Coles Bay - Culture and History

Before the arrival of European sealers and whalers the area was popular with Aborigines and there are many shell middens along the coast suggesting that it was a popular retreat from the coldness of the Tasmanian winter.

By the early nineteenth century whalers and sealers were well established on both Freycinet Peninsula and Schouten Island. From this time the settlement of the area was largely restricted to adventurers and near-hermits. It was Silas Cole, a lonely lime burner who collected the shells from the Aboriginal middens and burnt them for lime, who gave the town its name. He loved the area and often described its beauty to his friends when he took his lime across Great Oyster Bay to Swansea.

It wasn't until 1934, when a retired auctioneer named Harry Parsons purchased 5 ha of land at Coles Bay, that any kind of settlement developed. Parsons' purchase became the land for the town - and the town became a popular haunt for fishermen and bushwalkers. It was a retreat from modern life. A true escape to a small community of shanties on the edge of a beautiful bay. A rough road was hewn around the coast but most of the building materials for the town arrived on the SS Koomeela which made regular journeys across the bay.