Yorke Peninsula
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Yorke Peninsula is in South Australia, and should not be confused with Cape York Peninsula, in Queensland.
The Yorke Peninsula is a peninsula located north-west and west of Adelaide in South Australia, Australia, between Spencer Gulf on the west and Gulf St. Vincent on the east. It has geographic coordinates of .
Before white settlement in around 1840, Yorke Peninsula was the home to the Narungga people. Today the descendants of these people still live on Yorke Peninsula, supported by the Narungga Aboriginal Progress Association in Maitland, and in the community at Point Pearce near the northern end of Gulf Saint Vincent.
Principal towns include the Copper Triangle towns of Kadina, Moonta and Wallaroo; farming centres of Maitland, Minlaton and Yorketown; and the port of Ardrossan. A number of smaller coastal towns are popular destinations for fishing and relaxing holidays, particular from Adelaide. The south-western tip is occupied by Innes National Park.
Yorke Peninsula has never had a railway line along it, only the railway to Kadina and Wallaroo across the top. It is a major producer of grain, particularly barley, so historically this has been sent out by sea. Almost every coastal town has a jetty, which used to be visited by ketches, schooners and later steamships to collect the grain in bags, and deliver fertiliser and other supplies. As the roads have improved, and freight handling techniques have changed from bags to bulk, this became obsolete. A new deep-water port was built near the south eastern tip at Port Giles to export grain in bulk (opened in 1970), and almost all the other ports ceased to be used for freight in the 1950s and 1960s. The only other ports with bulk handling facilities are Wallaroo at the north-western side, and Ardrossan at the top of Gulf Saint Vincent, also used to ship dolomite from a nearby mine for OneSteel. Maitland has a grain receiving depot operated by AWB, serviced only by road.
[edit] External links
- Yorke Peninsula Website
- Terraserver.com navigable satellite map of the Yorke Peninsula.
- Map of Yorke Peninsula
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