Kelly Basin is a bay on the south eastern side of Macquarie Harbour on the West Coast of Tasmania. It was named after James Kelly an early explorer of the Tasmanian coastline. It was the location of the terminus of the North Mount Lyell Railway, and the ghost town of Pillinger. In the late 1890s when John Watt Beattie was showing his photographs of the west coast country to Hobart and Launceston audiences, it was designated as Kelly's Basin. The North Mount Lyell Railway close in the 1920s, and the former railway formation - known as 'Kelly Basin Road' was the land route to access the area.