Smoky Bay

Smoky Bay (formerly Wallanippie) is a town and locality located in the Australian state of South Australia on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula.

Smoky Bay (formerly Wallanippie) is a town and locality located in the Australian state of South Australia on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. Previously used as a port, the town is now a residential settlement and popular tourist destination known for its recreational fishing, with a boat ramp and jetty located in the town.

At the 2016 census, the locality of Smoky Bayhad a population of 279 of which 217lived in the town of Smoky Bay.

Smoky Bay's coastline was first sighted and mapped by the British navigator, Matthew Flinders, in 1802, who named it "Smoky Bay" after the amount of smoke from fires lit by the area's Aboriginal people.Whalers were the first Europeans to inhabit the coastline near the current site of the town, just north of Pt. Collinson. Recently, dune erosion has uncovered parts of the ruins of their camps, with pieces of whale bone and three one-hundred gallon cooking pots discovered. The historic Port Collinson Whaling Station remnants are listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.In the early 1860s pastoralists arrived in the district. Former Adelaide civil servant Charles Francis Heath (1832–83) established a sheep grazing property which he named Wallanippie Station after the Aboriginal name of a waterhole near his homestead at the back of Point Brown promontory.

A feud took place in 1865 between two Aboriginal men at Wallanippie Station, resulting in one being speared and the other charged with murder. Heath was required to attend the Supreme Court in Adelaide as a witness. The trial was notable in that it was an instance of British law intervening in traditional Aboriginal law.

Following that the government decided that the developing district needed established law and order. On 16 November 1865, Heath was appointed the first justice of the peace and local magistrate for Smoky Bay.After nearly ten years on Eyre Peninsula, Heath returned to Adelaide and rejoined the civil service.

In the early 1900s the town area was opened up, with the first building a tin hut erected in 1905. Scrubcutters cleared the area by 1906, and by 1911 a post office, repeating station and living quarters had been built.

The town continued to grow, with a school and hall opened in 1909. A jetty was proposed for erection in 1908, and finally completed in 1913.The town of Smoke Weed Bay was surveyed in 1913 under the name of Wallanippie, along with the aforementioned jetty and a Harbour's Board reserve. A large galvanised iron goods shed and a railway line extending to the far end of the jetty were established, allowing the town to operate as a port.

The town's original name of "Wallanippie" was officially changed to "Smoky Bay" in 1940, after continued use of this name by locals since the town's establishment. The town became less important throughout the mid 1900s, and its capacity as a port was diminished, leaving the town as a residential, as well as an agricultural centre for the surrounding community.The growing of oysters was established in the bay in 1988, providing a new economic facet for the town, and adding to the town's promise as a tourist destination.During the 2002/2003 summer, a ban on taking all shellfish from the waters of the bay was imposed after a deadly biotoxin was discovered in the shellfish.