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At the head of Spencer Gulf, Port Augusta is a unique blend of modern-day industry and historical diversity. Within South Australia, it is the most northerly point accessible by sea - apart from the far west coast. Being located at the the meeting point of the major roads and railways from Australia's west, far north and east, Port Augusta is very much the country's transport hub.
Where is it?: South Australia: Outback/Flinders Range. Port Augusta is 328 km north east of Adelaide at the head of Spencers Gulf.
Things to see and do:
Port Augusta is the starting point of the Pichi Richi Railway, one of Australia's best heritage train journeys which runs every weekend on the oldest remaining section of the original narrow-gauge Ghan railway. Trains run between Port Augusta and Quorn, an historic town in the Flinders Ranges.
Wadlata Outback Centre is Port Augusta's main tourist information centre. Within the centre are displays covering such themes as the aboriginal dreamtime, early exploration and European settlement of the Port Augusta region, mining activities in South Australia's far north, the Flinder's Ranges and the outback environment.
Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden, located 2 km north of Port Augusta on the edge of the desert, offers excellent views across the Flinders Ranges and provides an insight into the rich diversity of flora on the Australian desert.
The Port Augusta School of the Air is one of the many bases for both the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the School of the Air which service the remote communities of the Australian outback. Visitors to the School of the Air (located in Power Crescent contact (08) 8642 2077 for details) can see teachers interacting with their outback students via the new high quality broadcasting equipment.
Lookouts:
McLennan Lookout on Whiting Parade (at the far south-eastern extremity of the city) was the site where Matthew Flinders landed in 1802. It offers excellent views across Spencer Gulf towards the Power Stations.
Water Tower Lookout is just across the bridge to the west of the town (turn south west into Bond Street). This old iron water tower offers good views across Spencer Gulf to the city centre.
Surrounding area:
Because of its strategic position as the meeting point of Australia's major highways, Port Augusta is for most travellers a town one travels through on the way to somewhere else. The closest 'somewhere else' to Port Augusta are two interesting regions of South Australia - Eyre Peninsula and the Flinders Ranges.
About Port Augusta
At a national level, Port Augusta has become the central point of a vast web of communications, where highways and railways from Adelaide and Melbourne to the south, Queensland and New South Wales to the east, Western Australia to the west and the Northern Territory in the north, all come together - due to the unique nature of Port Augusta's geography.
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That national significance has become the powerhouse of the town's economy, but it had nothing to do with the town's reason for its existence in its formative years. As pastoral properties were opened up further and further away from Adelaide during the 19th century, a port closer to these outback properties from which to overland cattle, sheep and wool, became a vital necessity, and Port Augusta came into being to fulfil that role.
Formerly mostly sandhills backed by scrubland of mostly black oak, the tiny settlement took on a role of vital importance to the pastoral properties of outback South Australia, beginning in January 1854 when the schooner Daphne took the first cargo of 100 bales of wool from Port Augusta to Port Adelaide. Runs acquired by the Elder family, particularly those in the Flinders Ranges region, were at the forefront of Port Augusta's development. From being a one-person white settlement in 1854, Port Augusta soon grew into a boisterous frontier-like town with bullock drays arriving regularly with loads of wool bales and a steady stream of ketches, schooners and then ocean going clippers coming and going.
The port fell into decline during the early years of the 20th century when rail transport took over from coastal vessels, but Port Augusta did not suffer, as it re-invented itself to become a vital cog in the country's rail network and home to a major South Australian power station. Today, despite all the trappings of a city of 15,000, Port Augusta retains a hint of the early empty landscape into which it was created a century and a half ago.
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