- published: 27 Aug 2013
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Port Lincoln is a city in the Australian state of South Australia. It is a coastal city situated on Boston Bay at the southern extremity of the Eyre Peninsula. It is the largest city in the West Coast region, and is located approximately 280 kilometres (straight line - 646 km by road) from the capital city Adelaide.
Eyre Peninsula has been home to Aboriginal people for thousands of years, with the Nauo (south western Eyre), Barngarla (eastern Eyre), Wirangu (north western Eyre) and Mirning (far western Eyre) being the predominant original cultural groups present at the time of the arrival of Europeans (Tindale 1974 in DEH 2004a; SATC 1999)
British naval explorer Matthew Flinders discovered the harbour in February 1802. Because of its particularly good harbour, he named it Port Lincoln rather than just Lincoln, where Flinders came from.
It is thought that only the lack of a reliable nearby water supply stopped Port Lincoln becoming the state capital of the future South Australia.[citation needed]. Even as a small town, Port Lincoln outgrew its fresh water supplies, which is now supplied mostly from the underground aquifers to the south of Port Lincoln although recently the great water supply system on Eyre Peninsula has been connected to Murray water via the addition of a link from Kimba to Whyalla to connect into the Morgan to Whyalla pipeline water Morgan.