The coastline north of Elliston

Elliston
Attractive seaside town on the Eyre Peninsula
Elliston is a delightful seaside town located 169 km northwest of Port Lincoln and 641 km west of Adelaide via he Princes and Eyre Highways. Set between rolling and pleasant sheep and wheat country and some of the most interesting and dramatic coastline on the Eyre Peninsula the town has little of historical interest but is a pleasant place for fishing, swimming, surfing and walking along the rugged sandstone cliffs.

Elliston is one of the very few towns in Australia to boast that it has been named after a writer. Originally known as Ellie's Town it was named after the writer and teacher Ellen Liston who was born in England in 1838 and emigrated to South Australia in 1850. She became a governess and was working on the property owned by John Hamp near the present town when Governor Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois decided to name the town after her. The honour was a combination of the wide spread respect and admiration she enjoyed in the area and Jervois' penchant for naming towns after friends and family. Ellie's Town was officially gazetted in 1878.

Ellen Liston subsequently moved from the area and over the next seven years she gained a slight reputation as a writer of verse, novels and short stories. Her novels, Auckland Marston and The Stauntons are now long out of print and a collection of her stories and verse Pioneers: Stories by Ellen Liston was published in 1936. She died at Marrabel in 1885.

The area had been settled as early as the 1840s and by 1848, so local legend has it, the port had become known as Waterloo Bay after some settlers, in a brutal act of reprisal, rounded up a large number of local Aborigines and drove them to a cliff where they were confronted with either jumping to their death or being shot. Some macabre European wit decided that the Aborigines had met their Waterloo.

The town's economy was given a boost in the mid-1960s when a Sydney company brought Chinese, Tahitian and Malay divers to the region to exploit the abalone beds which lay offshore. Unfortunately the abalone in Waterloo Bay were fished out and although the town is still home to a small number of abalone divers they are now have to sail beyond the Bay to find their very lucrative molluscs.

Things to see:  

Ancient fossils
Elliston still stands on the shores of Waterloo Bay which, although it was used to ship out local produce and bring in supplies, has a hair-raisingly dangerous entry with reefs lying between the two headlands - Wellington and Wellesley Points. It is on these headlands that the unusual clog-shaped fossilised cocoons of the weevil Leptopius duponti, which are reputed to be over 100 000 years old, can be seen.

Anxious Bay
To the north of the town lies Anxious Bay (it can be reached by taking the road approximately 2 km north of the town) which offers spectacular cliff top views as well as access to the area known as 'Blackfellows' which is reputed to be one of the best surfing places on the Australian coast.

	Hotels
	Elliston Hotel/Motel Fifth St Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (086) 87 9009 Rating: *
	Apartments
	Ellenliston Holiday Apartments Beach Tce Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9028 Rating: **
	Cottages & Cabins
	Elliston Waterloo Bay Caravan Park Beach Tce P.O. Box 34 Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9076 Facsimile: (08) 8687 9276 Rating: ***1/2
	Caravan Parks
	Elliston Caravan Park & Camping Area Flinders Hwy P.O. Box 14 Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9061 Facsimile: (08) 8687 9071 Rating: **1/2
	Elliston Waterloo Bay Caravan Park Beach Tce P.O. Box 34 Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9076 Facsimile: (08) 8687 9276 Rating: ***1/2
	Restaurants
	Ellenliston Holiday Apartments Beach Tce Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9028
	Elliston Hotel/Motel Fifth St Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9009
	Cafés
	Elliston Cafe 145 Beach Tce Elliston SA 5670 Telephone: (08) 8687 9021