Victor Harbor, the main town on the Fleurieu Peninsula, is 84 kilometres south of the South Australia capital of Adelaide.
If driving, you’d have to leave the coast road and cut across along the mid-part of the peninsula.
If coming from Mt Barker, you could drive down or take the steam train instead.
Flinders and Baudin
Victor Harbor is the place where the British explorer Matthew Flinders and the French explorer Nicholas Baudin met in 1802 as each sought to establish a colony on the Fleurieu Peninsula.
It was Baudin who named the peninsula after the Comte de Fleurieu, Napoleon’s Navy Minister. The Comte de Fleurieu was responsible for financing Baudin’s exploration of the Australian coast.
Once a whaling town
Founded as a sealing and whaling town, Victor Harbor has many mementos of its whaling days. It is today the home of the South Australian Whale Centre.
Despite the reduction in whale numbers as a result of past whaling activities, you can often catch sight of a southern right whale in Encounter Bay near Victor Harbor during the whale migration season when these denizens of the deep move to warmer waters in the months from June to October.
The Whale Centre keeps track of the movement of whales with an information network which involves itself in the protection and conservation of these sea behemoths.
Goolwa and Cape Jervis
Other towns you might want to visit on the Fleurieu Peninsula are Goolwa on the mouth of the Murray River and Cape Jervis which is the jump-off point to Kangaroo Island.
