View Elliston’s stunning coastline via the Great Ocean Drive

Hey there, friend!

In this journal entry, I’ll be sharing some of the fun things you can see and do while staying in the wonderful coastal country town of Elliston, in the beautiful Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. It’s a wonderful holiday destination with a great town beach, and memorable touristy attractions!

Explore Elliston in the Eyre Peninsula with me

We stayed in Elliston for a month, which might sound crazy since the town itself is tiny, but we thoroughly enjoyed slowing down. Just like our time in Marion Bay, we only had a few jam-packed weekends and went to the beach for daily evening walks. It was a very restorative and calming time. 

It’s a lovely part of the Eyre Peninsula, and you might be surprised with the amount of fun things you can get up to in the area. You definitely don’t need a month to see everything; 2-4 days would be enough time to explore the township (minus Venus Bay). However, if you want to take your time and chill out at the lovely beaches, you could easily spend a week or more. 

If you’re interested in reading about the delightful town of Elliston, please read on. I hope you enjoy it!

The best time to visit Elliston

I feel like I’ve been saying the same thing for every Eyre Peninsula township. In the summer months, you’ll have beautiful weather for spending time at the beach, swimming, fishing, enjoying the scenic clifftop drives, camping, and so much more. 

However, it’s worth noting this will be peak tourist season, and the population of Elliston can jump incredibly. It can get busy, and you may need to book your accommodation way in advance. During shoulder months like November and March, the weather can still be quite pleasant, and you’ll benefit from fewer crowds. 

We stayed in Elliston mid-November to early December (2023), and the weather was fairly hit-and-miss. Most of the Eyre Peninsula was! We had a few gorgeous sunny days mixed with rainy, windy, and cold days. As with the rest of the peninsula, it gets really windy towards the afternoons and evenings. 

Where to stay in Elliston

Elliston Caravan Park

Elliston Dog-friendly Caravan Park

We chose this particular caravan park as we thought it would be less busy being slightly out of town, and would offer roomier sites. 

• Website: ellistoncaravanpark.com.au
• Length of our stay: 21 nights
• Time of year: Mid November – early December 
• Type of site: Powered grass site
• Site number: No number
• Cost per night and total: $724.50 total, $34.50/night. We booked online, no deposit was required. 
• Grocery shopping: Friendly Grocer – this is actually a decent size for a small grocery store. It has a great range of commonly used vegetables, meats (most from Port Lincoln) and pantry goods. They replenish their stock on Mondays and Thursdays. 
• Phone and internet reception: No issues with Telstra phones and Nighthawk wifi router.

About Elliston Caravan Park

• It’s a small to medium caravan park with large spacious grass sites. The grounds are nice and green, with plenty of trees and well kept gardens. It generally has a quiet and relaxing atmosphere. 
• The caravan park is located just outside of town, so it’s a short 3-minute drive or a 25 to 30-minute walk to go in. There’s a walking path you can take, or you can walk along the beach, which is across the road. This is a dog-friendly, off-leash beach. 
• You get to pick your own site. At check-in, we were told to have a wander around the park and set ourselves up on any site that was free. They don’t have a physical map to give you. We chose a site towards the back.
• Most of the sites are generously spaced out. We certainly had plenty of room and could have our caravan, awning, and car side by side. The ground was also fairly level already. There’s plenty of sites for longer vehicles. 
• Their shower and toilet facilities were all fine and kept clean. The caravan park had a well equipped large camp kitchen shed with heaps of seating. They even had arcade games there. Near the camp kitchen, they have a nice pool and also a bouncy pillow. Pity the weather was too cold for swimming the whole time. 
• They are very dog-friendly. Most people that came through didn’t bother with a leash; even the staff had their dog running loose and free. 
• You can give your car, caravan, or both a good wash while you’re here. We were told we could use the blue hose near us for washing. It’s bore water, but I don’t think SA bore water turns things orange unlike in Perth! 
• The caravan park is next to silos so it’s not the most picturesque in some ways, you do hear some slight truck noises but nothing terrible. Our site backed onto some sort of recycling area for the caravan park, so we heard the occasional noise of bottles clinking. There are thick bushes lining the fence so you definitely don’t see anything. 
• In the last couple of weeks we were there, it looked like a food joint was being set up at the caravan park called “Seafood & Salads”. However, from their Facebook page, it seems like they might only be available during holiday periods. 

Would we stay at Elliston Caravan Park again?

Yes, we would stay at this caravan park again, it had a nice relaxed vibe and never got busy. I loved that the grass sites were generous and the beach was only across the road. 

Waterloo Bay Tourist Park

Elliston Dog-friendly Caravan Park

The Waterloo Bay Tourist Park is a great option for those looking for a shorter walk into the town centre. It’s also located near the foreshore and the side of the beach where the water is calmer for swimming. The caravan park didn’t seem super busy whenever we walked past it, and most reviews do say that their grass sites are pretty generous in size. 

Where to eat & drink in Elliston

Skillo’s Wood Fired Pizzas (no longer open)

Elliston Dog-friendly Cafe & Takeaway

We tried Skillo’s Wood Fired Pizzas one Friday night, it’s a pizza shop located in the centre of town. We ordered a few takeaway pizzas:

• Prawn and garlic
• Spanish: chorizo, olive, capsicum
• Mexican: beef chilli con carne, capsicum.

The flavours were great and each was distinctive. There was a fair amount of prawns on the prawn pizza. I liked their thick layer of cheese. Their bases were like pita bread, very flat and thin, and became a bit flopsy when we were eating it. Overall, I enjoyed their pizzas. 

I also got a small tub of banana ice-cream, and it seriously just tasted like blitzed frozen banana. I don’t think it was worth $5, unfortunately. 

Elliston Bakery

Elliston Dog-friendly Bakery  

This bakery is at the centre of town and you can’t miss it because it’s bright orange with blue trimming. We thought the pies here were decent, especially the chunky steak-style pies. I thought I took photos of the food, but I didn’t.

Elliston Hotel / Waterloo Bay Bistro 

Elliston Dog-friendly Pub 

Elliston Hotel is also centrally located in town and doubles as the bottle-o. The hotel has a pretty large alfresco area that’s all under cover, has plenty of seating, and is dog-friendly. 

They serve your classic pub fare like schnitzel, fish and steak, with chips and salad. They also offer a lot of fresh seafood caught locally. They had listed ‘prawn platter’ on their specials menu, which I thought was a salad, but turned out to be a small bowl of unshelled prawns with a seafood sauce. 

These were locally caught at nearby Venus Bay and tasted so fresh and juicy. I know the photos don’t do the prawns any justice, but they actually tasted far better than the prawns we had at Oyster HQ. It goes to show that sometimes the most humble of places can serve great food. 

Fun attractions in Elliston 

Great Ocean Drive 

Elliston Dog-friendly Scenic Drive

I think the “Anxious Bay Clifftop Drive & Little Bay Clifftop Drive (combined)”, “Elliston Coastal Trail”, and “Great Ocean Drive” are all referring to the same thing. This is a long linear trail that spans from Little Bay Surf Break in the south to Cape Finnis in the north. The trail stretches 13.6 kilometres, and you can either drive it or walk it. 

• If you’re walking: most of the trail south has got a dedicated walking path, but from what we saw, it’s shared roadways once you turn onto Clifftop Drive from the highway and head north. It’s easy walking with most of the trail being flat, graded 2. 
• If you’re driving: along the esplanade and highway it is all sealed. Clifftop Drive and Boords Beach Road, from memory, were gravel but very well compacted. 

We couldn’t have asked for more beautiful weather for a scenic drive; the sun was out, and the sky was blue. Bliss!

Little Bay Clifftop Drive (lower section of Great Ocean Drive)

Elliston Dog-friendly Scenic Drive

Where to start

For this part of the Great Ocean Drive, we started from the Little Bay Surf Break car park, which had a shelter and the Recognition Sculpture.

See if you can spot

Just a little way away from the Little Bay Surf Break car park, along the walking trail and looking at the cove below, we saw some sketchy ladders and ropes making their way down from the top of the cliff to the bottom. What the?! I’m not exactly sure how tall the cliffs are, but you can see the houses and shelters above are pretty small in comparison.

Lookout Points 

There’s a couple of signposted lookout points with small parking spaces along the way. It’s worth stopping by Little Bay which has a pleasant little beach, and you can walk the top of the cliffs around it.

Wellington Point is another great stop on the drive, or you could walk from Little Bay. You get some really epic views of the jagged cliffs and ocean, as well as the rocky and reefy entrance to Waterloo Bay. It’s understandable why so many ships were grounded, there’s a lot of obstacles! 

From there, you could stop at the pretty foreshore and town beach, plus the Waterloo Bay Lookout and Historic Jetty. I’ll share more about these in a later section, as we didn’t actually visit these during the drive.  

Driving the Full Scenic Drive

To do the rest of the Great Ocean Drive, you carry on to the Anxious Bay Clifftop Drive. Once you’re on the highway, you exit onto the appropriately named Clifftop Drive.

Anxious Bay Clifftop Drive (upper section of the Great Ocean Drive)

Elliston Dog-friendly Scenic Drive

This part of the Great Ocean Drive was fun; not only do you get stunning coastal views from the cliff tops, but there’s sculptures to see along the way. 

Lookout Points

Some of my fave stops were the area with:

• The scraggly wood sculpture of eagles: We parked at the space at Salmon Point and walked over to Wellesley Point. This looked out towards Wellington Point on the other side, Waterloo Bay and the beach next to it. 
• The Easter Island-like head statues: These were fun to pose with, plus the statues had an amazing background of the tall cliffs and ocean. 
• The metal seahorse: This was a really lovely lookout point and offered fantastic views of Anxious Bay and the coastline around it. 
• The thong sculpture: It’s not really a lookout point; it’s more of a drive-by situation. There’s not really a parking area; most just take a snap of the thong sculpture from their car.

Anxious Bay

Elliston Dog-friendly Beach 

We finished off the drive at the picturesque Anxious Bay. We found there wasn’t much parking space at this beach, and it was full, so we had to park on the road. The colours of the ocean were gorgeous! It seemed like the ideal swimming beach because of its clear, shallow waters, with one end protected by cliffs. For the boaters out there, we walked away from the cliffs and came across a boat ramp. 

Coastal Walking Trails

Elliston Coastal Trail 

Elliston Dog-friendly Walking Trail

As mentioned, you can walk the length of the Elliston Coastal Trail OR you can break it up and do some of the smaller suggested trails. For the trails that we walked, we found that there were trail markers along the way and a few interpretive signs.  

• Clifftop Trail (along the north side towards Cape Finnis): I feel like most of this was along the road. It’s 6.5 kilometres one way and graded 2. 
• Little Bay Trail: It’s 2.4 kilometres one way and graded 2. It goes from Wellington Point to Little Bay Surf Break, and is along a dedicated walking path. 
• Beach Loop: The full length of the loop is 5.7 kilometres, and is along a mixture of walking path and beach. It’s graded 4, I think because it has a couple of inclines. 

Little Bay Trail

Elliston Dog-friendly Walking Trail

We decided to walk the Little Bay Trail as this had a proper walking path from Little Bay Surf Break to Wellington Point. It’s an easy walk and from memory, there’s no major steep uphills or anything. You get some pretty stunning ocean and coastline views from the trail. The sights you can see during the walk are the same ones I’ve mentioned for the Little Bay Clifftop Drive.

Beach Loop

Elliston Dog-friendly Walking Trail

On separate occasions, we walked from the Elliston Caravan Park (along the corner of the Flinders Highway and Silo Road) into town via the walking path, as well as the beach. Personally, I preferred walking along the beach rather than the path next to the highway. Although, if you go along the path, you can visit the Waterloo Bay Lookout. I’ll talk more about this in the next section. 

We didn’t do the whole beach loop, but we walked along the “wild” side of the beach multiple times during our stay. I explain why it’s the “wild” side in a later section. To be honest, we didn’t notice any way of getting back up onto the road from the very end of that side to make it a loop. Although, interpretive maps can be a bit vague!

Waterloo Bay

Elliston Foreshore

Elliston Dog-friendly foreshore

There’s a little bit of a grass area next to the beach. It’s pretty well equipped for BBQ-ing and large gatherings as there’s toilets, picnic shelters and BBQ facilities. Near the squid statue is a good spot for lovely scenic views of Waterloo Bay and the jetty. 

Town Beach

Elliston Dog-friendly beach

We walked this beautiful beach pretty much daily. It’s one of those beaches that has really compacted sand so it’s actually great to walk and run on without killing your calves. Dogs are allowed to roam off-leash, but of course, must be controllable. 

“Wild” Beach Side 

The heritage-listed jetty divides the beach into two sides. I call the section furthest from town, the “wild” side. A lot less people walk this part of the beach, and it has way more seaweed, birdlife, sea creatures, and rock formations. We didn’t like Charlie being off-leash on this side because there were lots of bluebottles, pufferfish and other harmful creatures washed up on the beach. 

Town/Foreshore Beach Side 

The beach closest to the town is great though; it’s far safer for dogs, and there were no harmful creatures washed up from what we experienced. The section of beach near the foreshore seems to have fairly shallow and calm waters, and is popular for swimming. There’s even a floating pontoon available. The jetty end has less seaweed, but the water is a lot less calm. 

There’s also Boord Beach, which is a tiny beach just before Wellington Point. We had a quick stroll and it was nice. 

Waterloo Bay Lookout

Elliston Dog-friendly Scenic Lookout

The lookout is a short walk from the jetty car park. Please note that there is a bit of a steep but brief incline to get to it. I think it’s worth stopping by, especially if it’s a nice day, because it offers gorgeous views of Waterloo Bay. 

Heritage-Listed Jetty

Elliston Dog-friendly jetty

There’s no end of heritage-listed jetties along the entire coastline of the Eyre Peninsula. The Elliston jetty is a pleasant place for a stroll when it’s not incredibly windy, and you’re surrounded by beautiful, calming scenery. It’s also a popular spot for fishing. 

Sea Caves

Elliston Dog-friendly attraction

Near the jetty, there’s some caves along the cliffs, which we’ve seen families use as shelters while spending time at the beach. It seemed very idyllic! 

Day trip to Venus Bay & Talia Caves

Eyre Peninsula dog-friendly travel

From Elliston, we did a day trip to Venus Bay and explored Talia Caves on the way back. I’ll be sharing what we got up to in a separate journal entry, please keep a lookout for it! 

And that’s a wrap!

I hope you’ve enjoyed exploring the sweet coastal country town of Elliston through this journal entry, and it’s inspired you to consider it for your Eyre Peninsula travel itinerary. I highly recommend spending some time here, even if it’s only for a few days! 

Have you been to any of these places before? Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments or pop in any questions you might have; I’d love to hear from you. 

Safe travels and happy exploring! Thanks for joining me, hope to see you again!

Sheryl