Walking & Hiking
Trails Along the Edge
The best walking & hiking in Eyre Peninsula
Walk the granite-cliffed coastline of Whalers Way, the dunes and bays of Coffin Bay National Park, or the rugged headlands of Lincoln National Park. Short clifftop strolls and full-day coastal treks reward you with sea-lion colonies, wildflowers and endless ocean horizons.
Walking the Eyre Peninsula means trading crowds for clifftops, granite domes and empty beaches. The trails here run from short, family-friendly foreshore strolls to rugged coastal hikes inside the national parks, almost always with the ocean or a sweeping inland horizon for company.
In the south, Lincoln National Park and Coffin Bay lace together lookouts, headlands and dune walks, with the climb to Stamford Hill rewarding effort with panoramic coastal views. Inland, the Gawler Ranges open up ancient volcanic country, waterfalls and the towering Organ Pipes, while granite monoliths like Mount Wudinna and Pildappa Rock offer easy scrambles to big views.
Many walks double as wildlife outings — you'll pass nesting ospreys, grazing emus and wildflowers in spring. Carry water, sun protection and a map, as remote trails have no facilities and patchy phone signal. Autumn through spring brings the most comfortable walking weather, with wildflowers peaking after winter rains.
Browse walking & hiking by area
43 places
Acraman Creek Conservation Park
A remote coastal park of mangroves, samphire flats and tidal creeks west of Ceduna, rich in birdlife.
Cape Bauer Loop & Whistling Rocks
Blowholes that whistle, cliffs that roar
A 38 km scenic loop from Streaky Bay out to the cliffs of Cape Bauer, where boardwalks lead to the Whistling Rocks and blowholes above the heaving Southern Ocean.
Cape Donington Lighthouse
A historic lighthouse at the tip of Lincoln National Park, looking out over Spilsby Island and the entrance to Boston Bay.
Coffin Bay National Park
Dunes, Surf Beaches & Sheltered Bays
A wild peninsula of windswept dunes, hidden bays and Southern Ocean surf beaches, much of it accessible only by four-wheel drive.
Gawler Ranges National Park
An ancient volcanic wilderness of ochre rhyolite domes, organ-pipe rock formations and arid-zone wildlife on the northern edge of the peninsula.
Great Ocean Tourist Drive Elliston
A clifftop loop drive around Elliston's Anxious Bay, dotted with quirky sculptures and some of the most dramatic sea-cliff scenery in South Australia.
Gunyah Beach
A vast sweep of dune-backed sand on the ocean side of Coffin Bay National Park, famous for its towering mobile dunes.
Hally Beach & Cape Bauer Loop
A coastal drive loop west of Streaky Bay linking sheltered Hally Beach with the dramatic blowholes and cliffs of Cape Bauer.
Head of Bight Whale Watching
One of the world's best land-based whale-watching sites, where southern right whales calve below the Bunda Cliffs each winter.
Hummock Hill Lookout
Where Whyalla began — and was defended
The hill where Whyalla was founded in 1901, fortified with WWII gun emplacements that now frame a sweeping lookout over the steelworks, marina and gulf.
Kellidie Bay Conservation Park
A sheltered tidal bay and mangrove wetland on the edge of Coffin Bay, rich in birdlife and walking trails.
Kolay Mirica Falls
A series of stepped rock pools and seasonal cascades over volcanic rock in the Gawler Ranges, ringed by ancient ironbark.
Lake Gairdner National Park
A salt lake the size of a small country
Australia's third-largest salt lake — 160 km of blinding white salt ringed by red dunes north of the Gawler Ranges, and the venue for Speed Week land-speed racing.
Lake Gilles Conservation Park
A wild expanse of salt lake, mallee and granite between Cowell and Kimba, with rich arid-country wildlife.
Lake Newland Conservation Park
The Eyre Peninsula's biggest wetland, hidden behind dunes
A 38 km coastal park north of Elliston where a 20 km saline lake — the peninsula's most extensive wetland — hides behind giant dunes, alive with waterbirds.
Lincoln National Park
Headlands, Bays & Memory Cove
A rugged coastal park just south of Port Lincoln, with sheltered swimming bays, dramatic headlands and the protected Memory Cove Wilderness.
Mount Greenly
A rugged granite peak inland from Coffin Bay, rewarding a steep scramble with sweeping coastal views.
Mount Wudinna
One of the largest granite monoliths in Australia, with a walking trail to the summit and sweeping views over the central Eyre Peninsula.
Murphy's Haystacks
Pink Granite From the Dawn of Time
A cluster of strange, wind-sculpted pink granite inselbergs more than 1,500 million years old, standing in a farm paddock near Streaky Bay.
Old Paney Homestead
Station life, preserved in stone
A restored stone homestead in Gawler Ranges National Park telling the story of pastoral settlement, police camps and hard seasons in the granite outback.
Organ Pipes Lookout
A wall of ancient volcanic rhyolite columns in Gawler Ranges National Park, formed over 1.5 billion years ago.
Parnkalla Trail
Boston Bay, one footstep at a time
A shoreline walking trail tracing the curve of Boston Bay through Port Lincoln — first landing site, beaches, marina and headlands, with the city never far away.
Pildappa Rock
A giant pink granite inselberg near Minnipa with a perfect "wave" formation, often called a friendlier rival to Wave Rock.
Pinkawillinie Conservation Park
A large mallee wilderness north-west of Wudinna, one of the peninsula's biggest tracts of untouched scrub.