Port Neill

Port Neill (formerly Carrow) is a small coastal town on the eastern side of the Eyre Peninsula, in South Australia about 3 km off the Lincoln Highway between the major towns of Whyalla and Port Lincoln.

Port Neill (formerly Carrow) is a small coastal town on the eastern side of the Eyre Peninsula, in South Australia about 3 km off the Lincoln Highway between the major towns of Whyalla and Port Lincoln. It is 576 km by road from Adelaide.The town offers protected beaches for swimming, as well as providing a venue for fishing, boating, sailing, skiing or skin-diving.

Matthew Flinders sailed past on 7 March 1802 and reported 'low front land, somewhat sandy, with raised land inland and of a barren appearance, its elevation diminishing to the northward.' The first land-based European exploration took place in April 1840, when the party of Governor Gawler, John Hill, and Thomas Burr explored the Spencer Gulf coast on horseback, they being the first Europeans to traverse the landward regions of this coast between Port Lincoln and the Middleback Ranges near Whyalla. They roughly followed the route of the present Lincoln Highway. During this expedition Gawler named Cape Burr as well as nearby Mount Hill.The first settlers arrived in 1873 when John Tennant and his son Andrew took up land around the bay, then known as Mottled Cove.The town was first called Carrow and was gazetted in 1903 and laid out in January 1909 by surveyor William Greig Evans. The name 'Carrow' came from an Aboriginal word relating to a soakage rock hole. Some confusion was caused by the similarity of the name to the locality of Warrow (near Coulta on south-western Eyre Peninsula) and the town was renamed Port Neill on 19 September 1940. The name of the town honours a Warden of the Marine Board, Andrew Sinclair Neill.The first jetty was built in 1912 to ship wheat and wool from the district. It was noted in the Observer in June 1910 that settlers in the Hundred of Butler and the district adjoining Mottled Cove were 'anxiously awaiting some movement towards the long promised jetty at that port'. The settlers were suffering greater disadvantages of shipping facilities than most other parts of the west coast at this time. Once the jetty was built, shipments continued until 1970, when shipments by road to Port Lincoln's larger harbour facilities and grain silos commenced. It was noted at the time of construction that the jetty was the largest on the Eyre Peninsula.