Bookabie

Bookabie faces the Great Australian Bight where aeolian limestone gives way to cliffs, sandy beaches and low scrub. Fresh water was scarce and unevenly distributed, so rock holes and the waterholes around Fowlers Bay formed the most valuable places in an otherwise difficult country. Their reliability governed movement, hunting and camping across a coast exposed to the Southern Ocean.

The land belongs to Wirangu country, with Mirning connections farther west and around the bay. Small groups followed seasonal food and water through coastal and near-inland routes, using fish, shellfish, game and plant foods. The great bay provided shelter from ocean swell and a landmark for canoe travel, while inland soaks sustained journeys between the coast and the dry interior. These routes linked communities rather than separating them.

Dutch navigator François Thijssen charted part of the coast in 1627, and Matthew Flinders named Fowlers Bay in 1802. Whalers began visiting the bay in the early nineteenth century. The name Bookabie was recorded by Daisy Bates much later and referred to a nearby waterhole described as bad water. The station, town survey and Eyre Highway came after 1837; the earlier place remained a water-defined country of the Wirangu.