Yorke Peninsula

South Australia

Yorke Peninsula

The Yorke Peninsula, only a couple of hours away from Adelaide, is nestled between Port Broughton and Gulk St Vincent. This secluded and peaceful peninsula is dotted with ports, the southern end becoming more rugged and isolated where Innes National Park combines spectacular scenery with undulating scrubland.

The Yorke Peninsula was almost the last section of the Australian coastline to be mapped by Matthew Flinders in 1802, and it still seems a bit of an afterthought: flat plains stretch out to the sea, so extensively cleared for farming that only tiny areas of original vegetation remain – in the Innes National Park at the very tip of the peninsula and in a couple of conservation parks.

Much is now made of the northern peninsula’s Cornish heritage, but the miners from Cornwall who flocked to the area when copper was discovered in 1859 have left behind little but their names and the ubiquitous Cornish pasty. The three towns of the Copper Triangle or “Little Cornwall” – Kadina, Wallaroo and Moonta – make the most of it at the Kernewek Lowender (Cornish Festival), held over the long weekend in May of every odd-numbered year, though in fact the mining boom ended seventy years ago, and they’ve been plain country towns ever since.

Just two hours’ drive from Adelaide, the peninsula offers a peaceful weekend break as well as good fishing. The east coast ports of Ardrossan, Port Vincent and Edithburgh on the Gulf St Vincent were visited first by ketches and schooners, and later by steamers transporting wheat and barley to England. Now the remaining jetties are used by anglers.

They’re all pleasant to visit, but Edithburgh offers most facilities: once a substantial salt-production town and grain port, it still has a few fine old buildings and a long jetty.

At the tip of the peninsula lies the Innes National Park, with its contrasting coastline of rough cliffs, sweeps of beach and sand dunes, and its interior of mallee scrub.

Premier Stateliner (tel 08/8415 5500) has a daily bus service from Adelaide to Moonta, via Kadina and Wallaroo. The Yorke Peninsula Passenger Service (tel 08/8391 2977) runs from Adelaide to Yorketown, alternating daily between the east coast via Ardrossan, Port Vincent and Edithburgh and the centre via Maitland and Minlaton. There’s no transport to the national park itself.

Climate

Like most of coastal South Australia, Yorke Peninsula has a temperate climate. Its winters are mild, its summers pleasant. Because the peninsula is never more than 50 kilometres across, and in most spots much less, cooling summer sea breezes are common.

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South Australia