Coffin Bay

History

The indigenous inhabitants of the Coffin Bay area are the Nauo Aboriginal people, who have lived there for tens of thousands of years. Well before the official colonisation of South Australia in 1836, the way of life of the Nauo people had been disrupted by raids carried out by seal hunters, often to kidnap Nauo women. British naval explorer Matthew Flinders named the bay on 16 February 1802 in honour of his friend Sir Isaac Coffin, who was Resident Naval Commissioner at Sheerness, where HMS Investigator was fitted out. The bay remained uncharted until it was explored in March 1839 by Captain Frederick R. Lees (), in command of the brig Nereus. Lees' thorough charts became a standard reference for mariners until the electronic era. In November 1952, and again in October 1955, the state government surveyed a "shack area" on crown land from which allotments were available for leasing. The tramway was closed in 1989, and the track was removed in 2001. On 16 October 2003, boundaries created for the locality included the full extent of the Coffin Bay Peninsula and the land to the east, bounded in the north in part by the channel connecting to Kellidie Bay and by the Coffin Bay Road, and in the east by the eastern boundary of the Hundred of Lake Wangary. The locality, which was given the "long established name", includes the private town, the Coffin Bay Shack Site and the Coffin Bay National Park.

Most-observed species

• Silver-eye

  Zosterops lateralis (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  595
• Red Wattlebird

  Anthochaera carunculata (Shaw, 1790) · Aves
  509
• New Holland Honeyeater

  Phylidonyris novaehollandiae (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  457
• Superb Fairywren

  Malurus cyaneus (Ellis, 1782) · Aves
  446
• Galah

  Eolophus roseicapilla (Vieillot, 1817) · Aves
  431
• Silver Gull

  Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae (Stephens, 1826) · Aves
  407
• Pacific Gull

  Larus pacificus Latham, 1801 · Aves
  397
• Emu

  Dromaius novaehollandiae (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  324

Most recent

• M 3.2 — 2003-05-27
  57 km SSW of Port Lincoln, Australia
• M 2.8 — 2002-11-08
  33 km N of Tumby Bay, Australia