A small tourist and fishing town, it serves as a central point for the surrounding agricultural district, as well as professional fishermen and tourists.

Where is it?: Eyre Peninsula. 655 km west of Adelaide; 61 km south east of Streaky Bay; 231 km north west of Port Lincoln.

Baird Bay: an excellent fishing spot located about 15 km from the Port Kenny Township. The bay's other attraction is a colony of sea lions. This protected bay is fast becoming a 'must do' holiday experience for travellers. Guided tours are available - the Nocturnal Wildlife tour, the Star Gazers delight and the Sea Lion and Dolphin tour. Unfed, untrained and totally wild sea lions and bottlenose dolphins often chose to interact with swimmers on these tours.

Talia: To experience the real drama of this very dramatic coast it is necessary to travel south 18 km from Port Kenny to the tiny town of Talia. Here is another forgotten little settlement. Talia was surveyed in 1882. The school opened in 1889 and the local hall was built in 1895. Looking at the town today it is hard to imagine that as late as the 1940s Talia was a thriving settlement.

6 km out of Talia (on a road which runs from the town across to the coast) are the famous Talia Caves, which are more accurately described as eroded limestone caverns in the cliff face created by weathering and erosion over thousands of years. Woolshed Ave is reached by a relatively easy walking track. The Woolshed is a large cave, or cavity, in the cliff face which has been formed by the erosion of the cliff face by wind and water.

The second cave, known as The Tub, is a collapsed limestone crater. It is possible to climb into The Tub. The ocean access to the area is through a tunnel in the rocks. Beyond The Tub is a dramatic cliff face which offers views for kilometres to the south along the Talia beach. This lonely and dramatic beach looks dangerous and, as if to confirm this initial impression, there is a substantial marble monument to a Sister Millard who lost her life on 24 June 1924 when part of the cliff face collapsed. Her story is a reminder of the dangers of these cliffs. The day before her death she had resigned from Ceduna Hospital. With three friends she travelled down the coast to have a picnic on the cliffs. While she was taking a photograph the cliff collapsed and she fell into the sea. Her companions watched helplessly as she struggled to keep afloat. There was nothing they could do to save her.

Venus Bay (14 km south): the settlement of Venus Bay is really nothing more than a caravan park, a few very temporary looking holiday homes, a jetty and a small community of people with that 'getting away from it all' look in their eyes. A road behind the settlement climbs up to the nearby cliffs. It is hard to imagine to more different scenes than the quiet harbour on one side and the pounding waves of the Southern Ocean on the other. Primarily a fishing and water sport based destination, the sheltered waters of the bay provide small boat users a safe fishing environment.

The bay is known to hold whiting, salmon, garfish, snook, tommy ruff, flathead and gummy shark. The town lookout, within Venus Bay Conservation Park, offers breathtaking views of towering cliffs and booming surf rolling in from the Great Australian Bight. Keen board riders can also view surf conditions of nearby surf beaches from here.

About Port Kenny

Like nearly all of the west coast of Eyre Peninsula the first European to sight this area was Matthew Flinders who sailed along the coast in the Investigator in 1802. There is a piece of local folklore which claims that Flinders named Venus Bay after the Roman God of Love but the more plausible, and more pedestrian, explanation is that it was named after a 40 ton schooner named Venus which traded along the coast until she ran aground at Tumby Bay in 1850. Equally Port Kenny was named after the first European settler, Michael Kenny, who, having made his fortune on the Victorian goldfields, moved to Eyre Peninsula where he was one of the first farmers to try to grow grain rather than raise sheep. Talia probably is an Aboriginal word. Some sources suggest that it means 'near water'.

The first settlement in the area was on the shores of Venus Bay where a whaling station was established in the 1820s. The tiny settlement consisting of a shop, hotel and police station operated until the 1840s. After that time the focus of the settlement turned inland as the surrounding area was opened up for grazing in 1840s and cereal cropping in the 1870s. The township was abandoned by 1900. It was somewhat revitalised in the 1920s when it became a base for a commercial fishing operation.

Port Kenny was surveyed in 1912, with Governor Bosanquet naming the town after a local landholder. The town grew slightly with the opening of a local hall in 1934, and then the hotel in 1939. Very little has occurred since these buildings were erected, although the town was pivotal in handling the grain and wool which was produced in the hinterland, with grain still being shipped from Port Kenny until the late 1950s. Port Kenny and Venus Bay have survived because during the early part of this century they were important (if very small) ports. As early as the late 1920s the area had been discovered by recreational fishermen who travelled to these tiny outposts eager to catch trevally and trout.