Guide to Whyalla South Australia Australia

This seaside city is blessed with more than 300 days of sunshine a year and offers a wealth of attractions and events.

Whyalla is a great spot for keen fishermen, divers and boat enthusiasts. The city hosts the hotly-contested Australian Amateur Snapper Fishing Championship. It’s home to a maritime museum that exhibits the largest permanently land-locked ship in Australia – the HMAS Whyalla wartime corvette, which was the first ship built at Whyalla’s BHP shipyards in 1941. And between May and August every year hundreds of thousands of giant cuttlefish gather to spawn in and around the rocky shores of nearby Black Point and Point Lowly. It’s an awesome underwater spectacle.

There’s also a marina, foreshore with parkland, and the Hummock Hill lookout to take in. Hummock Hill once served as a gun battery and observation post to protect the town’s shipyards during World War II. Now it offers an unequalled view of Whyalla and the steelworks; foreshore and upper Spencer Gulf across to the southern Flinders Ranges, Port Bonython and the nearby Point Lowly lighthouse; and westwards to the Middleback Ranges.

Known originally as Hummock Hill, Whyalla was developed from 1901 as a departure port for iron discovered at the nearby town of Iron Knob. The town flourished around its BHP steelworks and mining operations.

Whyalla is South Australia’s third largest city and offers major shopping centres, a range of accommodation options, dining and sports facilities. Visit the Mount Laura Homestead Museum, the wetlands, lovely Ada Ryan Gardens with its mini zoo, or take a tour of the steelworks. There are also a variety of scenic drives and walking trails in the region.