Champion Bay

Champion Bay is a coastal feature north of Geraldton, Western Australia, facing the port and city between Point Moore and Bluff Point.[1]

Champion Bay was named by Lieutenant John Lort Stokes of HMS Beagle, who surveyed the area in April 1840.[2] He named it after the colonial schooner Champion, in which George Fletcher Moore had travelled to the region and first located the bay in January of that year.[3][4]

The locality at the bay was also called Champion Bay. The townsite of Geraldton was surveyed in 1850, named after Captain Charles Fitzgerald, 4th Governor of Western Australia.[5]

The area around Champion Bay was traditionally inhabited by an Aboriginal people who spoke the Nhanhagardi language.[6]

In 1877 a lighthouse was with a diptric lens was built at Bluff Point in Champion Bay. The upper square portion was 7.5 metres high while the lower octagonal base was 11.3 metres high.[7]

  1. ^ Gazetteer of Australia Archived October 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Stokes, John Lort (1846). "Chapter 5: Victoria River to Swan River". Discoveries in Australia, with an account of the coasts and rivers explored and surveyed during the voyage of the Beagle, 1837–1843, Volume 2. London: T and W. Boone. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  3. ^ "Expedition to the Northwest". The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal. 8 February 1840. p. 23. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  4. ^ Kimberly, Warren Bert (1897). "13. Land Laws; Exploration; Australiand Settlement 1839-1842". History of West Australia. Melbourne: F. W. Niven & Co. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
  5. ^ Gregory, A.C. (15 March 1850). "Assist.-Surv.-Gregory's Report". The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News. p. 2. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
  6. ^ "A93: Nhanhagardi". Austlang. AIATSIS. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  7. ^ Lighthouses of the World, AG Findlay, 1879,