PORT ELLIOT, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

$775.00

Original painting by Maureen Finck.

Oil and acrylic paint on canvas.

Ready to  hang.

 

Out of stock

Description

The beautiful beach of Port Elliot inspired me to produce this abstract ocean painting.

Port Elliot is a town in South Australia toward the eastern end of the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula.

It is situated on the sheltered Horseshoe Bay, a small bay off the much larger Encounter Bay.

Located 91 km south of Adelaide, Port Elliot is a pleasant township which was once the major port for good moving up and down the Murray River.

Europeans moved into the area around Port Elliot as early as the 1830s and 1840s.

Horseshoe Bay was proclaimed a port in 1851, and the settlement above the bay was named Port Elliot in 1852 after Charles Elliot, the Governor of Bermuda who was a friend of the then Governor of South Australia, Sir Henry Young.

The location had been previously known as Freeman’s Knob; the aboriginal name for the area may have been “Witengangool”.

The port was established to provide a safe seaport for the Murray river trade which terminated at Goolwa as the Murray Mouth was deemed too treacherous and unpredictable for safe navigation.

Goods and passengers were carried between Goolwa and Port Elliot on the first public railway in Australia completed in 1854. By 1855 the port was dealing with 85 ships a year.

It was operated by draught horses pulling the carriages along the line.

It was, by any conventional measure, a bit of a disaster. It rarely made a profit and the trains carrying the goods travelled at about 10 km/h and had to be unloaded before the goods could be moved to the ships because the waters at Port Elliot were too shallow and the jetty was not long enough.

Add to this the problem of rocks off the shore and the constant battering the area receives from the Southern Ocean. In the space of a decade, seven ships were wrecked trying to navigate through the difficult rocky outcrops off the coast.

For this reason, in 1864 the railway was extended to Victor Harbor which provided safer access for ships and it became the major port on the south coast.

Port Elliot’s role as a port ended, with the bay and jetty being left to the fishermen and beachgoers.

Surprisingly this change of focus did not hinder the development of the town. By the early 1870s there were a number of guest houses and hotels in the town and it was already catering for the tourists who still drive the town’s economy today.

Boomers Beach
The huge waves which caused such problems for the early sailing ships are ideal for experienced surfers. Boomers Beach, when the waves are running, is one of the best locations on the South Australian coast.

Today, Port Elliot is a quiet township with two hotels, three churches, six coffee shops, no fast food chains, and is a popular holiday destination close enough to Adelaide for day trippers and even commuters.

Additional information

Weight 2.2 kg
Dimensions 76 × 3.75 × 101 cm