Camping at Port Broughton (28 Sep ´- 1 Oct)

One thing we hadn't got to do in Sweden was camping (except for the motorhome trips), so we were quite keen to crack out the tent, camp kitchen and sleeping bags and head off camping for a weekend.  The October Labour Day long weekend was perfect - the kids were off school on the Friday, so I took the day off and we headed up to Port Broughton.

Our plan was originally to stay around Moonta, a place that we both had fond memories of, from trips when we were younger, but the parks there were completely booked out.  We did consider a proper wild-camping trip, but it seemed safer to choose a caravan park for our first camping trip in 4 years.  That way if the tent failed, or we didn't have something we needed, we wouldn't be in the middle of nowhere.  The only problem with this was the fact that it was a long weekend, the first week of school holidays and also the first "summer-ish" weekend, meaning that most camp sites were booked out.  We checked out a few towns in the area, Kadina, Wallaroo or Port Huges, but they were all full.  Luckily Kris found an available site at Port Broughton, so we headed there.

Port Broughton and Adelaide location

The Yorke Peninsula

Port Broughton sits on the Yorke Peninsula, about 3 hours drive from our house south of Adelaide. The area was settled by Europeans in 1840 (previously it was home to the Narungga Aboriginal people).  It is named after the Right Honourable Charles Phillip Yorke who was a British Politician (1764-1834).

The Yorke Peninsula is a rural area, with lots of barley and grain farms, as well as coastal towns which originally were used for transporting the goods to and from the farms.

Port Broughton was also a rural farming village, originally used for grazing as well as wheat and barley.  It was founded in 1871 and named after the Broughton River.

We packed the car on Thursday night and on Friday morning we took our dog, Oscar, to mum's for the weekend then headed off.  We stopped at Port Wakefield - on the junction of Yorke Peninsula and the Fleurio Peninsula (the one Adelaide is on) for lunch (pies of course) and then continued on our way, arriving around 2pm.

After driving in Sweden and Europe, it was interesting to see how flat, straight and bare Australia roads were:

On the way to Port Broughton

Reading and the huge pile of stuff in the boot

On the way to Port Broughton

One of Australia's Famous road trains (Kalari transport from the mines)

 

Coming into Port Broughton

 We didn't really have the best tent site at the caravan park - it was right next to the play area and bouncy cushion, which got a loud for most of the day (6am-7pm) and on a tight corner where the cars and caravans drove past, but it was comfortable and we had a good time.

Getting the tent laid out

Putting the poles together

Spreading out the base

The kids stayed out of the way - jumping on the bouncy cushion

But they ended did help hold some poles

The car overflowing

Pegging it out

And done!

Tom was happy with it

And happy to model the insides

Our kitchen

Kids bedroom - the boys had a bunk bed

Getting ready to jump on the cushion

On the cushion

Once we had finally set up the tent and moved everything into it we went for a walk down along the beach and had a dinner at the Port Broughton Hotel.  We went to bed pretty early and were up early on Saturday for a trip down to Moonta.

Moonta is about an hour south of Port Broughton and is in the Copper Coast district.  It is also know as "Little Cornwall" as it had a large number of immigrants from Cornwall and a shared copper mining history. (Cornwall is a county in the southwest for England).

Moonta was originally occupied by the Narungga people, who named it Munta-Muntara, or Moontera, meaning "Thick Scrub Place" or "Impenetrable Scrub".  (As an aside, nearby Wallaroo, comes from the Aboriginal word for Wallaby urine - not really the most attractive name..)

Moonta was settled in the 1840s, but wasn't very well populated due to a lack of water.  The first settlers spent a long time clearing the land (hence, the name Moonta).  Originally the area was used for sheep grazing, but copper had been found in nearby Wallaroo, and the land owners had asked their shepherd to keep an eye out for green rock (copper ores).  In 1861, a shepherd named Patrick Ryan, who worked for Walter Hughes, located a copper outside a wombat burrow and informed Hughes.  (He first informed the barkeeper at the local pub, while drinking there, and this sparked a fight over land rights, but Hughes won out).  They founded the Wheal Hughes mine - Wheal meaning "Workplace" in Cornish".  The Moonta mines caused the area to explode and many Cornish miners with experience in copper mining were invited by the South Australian government.  It was the richest mine in South Australia in 1917. The mining ceased in 1923 and the area reverted to dry farming, such as barley, wheat and legumes.  The mines were then heritage listed and now serve as a tourist attraction.

At the time, conditions in Moonta were poor.  Water was limited and often of very bad quality, causing lots of illnesses, and (as per most 1800s work sites) there was very little safety in place, so many miners were killed on the job. Moonta is listed as semi-arid and surrounded by mallee scrub.

On the road to Moonta

Copper Coast

Welcome to Moonta

Moonta - Copper Coast

Our first stop was at Hancocks Tailing Heap.  Tailings are the left-overs after the mining process - the dirt and rocks that have been removed from the mine and then filtered for traces of copper.  They had the classic red colour that is always associated with the Aussie outback:

Around the tailing heaps

Climbing Hancock's Tailing Heap

 

Hancock's Tailing Heap

Some details on how they set up the heap

How they extracted copper from the heap

Top of the heap

Looking down from the top of the heap

The heritage listed Miner's Cottage

On the way back to the car, we passed one of the mine shafts - Prince Alfred Shaft:

Info on the shaft - most notably that a 1 ton piece of ore was found in the mine - bigger than the mouth of the shaft!

The remains of Prince Alfred Shaft

We then drove around the the next stop, which was Ryan's Shaft and Tailing heap.  This was where we intersected with the Moonta Mine Railway line:

Ryan Shaft memorial

Information

Ryan Shaft

The slime pit - where they stored the copper slimes to allow them to settle

Map of the lodes

Ryan's Tailings Heap

Ryan's Tailing Heap and the railway tunnel

From Ryan's Shaft, we headed to the Moonta Railway and had a picnic lunch before exploring the site.  It was going to be an hour and a half before the next tourist train, so we had a walk around and visited the heritage Moonta Sweet Shop:

Moonta Mine Railway Station

Formerly the Moonta Mines school - now the mine museum

The Moonta Trains site

Displays at the back of the station

 
 
 

Details of one of the many mine disasters

The reservoir for the mines - built to deal with the poor water supply to the town

The reservoir

Due to the poor condition of the limited water for the miners, a reservoir was built and the fresh water was sold by the bucketful to the residents.  The reservoir was 180' x 120' by 9' deep and could hold about 20,000 hogsheads of water (a hogshead was 240 liters - so it could hold 4.8 million liters of water. Tomas misread the sign and informed us all that the reservoir could hold 20,000 hedgehogs.

The tourist train comes back around

Tom was excited about going on the train

I'm guessing Kris and Alana were too..

Waiting for the train to go

But first, Tomas had to stop it from moving

Dominick's Shaft

Ryan's Tailing Heap (Where we had been earlier)

A picky boy exhibit - "Picky Boys" where 10-12 year old boys who were employed to sort through the rocks to find the copper ore

The guide explaining how the copper mines were founded

Remains of the draining pools

 

We stopped at the washing station - where efforts had been taken to extract all of the trace ore from the mines was undertaken.  The ore slime was pumped in and treated using a precipitation method. In this way, iron was added to the trenches of copper and rock water solution and the copper precipitated out of the solution and onto the iron, where it could be extracted, dried then packaged and sent to the smelter:

Heading into the Washing and Drying Station

Precipitation process

The washing tanks

 

Mine shaft flying the Cornish flag

The Moonta Visitor Center

Hi! We're at Moonta!

and of course we had to visit the Sweet Shop

Flags outside the visitor center - Australia, South Australia, Aboriginal, Cornwell, National Heritage

After the train ride, visitor center and sweet shop, we drove to Wallaroo to check out the marina and then headed back home.  That night we had sausages cooked on the camp stove and played some board games.

Sunday we spent some time at the campsite, with the kids playing on the bouncy cushion, then we headed down to check out the Port Broughton beach and their yearly market.  The beach at Port Broughton is a mangrove beach (mangroves are trees that are salt tolerant and live in coastal or salty waters), so it wasn't the best for swimming, but it was a nice walk:

Beach

Tomas saw some sandcastles and had to go stomp them..

 

A tiny mud crab

The old jetty

Under the main jetty

Mangroves

Only headless dogs were allowed in the park

A seagull with a fish on an antenna

 

 

Lollies at the market

And ice-cream!

The market

Market

After the market we cooked up some potatoes and bolagnese sauce for dinner.

The next morning, we needed to be out by 10:00am, so we packed up and headed home.  We got back just after lunch.


On the way back, we snapped some quick shots of the Port Wakefield Road Protest Sculptures.  The site was originally planned to be a waste dump back in the 1990s, but locals protested that it would have damaged the environment and the shore bird ecology, so the plans were scrapped.

A group of protestors used the site to build protest sculptures -  about the selling of the Repat hospital, coastal pollution and former premier John Olsen.  We didn't stop as the road was pretty busy, but I got a few quick snaps as we drove past.  Also present was Andrew 'Cosi' Costello's World's Biggest Cockroach.  It is 4m long and was originally part of the protest site when it originally protested the creation of the dump.  Cosi noticed that it had been removed and used social media to track it down in a scrap metal yard.  He purchased the cockroach for two slabs of beer (a slab is 24 'stubbie' bottles) and donated it back to the sculpture yard:

Protest over SA Health Minister Jack Snelling's plans to sell the Repatriation Hospital

Protest over Veteran's Affairs Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith's plan to move Ward 17 from the Repat Hospital

Ned Kelly style protest over the sale of the Repat

Protest over former premier Jay Weatherill

World's Biggest Cockroach

We were lucky to have awesome weather the whole trip and it was great to go camping again and revisit some places we had both been when we were younger and to share them with our kids.