Port Lincoln South Australia |
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Port Lincoln
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Location in South Australia | |||||||||||||
Coordinates | 34°43′56″S 135°51′31″E / 34.73222°S 135.85861°ECoordinates: 34°43′56″S 135°51′31″E / 34.73222°S 135.85861°E | ||||||||||||
Population | 16,147 (2015) | ||||||||||||
• Density | 118.47/km2 (306.83/sq mi) | ||||||||||||
Established | 1839 | ||||||||||||
Postcode(s) | 5606 | ||||||||||||
Area | 136.3 km2 (52.6 sq mi) (2011 urban) | ||||||||||||
Time zone | ACST (UTC+9:30) | ||||||||||||
• Summer (DST) | ACST (UTC+10:30) | ||||||||||||
Location |
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LGA(s) | City of Port Lincoln | ||||||||||||
Region | Eyre and Western | ||||||||||||
County | Flinders | ||||||||||||
State electorate(s) | Flinders | ||||||||||||
Federal Division(s) | Grey | ||||||||||||
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Footnotes | Adjoining localities |
Port Lincoln is a city on the lower Eyre Peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia. It is situated on the shore of Boston Bay, which opens eastward into Spencer Gulf. It is the largest city in the West Coast region, and is located approximately 280 km as the crow flies from the State's capital city of Adelaide (646 km by road). The city is reputed to have the most millionaires per capita in Australia. The town claims to be the "Seafood Capital of Australia".
The Eyre Peninsula has been home to Aboriginal people for over 40 thousand years, with the Nauo (south western Eyre), Barngarla (eastern Eyre), Wirangu (north western Eyre) and Mirning (far western Eyre) being the predominant original cultural groups present at the time of the arrival of Europeans. (Tindale 1974 in DEH 2004a; SATC 1999).
Matthew Flinders was the first European to discover Port Lincoln under his commission by the British Admiralty to chart Australia's unexplored coastline. On 25 February 1802, Flinders sailed his exploration vessel HMS Investigator into the harbour, which he later named Port Lincoln after his native county of Lincolnshire in England. A couple of months later on 19 April, Nicolas Baudin entered the same port and named it Port Champagny.
Sealers had visited the area around 1828 and the mainly French whailing ships were fishing the local bays and island regions by the 1820s and up to the 1840s. In 1836 Governor Sir John Hindmarsh, the first Governor of South Australia, gave instructions to Colonel William Light of finding a capital for the 'New British Provence of South Australia'. He'd been in the colony for four months and in all that time he'd been trying to find a right place for a harbour, and a right place for a settlement.