Travelling Australia Fact Sheet  http://www.travelling-australia.info	HOME   LIST   BACK

Victor Harbor photographs

Victor Harbor, SA.

In the vicinity of present day Victor Harbor, on 8 April 1802 the explorer Matthew Flinders commanding HMS Investigator and Nicholas Baudin, the French explorer in Le Geographe, met unexpectedly while exploring the Australian coastline. On the basis of this meeting Flinders named Encounter Bay. By 1829 Captain Charles Sturt made his exploratory journey down the Murray River and there were moves to establish a settlement near the river mouth so that the inland could be opened up. In 1837 Colonel Light inspected the area and rejected it as a suitable site for a settlement; he preferred the site he had selected for Adelaide on Gulf St Vincent. Despite Light's unfavourable assessment, Victor Harbor had already established itself as a major location for whalers and sealers who plied the waters of the Southern Ocean. By 1837 there was a whaling station on Granite Island and 200 tons of whale oil were produced in that year. By 1838 Victor Harbor (it had been named by a Captain R. Crozier after HMS Victor which surveyed the harbour at this time) was already recognised as a port (previously known as Port Victor). The first European settlers moved into the area in 1839. Some lived on the mainland and worked at the local whaling stations. Others took up land and started grazing sheep and cattle. Whaling stations in Encounter Bay closed in the 1850s, a victim of their own success in taking Southern Right Whales which regularly visited Encounter Bay to give birth. An attempt to revive whaling in 1871-72 resulted in the single whale taken in 1872 being the last whale taken in Encounter Bay (and probably in Australia). By the 1870s Victor Harbor had established itself as ocean port for the Murray-Darling river system. At first Victor Harbor was not involved in Murray River traffic; Port Elliot had been selected as the ocean port for the river traffic terminating at Goolwa and the railway had been built between Goolwa and Port Elliot for moving cargo between paddle-steamers on the river and ocean-going sailing ships. But Port Elliot had not been successful; the jetty was not long enough to reach water deep enough for ships to come alongside and cargo had to be carried by boat between train and ship. As well, the port was exposed to the Southern Ocean and there were rock obstructions close offshore. By 1864 seven ships had sunk off Port Elliot; Victor Harbor was selected as the replacement ocean port and the railway line from Goolwa was extended to Victor Harbor which became the primary ocean-port for the Murray-Darling. By the 1880s some 25,000 bales of wool from all over western New South Wales and Queensland were being shipped down the Murray, travelling by train from Goolwa to Victor Harbor, and finally travelling to destinations all around the world. This trade came to an abrupt halt in the 1890s when the railway lines were established and the river traffic died. Today the town is a popular tourist and holidaymaker destination in summer and a growing centre for whale watching in winter. Victor Harbor has adopted the Southern Right Whale and seems to regard the visiting right whales as its own. The town is replete with whale images intruding into all sorts of places. Whale watching is very popular, one document mentioned 40,000 visitors each season to watch the whales from the shore. The economic benefit of these additional visitors is most welcome, especially in winter when a beach resort would normally be pretty quiet, but the adverse impact of all those people crowding along the shoreline to look at whales has been recognised. The whale watching season begins at the end of May.

TOP