Eyre Peninsula, South Australia: What are the best things to do?

Things to do on the Eyre Peninsula include swimming with sea lions at Baird Bay and shark cage diving from Port Lincoln. Other Eyre Peninsula attractions include the Whyalla steelworks, the Halfway Across Australia sign in Kimba and tasting Coffin Bay oysters.

The Eyre Peninsula isn’t on the tourist map for most visitors to Australia, but it does offer several highly distinctive experiences. Make the effort to get to the Eyre Peninsula and you can be rewarded with some of the most memorable moments of your trip.

Getting to the Eyre Peninsula, SA

Getting there is part of the problem. The triangular-shaped peninsula is on the other side of the Spencer Gulf from the most populated areas of South Australia, including state capital Adelaide.

The drive from Adelaide to Port Lincoln takes more than seven hours. That passes through the parched, dry and basically uninhabitable outback to the north of Goyder’s Line. This includes the Eyre Peninsula’s largest city, Whyalla. It’s a grimly industrial place that is slowly becoming more appealing. The new, circular Whyalla Jetty is a step in the lighter direction, but the tours of the Whyalla Steelworks are worth a look. Maybe skip that in summer when the Whyalla weather is unpleasantly hot, however.

On the Whyalla to Port Lincoln leg of the drive, decent stops include Cowell, which offers excellent fishing, silo art and jade jewellery shopping. Cowell is near Lucky Bay, where the Wallaroo ferry from Wallaroo on the Yorke Peninsula arrives.

Most people choose to fly from Adelaide to Port Lincoln, however. Rental cars are available at Port Lincoln Airport.

Eyre Peninsula activities

Port Lincoln is the Eyre Peninsula’s activity hub. It’s where the boat tours to the Neptune Islands depart from. These islands are the only place where you can do a cage dive with great white sharks in Australia.

Significantly less scary are the koalas of Mikkira Station, another Eyre Peninsula attraction. The stunted trees make this a good place to see koalas at eye level. It’s private land, so you’ll need an access key to get in. The same applies to the coastline of Whalers Way.

The Glen-Forest Tourist Park has an animal section where you can hand-feed kangaroos, or see wombats and dingoes.

There’s more Aussie wildlife in the Coffin Bay National Park, where emus run wild on the beaches such as Almonta Beach. The Yangie Bay campground is a great place to pitch a tent. Coffin Bay is more famous for its oyster sheds, however. Coffin Bay oysters are often said to be the best in Australia.

On the western side of the Eyre Peninsula are some excellent beaches. These include Greenly Beach, which is becoming famous for its swimmable rockpools, and Sheringa Beach. Murphy’s Haystacks, meanwhile, offer weird rock formations near the beaches of Sceale Bay.

There’s also Australian sea lion hotspot Baird Bay, where it’s possible to do a phenomenal swimming with sealions tour.

Ceduna and crossing the Nullarbor

A little further north is Ceduna, start (or end) point for the world’s longest golf course – the Nullarbor Links. It’s also the last place your mobile phone will work for a long time if you decide to undertake the humungous outback drive towards Western Australia over the Nullarbor Plain. There are direct flights to Ceduna from Adelaide.

Next up on that journey are the windmills in Penong, the Lake MacDonnell pink lake and surfing heaven Cactus Beach.

Also stop to watch whales at the Head of Bight lookout before gliding into Australian Central Western Time.

If you head straight down the Eyre Highway instead of around the Eyre Peninsula, you can stop to see the silo art and Big Galah at Kimba, plus Pildappa Rock near Wudinna.