Yankalilla

History

The Yankalilla area was originally inhabited by the Kaurna, an Aboriginal Australian people, who occupied an area of land stretching from Cape Jervis, up the western side of the Fleurieu Peninsula, to the top of Gulf St Vincent. The Kaurna occasionally met with the Ramindjeri people from the Encounter Bay and Fleurieu Peninsula for trade and exchange. Aboriginal mythology credits the formation of the land forms of the Fleurieu Peninsula to the travels of Tjilbruke, the Kaurna ancestor creator as he grieved carrying the body of his nephew from the Sturt River to Cape Jervis. The Yankalilla district has European history dating back to the first settlement in South Australia, with coastal areas colonised in the late 1830s. In 1839 and 1840 the area around Yankalilla was surveyed into sections of 80 acres each and this land was opened up for selection in 1840 for sheep and dairy activities and wheat growing. In 1841 and 1842 Henry Kemmis selected sections 1181 and 1182 and in 1842 came to live on Manna Farm. He and his family lived at first in a Manning house (a prefabricated wooden house transported from England), while their stone house was being built. His wife (Mary nee Dodd) died in 1848. Kemmis remarried in 1851 to Isabella Daglish, and they left Yankalilla in the 1850s and went to Tasmania where Henry ran Campbelltown Grammar School, and later to Warrnambool to run a school there, and finally to Bathurst NSW where he was the first headmaster of All Saints College. Also in 1842 Septimane Herbert came to Yankalilla and built a stone house which he called Wissanger. Herbert remained at Yankalilla for the rest of his life and was a prominent member of the community. Another early settler was Thomas Willson, who bought land from Kemmis in 1853. In 1857 he had part…

Geography

Yankalilla lies inland on the Fleurieu Peninsula, a small protruding stretch of land south of the Adelaide Plains. It is situated in the valley carved by the Bungala River, which meets the sea at the coast not far from the town, at nearby Normanville. The natural vegetation is dominated by Eucalypts and other southern natives, although grasses and weeds have taken their toll on many species. Most of the region lies on sedimentary rock, with sandstone, mudstone and limestone deposited on an ancient sea floor between 1000 million and 600 million years ago during the Proterozoic. The youngest rocks in the region are in deposits laid down during the Cambrian period (600 to 500 million years ago) when fossils first appeared in the record. Fossils in the Normanville Group of rocks, which outcrop on the coast from Myponga Beach to Carrickalinga, were the first proof of Cambrian-age rocks in the Mount Lofty Ranges. The area was impacted during the Delamerian Orogeny around 500 Million Years ago, forming mountain ranges, which have long since eroded away. During the Permian ice ages, many of the areas rocks were left with striation pavements, showing the direction of glacial movement, with Glacier Rock at Inman Valley, South Australia a well studied example. During the Triassic, Laterite, an iron-rich formation was deposited, and is now of economic value in road metals. The landscape came to its present form only around two million years ago, after a period of subsidence, followed by uplift from intraplate movements, the same disturbance that formed the Flinders Ranges. Since the town has no weather station, climate data was sourced from Parawa, a small settlement south of Yankalilla.

Most-observed species

• Australian Magpie

  Gymnorhina tibicen (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  1,208
• Galah

  Eolophus roseicapilla (Vieillot, 1817) · Aves
  949
• Little Raven

  Corvus mellori Mathews, 1912 · Aves
  899
• Superb Fairywren

  Malurus cyaneus (Ellis, 1782) · Aves
  814
• Crimson Rosella

  Platycercus elegans (Gmelin, 1788) · Aves
  801
• Welcome Swallow

  Hirundo neoxena Gould, 1842 · Aves
  673
• Silver Gull

  Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae (Stephens, 1826) · Aves
  612
• Magpie-lark

  Grallina cyanoleuca (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  602

Most recent

• M 3 — 2022-03-29
  3 km ESE of Macclesfield, Australia
• M 4 — 2022-03-05
  3 km SW of Mount Barker, Australia
• M 3.2 — 2018-08-08
  11 km WNW of Mannum, Australia
• M 3.9 — 2017-02-01
  9 km NW of Murray Bridge, Australia
• M 3.3 — 2011-10-18
  3 km ESE of Hawthorndene, Australia
• M 3.8 — 2010-04-16
  2 km N of Macclesfield, Australia