Thistle Island

Thistle Island is in the Spencer Gulf, South Australia, some 200 km west of Adelaide, and northwest of the Gambier Islands. The city of Port Lincoln lies to the northwest of the island. Between them, the Gambier Islands and Thistle form a chain across the mouth of the gulf between the southern tips of the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas.[1] As of 2014 the Royal Australian Navy operated an acoustic range in the waters west of Thistle Island, with a small control facility being located on the island itself.[2]

Thistle
Thistle
Geography
LocationSpencer Gulf
Coordinates
Administration
Australia

History

The island was named by British explorer Matthew Flinders in 1802, after a terrible accident in which a cutter that was mastered by John Thistle and carrying 7 other men, overturned in choppy seas while returning from the mainland to the ship. Despite frantic searching by the ships crew, the bodies of the men were never found. Flinders also named several smaller islands in the area after the lost crew.[3]

A small community of sealers, their Aboriginal "wives" and children were living on the island by 1832. They are thought to have had their camp on the shore of Waterhouse Bay.[4]

The South Australian Company established a shore-based bay whaling station at Whalers Bay in 1838. A team of experienced whalers were brought from Tasmania with H.B.T. McFarlane in charge as headsman. The operation had limited success during the 1838 season and none at all in the 1839 season. It was concluded the location was too far from the migration route of the southern right whale and the site was abandoned.[5]

The historic Whalers Bay Whaling Site and Thistle Island Sealing Site are both listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.[6][7]

References
  1. Collins concise atlas of the world (3rd ed.) (1993). London: HarperCollins.
  2. Morris, Alex (2014). "Submarine Acoustic Analysis Cell goes to SAAR" (PDF). The Trade (2): 15.
  3. Matthew Flinders, A voyage to Terra Australis (Chapter 6). Retrieved 25 January 2019
  4. Kostoglou & McCarthy, p.57.
  5. Kostoglou, Parry; McCarthy, Justin (1991). Whaling and sealing sites in South Australia (First ed.). Fremantle: Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology. p. 24.
  6. "Whalers Bay Whaling Site, Thistle Island". South Australian Heritage Register. Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
  7. "Thistle Island Sealing Site (designated place of archaeological significance)". South Australian Heritage Register. Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. Retrieved 12 February 2016.


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