other wildlife. The Watchers are associated with a submerged reef system independent of that underlying the Waldegrave and Little Waldegrave Islands. As of 1996, the Waldegrave Islands were considered to be the ���second most important breeding area��� for Cape Barren geese in South Australia. The Waldegrave Islands are also the site of a little penguin breeding colony.

Waters adjoining the Watchers drop to depths of 15 metres within about 300 metres immediately south and west of the western rock and about 600 metres to its north east. Little Waldegrave Island is the site of a breeding colony of Australian sea lion. As of 1999, the population was reported as being 38.

Natural features: Great Australian Bight; Cape Finniss; Waterloo Bay; Anxious Bay; Talia Limestone Caves; Lock's Well; Sheringa Beach (surfing); Cape Finniss; Waldergrave Islands Conservation Park; Investigator Group Conservation Park (Flinders, Ward and Pearson Islands); Cap Island Conservation Park (15 km south-west); Bascombe Well Conservation Park.

Built features: Cummings Monument Lookout at Kiana (52 km south)

Anxious Bay: To the north of the town lies Anxious Bay (it can be reached by taking the road approximately 2 km north of the town) which offers spectacular cliff top views as well as access to the area known as 'Blackfellows' which is reputed to be one of the best surfing places on the Australian coast. King George whiting and crayfish are just some of the catch from this clean and unspoilt bay. Anxious Bay is appropriately named ��� we recommend you seek local advice on boating sizes and conditions before you venture out.

Anxious Bay Cliff Top Loop: includes Anxious Bay views as well as the islands and Blacks surf spot. It has the added attraction of sculptures dotted along the cliffs.

Little Bay Clifftop Loop: from the lookout take in the superb view of the outlying islands, including Top Gallant Isles, Flinders Island, Pearson Island and part of Waldegrave Island. Bird Rock, Waterloo Bay and the Elliston township and silos with farmland beyond can also be seen from the lookout.

Little Bay

About Elliston

Elliston is one of the very few towns in Australia to boast that it has been named after a writer. Originally known as Ellie's Town it was named after the writer and teacher Ellen Liston who was born in England in 1838 and emigrated to South Australia in 1850. She became a governess and was working on the property owned by John Hamp near the present town when Governor Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois decided to name the town after her. The honour was a combination of the wide spread respect and admiration she enjoyed in the area and Jervois' penchant for naming towns after friends and family. Ellie's Town was officially gazetted in 1878.

Ellen Liston subsequently moved from the area and over the next seven years she gained a slight reputation as a writer of verse, novels and short stories. Her novels, Auckland Marston and The Stauntons are now long out of print and a collection of her stories and verse Pioneers: Stories by Ellen Liston was published in 1936. She died at Marrabel in 1885.

The area had been settled as early as the 1840s and by 1848, so local legend has it, the port had become known as Waterloo Bay after some settlers, in a brutal act of reprisal, rounded up a large number of local Aborigines and drove them to a cliff where they were confronted with either jumping to their death or being shot. Some macabre European wit decided that the Aborigines had met their Waterloo.

The town's economy was given a boost in the mid-1960s when a Sydney company brought Chinese, Tahitian and Malay divers to the region to exploit the abalone beds which lay offshore. Unfortunately the abalone in Waterloo Bay were fished out and although the town is still home to a small number of abalone divers they are now have to sail beyond the Bay to find their very lucrative molluscs.