The peninsula's lighthouses tell the story of a coast that once carried copper, grain and gypsum to the world.
Stand at the southern tip of the Yorke Peninsula, where the surf pounds the cliffs below Cape Spencer, and it is easy to understand why this coast needed lights. For more than a century the gulfs around the peninsula were thick with shipping, carrying copper from Wallaroo, grain from Port Victoria, salt from Edithburgh and gypsum from Stenhouse Bay. Many ships never made it home, and the wrecks still litter the coast.
The lighthouses were the answer. At the bottom of the peninsula, inside Innes National Park, the Cape Spencer light stands above some of the most dramatic coast in South Australia, with views across to Kangaroo Island on a clear day. Nearby, a boardwalk leads out to the slender West Cape light, perched above the dunes.
Work up the west coast and you reach Corny Point, where an 1880s tower has marked the south-west corner of the peninsula for generations. Further north again, on the Copper Coast, the old Wallaroo light watched over the busy smelting port, while offshore the lonely Tipara Reef light still warns boats off the rocks.
Followed together, the lights trace the shape of the peninsula and the story of its sea-going past. They are also simply beautiful places to stand, where the land runs out and the gulf opens up, and the only sound is the wind and the surf below.
