Fowlers Bay

History

The town site of Fowlers Bay lies on the traditional lands of the Wirangu people. The Mirning, Kokatha, and Maralinga Tjarutja people, some of whom lived at the Yalata Mission during the 1950s after being displaced, also have spiritual connections to the country. The Mirning people have dreaming stories connected with the whales, in which the people call the whales from the edges of the bight. The word yalata is said to be from an Aboriginal language, meaning "oyster place" (or "shellfish").{{efn|Yatala Reef lies off Fowlers Bay, named after the Yatala, a schooner used to deliver supplies to the west coast in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The bay was named on 28 January 1802 by Matthew Flinders after his first lieutenant, Robert Fowler, as he was reconfirming the Dutch mapping of the coast and naming features along the way, in the Investigator. He found a couple of islands charted by Thijssen and named the group Nuyts Archipelago. Edward John Eyre set up base camp here from November 1840 during his epic journeys across the Nullarbor Plain, receiving supplies at Eyre's Landing. A government ship landed at the bay to bring him supplies. Whaling ships visited the port in the 1800s, and whales were brought onto the beach for processing. An unofficial post office was opened in 1865, and the first three postmasters were also policemen. (Yalata now refers to a nearby township.) From 1875 to 1877, three sections of the East-West Telegraph Line were built: from Port Augusta to Port Lincoln; from there to Fowlers Bay, and from Fowlers Bay to near the WA border at Eucla. The third section was undertaken by the Posts and Telegraph Department itself and supervised by R. R. Knuckey. A supply base was built at Fowlers Bay to provide equipment and provisions along the line, and…

Most-observed species

• Singing Honeyeater

  Gavicalis virescens (Vieillot, 1817) · Aves
  48
• Welcome Swallow

  Hirundo neoxena Gould, 1842 · Aves
  31
• Silver Gull

  Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae (Stephens, 1826) · Aves
  29
• southern right whale

  Eubalaena australis (Desmoulins, 1822) · Mammalia
  23
• European Starling

  Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  21
• Pacific Gull

  Larus pacificus Latham, 1801 · Aves
  20
• Australian Ringneck

  Barnardius zonarius (Shaw, 1805) · Aves
  16
• Gray Shrikethrush

  Colluricincla harmonica (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  16