Port Elliot was once the major port for goods moving up and down the Murray River.
The area of South Australia which now
stretches from Lake Alexandrina to the mouth of the Murray River and around
through Goolwa to Port Elliot developed as a unified whole. Captain
Charles Sturt (by 1829) had
made his historic journey down the Murray River leaving a feeling that a
settlement should be established near the mouth of the Murray River so that
the inland could become opened up.
Colonel William Light (in 1837), responding to this interest, inspected the area around the mouth of the Murray River and concluded that the land was poor and the mouth of the river was probably not navigable. The following year Sturt endorsed Light's view that the mouth of the Murray could not be made safe for navigation. This led to the establishment of Adelaide on Gulf St Vincent but there was still a body of support for the utilisation of the Murray River and a number of proposals (most involving safer harbours and moving goods overland to points further up the river) were suggested.
Eventually a decision was made that
Goolwa would become the last
point for shipping on the
Murray River (it was located on the last bend before the river entered the
sea) and there was a debate as to whether Victor Harbour or Port Elliot would
be the ocean port. It was eventually decided that Port Elliot was the best
location but this was probably
based on its proximity to Goolwa and the belief that a canal could be
constructed between the two locations. In 1851 it was agreed
to build a railway between
Port Elliot and Goolwa at a cost of £20,000. It ended up costing £31,000 and
wasn't completed until 1854. It was historically significant being the first
railway in Australia. It was
operated by draught horses pulling the carriages along the line at about 10
km/h.
Europeans moved into the area around Port Elliot as early as the 1830s and 1840s. The town was surveyed in 1852 and named after Sir Charles Elliot who was the Governor of Bermuda, Trinidad and St Helena at the time. By 1855 the port was dealing with 85 ships a year and in 1861 the 'Altrevida', a ship of 457 tons, became the largest ship ever to enter the port. However, in the space of a decade, seven ships were wrecked trying to navigate through the difficult rocky outcrops off the coast and it was decided to extend the railway to Victor Harbour which became the major port on the south coast.
