The bags of grain were built into huge stacks around the town to await the arrival of the sailing ships.

The largest fleet of ships was owned by Gustaf Erikson, whose home port was Mariehamn on the island of Åland in Finland.

The journey from the port to Europe was eastwards in the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties via Cape Horn.

Voyages took anything between the record-breaking 83 days by the Parma in 1933 to over five months – depending on the ship, weather conditions, and the skills of the captains and crews.

The First Encounters Display provides information on the local Narungga indigenous people and their culture, the charting of the Spencer Gulf by Matthew Flinders and Nicholas Baudin, as well as the setting up of the large sheep pastoral leases on the Yorke Peninsula in the nineteenth century.