Meningie

Meningie is a town on the south-east side of Lake Albert in South Australia.

Meningie is a town on the south-east side of Lake Albert in South Australia. It is on the Princes Highway near The Coorong and was surveyed in 1866. At the 2016 census,the locality of Meningie had a population of 1118 with a median age of 51 while its town centre had a population of 852.

The word Meningie is derived from "the Aboriginal word 'meningeng' meaning 'place of mud'".The town was surveyed between March and June 1866 by W. Farquhar without any proclamation.Land was offered for sale on 23 August 1866.The name also was used for an “adjoining private subdivision of sections 104, 106/9 and 111” in the cadastral unit of the Hundred of Bonney.A school was opened in 1869.A jetty was erected in 1867, with paddle steamers operatingbetween Meningie and other ports on Lake Albert and Lake Alexandrina until 1927/1928. The town ceased to operate as a port in December 1936.Boundaries for the locality were created for the “long established name” on 24 August 2000 and which include the Government Town of Meningie.Meningie was the first place in Australia to have ADSL broadband installed without using a Telstra DSLAM. Agile Communications installed their own DSLAM in Meningie in October 2003, following on from having established a microwave network connecting to Adelaide in May 2001. Agile's associated internet service provider, Internode Systems offered services through this DSLAM.

Meningie has attractions and amenities for travellers and is the closest township to the Coorong National Park. The Lake provides visitors with many scenic locations and places to fish, swim, kayak, jet ski and water ski / wake-board.Bird watchers also enjoy coming to see the range of rare and vulnerable wildlife that the Lake and wetlands support. There are local 4WD tracks, bush walking trails, and indigenous cultural journeys at Camp Coorong. The Meningie Cheese Factory Museum Inc. is wholly owned and operated by volunteers, and is both educational and a tourist attraction for the town. It is alongside the Cheese Factory Restaurant and the Lake Albert Caravan Park which is directly opposite.

In May 2013, a statue of a ostrich wearing a saddle was unveiled to commemorate the story of a local Irish bushranger, John Francis Peggotty, also known as "Birdman of the Coorong".