Beachport’s summer loving ‘locals’

Meandering down the Southern Ports Highway, as the endless roadside scrub makes way for Norfolk Island Pines and flashes of that famous aquamarine blue water, you know you’ve arrived. Whether you’re here for beach time, fishing, swimming, or just some idling around with the sun on your back, Beachport has you covered.

Laidback and casual as can be, it’s the Limestone Coast town where thongs are year-round attire and no one will bat an eyelid if you decide to ride your horse through the local bottle shop.

Pulling an icy brew for thirsty holidaymakers at the Beachport Brewing Co., Venue Manager Kasey Powell remarks its why the town swells from 800 residents to a summer population of up to 10,000. “Everyone is here to have a good time,” she said, “and the same people keep on coming back every summer.”

A mere seagull swoop from the town’s iconic jetty, the brewery opened in mid-2022 and was the brainchild of local farmers Mark and Kate Wheal, becoming a reality after Mark’s desire to create a special beer for their wedding guests in 2015. Housed in the old fish factory, which was originally a railway yard, you can still see the old tracks where trolleys filled with foodstuffs and supplies once trundled along to load waiting ships in Rivoli Bay.

In summer, the brewery is the hot ticket, with dad jokes sharing space with daily bait sales, a fairly relaxed dress code (‘no shirt, no shoes, doesn’t matter’) and a line-up out the door. “This is something the town definitely needed,” 20-year-old Kasey said, who moved from the Adelaide Hills to Beachport for the job in 2022.  

“Originally, the goal was Queensland or Hamilton Island, but here I can see the water from the bar,” she says, smiling. “How many jobs can you say that about?”

“We have families who have been coming here for 30 years,” Beachport Caravan Park’s Denise Anderson said, of the oceanfront park. “Summer is like a big family reunion.

“People return every year because they just love the town, then they meet the people next door at campsites, they form friendships and then they come back every year….like a big family.”

Peak time for the town’s accommodation venues is from Boxing Day to mid-January and most people end their holiday by rebooking for the year following. “We have a waitlist of 30 people long by the end of February – as soon as you have a cancellation, it’s filled,” Denise said.

A Beachport local, Denise believes it’s the town’s casual and family friendly vibe that sees holiday makers return again and again. “Doesn’t matter where you are, there’s always a beautiful beach to swim at, the walks, the big playground, its very family orientated and friendly, here’s something for every age group here.

“Everyone knows everyone here and every business is run by beautiful welcoming people.”

One of the most popular businesses in town shows up for just a few weeks per year and sells just one item – hot cinnamon donuts. “They fly out of there – everyone knows the donut van,” Denise laughs. With a permanent spot on the foreshore, the Beachport Rivoli Bay Lions Club van has been a town institution for nearly forty years, with deep fryers bubbling away and volunteers pumping out thousands of the fried sweet treats to hungry kids and big kids alike.

The town’s other favourite summer staple is crayfish, available fresh off the boat, best eaten cooked in its shell, with butter, garlic and a squeeze of lemon or, for those who fancy a working dinner, handed over live. Crayfishing is one of the town’s main occupations, with around 18 cray boats calling the port home and supporting more than 100 workers directly and indirectly as crew, processors, suppliers, and exporters.

Everything, from jobs to tourism, to lifestyle and town history, centres around the town’s impressive stretch of coastline. Turning off the main street and heading South, Bowman Scenic Drive has been compared to another famous Australian coastal drive – Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.

In a mere eight-kilometre stretch, every single water activity or experience is up for grabs, from blowholes to ocean lookouts, diving, fishing, swimming, whale spotting or merely relaxing on Salmon Hole’s rounded beach.

Keen visitors can also try the Pool of Siloam, a flat body of water reputedly eight times saltier than the ocean and harbouring mystical healing qualities. If you’re a believer.

Like all small communities, the town is home to more than a few characters. “The wind blew me down here and one day, it’s literally going to blow me out of here,” says Greg ‘Finn’ Reynolds, who runs his surfboard shaping and repair shop just out of town. In the early 1980s, living south of Port MacQuarie, Finn jumped on a mate’s surf trip in a car destined for Beachport. Forty years later, he’s still here.

A surfboard maker and shaper for more than 50 years, Finn is semi-retired from the board-making business, but happily repairs boards for ‘beer money’.

As an out-of-town surfer tries to convince him to sell one of his boards, for the second time today, Finn laughingly tells him ‘you’re dreamin’. Lifting a freshly shaped board onto the brace in his Shaping Room, he runs his hand over the freshly shaped curves and declares it will be a ‘7ft 6 gun with 6 deep channels and foot high gloss’.

It’s a language universal to surfers everywhere. After the day’s work is done, Finn will grab a long-board and surf the town break but only when it’s ‘off-shore’.

Another character around Beachport is the town’s 772-metre long jetty – the state’s second longest - which bustles with recreational fishers, afternoon strollers, dogs and gambolling salty kids from sunup to sundown. Elaine Donaldson, who has been involved with the Old Wood and Grain Store Museum for around 52 years, says not much could dent the town’s love for the iconic structure.

“Without the jetty, Beachport would not have developed. It’s our lifeblood,” she said. “Without pressure from the townspeople, it would never have been built.”

Opening in 1882, the jetty was valuable marine infrastructure, ensuring the town became a busy shipping port, bringing in freight and passengers for the rest of the developing Limestone Coast region. In the 1970s, with the jetty in dire need of repairs to the end section, state officials decided that section of the jetty was unsafe and announced it would be cut off from the rest of the structure and simply allowed to fall into the water.

“They didn’t bank on the town being so attached to the jetty,” Elaine said. “They organised protests and kept watch on the foot of the jetty to prevent it being cut off from the rest of the jetty.”

With the message loud and clear, the town council stepped in and re-decked the jetty. Old timbers, sometimes with a rusty old bolt still present, are scattered around Beachport homes, ending up as decks and hallway tables. To ensure the jetty survives into her sesquicentennial years, a year of repairs was completed in late 2023, with 840 of the old deck planks and 350 bracing structures replaced.

In her earlier years, Elaine used to fish for Mullet or Tommy Ruff from the jetty but now, like many others, an evening stroll is her jetty experience these days. “It’s a great place to go out on a really hot night and cool down. It’s part of our everyday life.”

With stunning views out onto Rivoli Bay, Beach Road is one of the town’s favourite accommodation hotspots. In her thirty years of living there, Liz Rogers said the road has undergone an incredible transformation since her father paid the grand sum of 600 pounds for the block back in the 1960s. Once full of tiny holiday shacks, the road is now dominated by multi-storey houses befitting the million-dollar views.

“We built here in 1998 and we just love it, looking at the jetty and fishing boats,” Liz said, who lives there with her partner Trevor. “Post Covid, people just bought everything. There are two two-storey places being built right now and only about two of the original shacks remaining.” Five generations of her family now have lived, or holiday in Beachport, with Liz remembering both her grandparents and parents having their Christmas lunch on the beach at Glens Point.

When family arrives from the busyness of Melbourne, an oft repeated joke sums up summer ‘peak hour’. “I say ‘oh my God, look at the traffic!’. “My daughters say, ‘it’s probably half a dozen cars Mum’.”

Like many locals, Liz and Trevor are well used to living in a town with a population that ebbs and flows around holiday periods and they’re happy to share their piece of paradise.Come Autumn, Beachport will be theirs again.