Port Elliot - Culture and History

In 1837 Colonel William Light, responding to this interest, inspected the area around the mouth of the Murray and concluded that the land was poor and the mouth of the river was probably not navigable. The following year Sturt endorsed Light's view that the mouth of the Murray could not be made safe for navigation. This led to the establishment of Adelaide on Gulf St Vincent but there was still a body of support for the utilisation of the Murray River and a number of proposals (most involving safer harbours and moving goods overland to points further up the river) were suggested.

Eventually a decision was made that Goolwa would become the last point for shipping on the Murray River (it was located on the last bend before the river entered the sea) and there was a debate as to whether Victor Harbor or Port Elliot would be the ocean port. It was eventually decided that Port Elliot was the best location but this was probably based on its proximity to Goolwa and the belief that a canal could be constructed between the two locations. In 1851 it was agreed to build a railway between Port Elliot and Goolwa at a cost of £20,000. It ended up costing £31,000 and wasn't completed until 1854. It was historically significant being the first railway in Australia. It was operated by draught horses pulling the carriages along the line.

It was, by any conventional measure, a bit of a disaster. It rarely made a profit and the trains carrying the goods travelled at about 10 km/h and had to be unloaded before the goods could be moved to the ships because the waters at Port Elliot were too shallow and the jetty was not long enough. Add to this the problem of rocks off the shore and the constant battering the area receives from the Southern Ocean and it is easy to understand how, after a decade, the major port activities were moved to Victor Harbour. In fact today the towns of Port Elliot and Victor Harbour are so close they almost join in a continuous stretch of holiday accommodation.

Europeans moved into the area around Port Elliot as early as the 1830s and 1840s. The town was surveyed in 1852 and named after Sir Charles Elliot who was the Governor of Bermuda, Trinidad and St Helena at the time. By 1855 the port was dealing with 85 ships a year and in 1861 the 'Altrevida', a ship of 457 tons, became the largest ship ever to enter the port. However, in the space of a decade, seven ships were wrecked trying to navigate through the difficult rocky outcrops off the coast and it was decided to extend the railway to Victor Harbour which became the major port on the south coast.

Surprisingly this change of focus did not hinder the development of the town. By the early 1870s there were a number of guest houses and hotels in the town and it was already catering for the tourists who still drive the town's economy today.