Fowlers Bay, formerly known as Yalata, is a bay, town and locality in the Australian state of South Australia located about north-west of the state capital, Adelaide. The town is located on Port Eyre, at the western end of the larger Fowlers Bay. It was named Yalata after Yalata station, established in the 1860s and stretching from the Nullarbor Plain across to near Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula, whose homestead was located on the hill nearby. The name Yalata now belongs to a small Aboriginal community further west, which was also situated on station land. Situated on the Nullarbor Plain, Fowlers Bay was once an active port and a gateway to the western reaches of the continent, but fell into decline in the 1960s and 1970s. However a revitalised tourist industry started bringing more tourists to the town from the 1980s onwards. The southern right whales that frequent the Great Australian Bight were a target of whalers in the past, but now bring sightseers. Large sand dunes are prominent on the southern side of the town, and have been migrating to cover parts of the town over the past century. At the 2016 census, the localities of Fowlers Bay and Coorabie shared a population of 51. History Aboriginal connections The town site of Fowlers Bay lies on the traditional lands of the Wirangu people. The Mirning, Kokatha, and Maralinga Tjarutja people, some of whom lived at the Yalata Mission during the 1950s after being displaced, also have spiritual connections to the country. The Mirning people have dreaming stories connected with the whales, in which the people call the whales from the edges of the bight. The word yalata is said to be from an Aboriginal language, meaning "oyster place" (or "shellfish"). European exploration The coastline around Fowlers Bay was first mapped in 1627 by François Thijssen, a Dutch sea captain, on his ship 't Gulden Zeepard (Golden Seahorse). The bay was named on 28 January 1802 by Matthew Flinders after his first lieutenant, Robert Fowler, as he was reconfirming the Dutch mapping of the coast and naming features along the way, in the Investigator. He found a couple of islands charted by Thijssen and named the group Nuyts Archipelago. Edward John Eyre set up base camp here from November 1840 during his epic journeys across the Nullarbor Plain, receiving supplies at Eyre’s Landing. By this time the area was