The Best Museums & Heritage Stops on the Eyre Peninsula
Windjammers, windmills, blacksmiths and jade - ten places where the peninsula keeps its past.
The Eyre Peninsula's history was built by windjammer sailors, blacksmiths, lighthouse keepers and farmers who harvested water off bare granite - and the region keeps that past in a string of small, volunteer-run museums that punch far above their weight. From Port Lincoln's working slipway to a windmill collection on the edge of the Nullarbor, here are the heritage stops worth your time. For the human story behind the best of them, read The Boatbuilder of Boston Bay - then start ticking off the heritage and history trail below.
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1
WhyallaWhyalla Maritime Museum
Walk under - then aboard - HMAS Whyalla, the corvette the city's shipyards launched in 1941, now landlocked beside the highway.
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2Port Lincoln
Axel Stenross Maritime Museum
The preserved slipway and workshops of a Finnish windjammer carpenter, still smelling of tar and timber on the Port Lincoln foreshore.
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3
Tumby BayKoppio Smithy Museum
A whole National Trust village in the green hills behind Tumby Bay, grown around a 1905 blacksmith's shop.
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4
CedunaPenong Windmill Museum
Twenty restored windmills beside the Eyre Highway, crowned by Bruce - the biggest windmill in Australia.
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5Streaky Bay
Streaky Bay Powerhouse Museum
A dense, well-kept collection of west coast pioneering life, from shipwreck relics to settler cottages.
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6Cowell
Franklin Harbour Historical Museum
Cowell's 1880s post office, filled with period rooms and specimens of the town's improbable nephrite jade.
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7Whyalla
Mount Laura Homestead Museum
Whyalla's station-era homestead museum, telling the pastoral story that preceded the steel.
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8
Coffin BayMount Dutton Bay Woolshed
A heritage-listed 1875 woolshed on its own jetty near Coffin Bay - shearing history in situ.
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9Gawler Ranges
Old Paney Homestead
A restored stone homestead deep in Gawler Ranges National Park, from the days when this was sheep country.
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10Port Lincoln
St Matthew's Anglican Church (Poonindie)
The 1850s chapel of the Poonindie Aboriginal mission, one of the most historically significant buildings on the peninsula.
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Image credits
- Whyalla ship 7-1.jpg by Thilver , CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons