 At the 2016 census, the locality of Smoky Bay had a population of 279 of which 217 lived in the town of Smoky Bay.Smoky Bay's coastline was first sighted and mapped by the British navigator, Matthew Flinders, in 1802, who named it "Smoky Bay" after the amount of smoke from fires lit by the area's Aboriginal people.Whalers were the first Europeans to inhabit the coastline near the current site of the town, just north of Pt.