Whyalla
Whyalla is a city in South Australia. It was founded as Hummock's Hill, and was known by that name until 1916. It is the fourth most populous city in the Australian state of South Australia after Adelaide, Mount Gambier, and Gawler, and along with Port Pirie and Port Augusta is one of the three towns to make up the "Iron Triangle". It is a seaport located on the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula and is known as the "Steel City" due to its integrated steelworks and shipbuilding heritage. The Whyalla Steelworks is the major employer in the town, and has in February 2025 been put into voluntary administration by the Government of South Australia. The port of Whyalla has been exporting iron ore since 1903.
Description
The city consists of an urban area bounded to the north by the railway to the mining town of Iron Knob, to the east by Spencer Gulf, and to the south by the Lincoln Highway. The urban area consists of the following suburbs laid from east to west extending from a natural hill known as Hummock Hill: Whyalla, Whyalla Playford, Whyalla Norrie, Whyalla Stuart, and Whyalla Jenkins. A port facility, a rail yard serving the railway line to Iron Knob, and an industrial complex are located to the immediate north of Hummock Hill. Whyalla Barson and the Whyalla Conservation Park are located about north of the city. It is an iron-rich exporting town that supplies China.Nomenclature
The origin of the name Whyalla is disputed. In 1916 it was referred to as the "native" name, having been ascribed during a survey conducted a few years beforehand. During the 1940s, Norman Tindale, the ethnologist at the South Australian Museum believed that the name could have been derived from aboriginal words "Wajala", meaning "west" in a language common to Port Pirie, or "Waiala", meaning "I don't know" in a language more common to Port Augusta. In 1945, BHP advised that the name had been taken from nearby Mount Whyalla, which lies northwest of Whyalla, roughly midway between the town and Iron Knob. Other meanings ascribed to the word Whyalla include "dingo", "by the water", and "a place of water". Another hypothesis is that the name was brought by European settlers and was derived from a place called Whyalla in Durham, England.History
Early history
Whyalla is part of the Barngarla Aboriginal country.A mariner named William Morgan Burgoyne purportedly recommended the site for the establishment of a port on False Bay to Harry Morgan of BHP. Burgoyne had spent several weeks there on a trip out from Port Augusta hunting kangaroo with his brother and another man called Alf Rowarth. At that time there was no settlement between Middleback Station and the Point Lowly Lighthouse, and kangaroos were plentiful there.
Burgoyne recalled that the tug Florrie ferried a crew there a week later and pegged out the settlement first known as Hummocky.
20th century
Whyalla was founded as "Hummock's Hill", and was known by that name until 1916. It was officially founded as Hummock's Hill in 1901 by the BHP Whyalla Tramway, which transported iron ore from Iron Knob in the Middleback Range to the sea. Its first shipment was transported across Spencer Gulf to Port Pirie, where it was used in lead smelters as a flux. A jetty was built to transfer the ore and the first shipment was sent in 1903. The early settlement consisted of small cottages and tents clustered around the base of the hill. The post office opened in 1901 as Hummock's Hill.In 1905 the town's first school opened. It was originally called Hummock Hill School but was subsequently renamed to Whyalla Primary School and Whyalla Higher Primary School. The school's current name is Whyalla Town Primary School.
The arid environment and lack of natural fresh water resources made it necessary to import water in barges from Port Pirie.
The Post Office was renamed Whyalla on 1 November 1919, and on 16 April 1920 the town was officially proclaimed with its new name. The ore conveyor on the jetty was improved, and the shipping of ore to the newly built Newcastle Steelworks commenced. The town grew slowly prior to the development of steelmaking and shipbuilding facilities in the late 1930s.
The BHP Indenture Act was proclaimed in 1937 and provided the impetus for the construction of a blast furnace and harbour. In 1939 the blast furnace and harbour began to be constructed and a commitment for a water supply pipeline from the Murray River was made. A shipyard was built to provide ships for the Royal Australian Navy during World War II. The population began to rise rapidly and many new facilities, including a hospital and abattoirs, were built.
In 1941 the first ship from the new shipyard,, was launched and the blast furnace became operational. By 1943 the population was more than 5,000. On 31 March 1943, the Morgan - Whyalla pipeline became operational. In 1945 the city came under combined company and public administration and the shipyard began producing commercial ships. In 1948, displaced persons began arriving from Europe increasing the cultural diversity of Whyalla.
In 1958 BHP decided to build an integrated steelworks at Whyalla and it was completed in 1965. In the following year, salt harvesting began and coke ovens were built. The population grew extremely rapidly, and the South Australian Housing Trust was building 500 houses each year to cope with the demand. Plans for a city of 100,000 were produced by the Department of Lands. A second water supply pipeline from Morgan was built to cope with the demand.
In 1970 the city adopted full local government status. Fierce competition from Japanese ship builders resulted in the closing of the shipyards in 1978, which were at the time the largest in Australia. From a peak population of 38,130 in 1976, the population dropped rapidly. A decline in the BHP iron and steel industry since 1981 also impacted employment.
21st century
The BHP long products division was divested in 2000 to form OneSteel, which is the sole producer of rail and steel sleepers in Australia. On 2 July 2012, OneSteel changed its name to Arrium. After going into administration in 2016 Arrium was purchased by UK entity GFG Alliance with the steelworks placed under Liberty Steel Group and called Liberty Primary Steel and Mining.From 2004 onward, northern South Australia enjoyed a mineral exploration boom, and Whyalla found itself well placed to benefit from new ventures, being situated on the edge of the Gawler craton. The city experienced an economic upturn with the population slowly increasing and the unemployment rate falling to a more typical level.
Heritage listings
Whyalla has a number of heritage-listed sites, including:- Broadbent Terrace: Whyalla High School
- 13 Forsyth Street: Hotel Bay View, Whyalla
- 5 Forsyth Street: Spencer Hotel, Whyalla
- Gay Street: World War Two Gun Emplacements, Hummock Hill
- 3 Whitehead Street: Whyalla Court House
Port
The port's first conveyor-belt loading system was installed in 1915 and was capable of loading 1,000 tonnes of ore per hour. In 1943, it took 5½-to-6 hours to load a single 5,000-ton freighter.
In 2007, new transshipment handling processes were implemented, which allowed Arrium to load iron ore onto larger capesize bulk carrier vessels in deeper water. The transshipment process involves filling barges with ore that is then transferred into the receiving vessels at one of three transshipment anchorages.
In the financial year 2014–15, 12.5 million tonnes of haematite ore was exported from Whyalla using the transshipment process.
In October 2015 Arrium loaded its largest capesize cargo via transshipment. The FPMCB Nature was loaded with approximately 205,698 wet metric tonnes of iron ore – significantly more than the average load of about 170,000 wmt.
The port's inner harbour receives shipments of coal that is used to produce coke for the Whyalla steelworks and exports smaller cargoes of finished steel products.
Economy and energy
Whyalla Steelworks
Much of the town's economy is centred around the Whyalla Steelworks.After changes of ownership from BHP to its spin-off Arrium, which went into voluntary administration in 2017, the steelworks were bought by Liberty Steel Group, a subsidiary of the British-based international company GFG Alliance. On 20 February 2025, the federal government under Anthony Albanese announced a $2.4 billion joint state-federal support package for Whyalla and its steelworks, after GFG had got into financial difficulties and own tens of millions of dollars to its suppliers.
Energy
has supplied gas to the steelworks for several years, and in February 2024 signed an MoU with GFG Alliance to start discussions to reduce emissions from the steelworks.The Whyalla Hydrogen Facility was a proposed 250MWe hydrogen electrolyser, a 200MW combined cycle gas turbine generator, and 3600-tonne hydrogen storage facility. A South Australian Government company called Hydrogen Power South Australia was established to own and operate the plant, which is expected to be completed in 2025 and begin operations in 2026. ATCO Australia, BOC, and Epic Energy would deliver the plan, in which the government has invested million. In February 2024, the government signed an agreement with GFG Alliance reaching "to explore opportunities for hydrogen offtake" from the WHF. It would supply power to the steelworks to produce green steel. The project was cancelled in 2025.