Coffin Bay ponies have always been reared in a semi-wild and wild manner, which has made them healthy and hardy with strong bones and hooves.
They are mainly bay, brown, black, chestnut, grey, red and blue roan and dun, but all solid colours are permissible.
In 1839, the settler and British Captain Hawson and his family arrived in Happy Valley in South Australia to live and breed horses.
The Morgan family therefore mustered a small portion of the herd a few times during the year and sold them at markets in Port Augusta.
After World War II finished, however, demand for ponies declined as the economy stabilized and the mechanization of society made equine work animals obsolete.
In an attempt to save the herd, he gave the farm to the South Australia Government to transform the land into a national park.
In 1991 the first Management Agreement was entered into between the Coffin Bay Pony Society and the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
A predetermined price per head went to the NPWS for land management and the rest of the money was used by the Coffin Bay Pony Society.
In 1999 the National Parks and Wildlife Service devised a new Draft Management Plan for the area that included the proposal of a Wilderness Zone that would take the ponies away from their natural pastures.
[2] On 29 February 2004, the final mob of 35 or 40 ponies were moved to their new home, ironically called the "Brumbies Run", near Coffin Bay.