Port Victoria, South Australia
town in South Australia
Port Victoria (formerly Wauraltee) is a town on the west coast of Yorke Peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia.
Like many other coastal towns on the peninsula, it has a jetty and used to be a thriving port for the export of grain to England. Its anchorage is sheltered from westerly weather by nearby Wardang Island. The windjammers carrying the bagged grain called at Falmouth, England or Queenstown, Ireland for orders of where the grain was to be taken. Many of the smaller ports were visited only by coastal ketches and schooners. Port Victoria also had an anchorage offshore for the larger windjammers. These were loaded from the ketches which were in turn loaded at the jetty. The peak of the windjammer trade, the Great Grain Race, was in the 1930s; the last working sailing ships visited in 1949. As a result, Port Victoria is known as the last of the windjammer ports. This era is illustrated in the Port Victoria Maritime Museum.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Port Victoria, South Australia” as town in South Australia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as town in South Australia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q7231007. VIAF identifies the subject as 159428711. The Library of Congress control number is n78074790. Authority coordinates are -34.497, 137.483. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Port Victoria, South Australia”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Port Victoria, South Australia primary sources, Port Victoria, South Australia archive and Port research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Port Victoria, South Australia”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Port Victoria, South Australia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.