Burra, South Australia

Burra, South Australia

Self-proclaimed as ‘An Historic Copper Town and Merino Capital of the World’, the town of Burra in South Australia might be the best-preserved 19th century streetscape in Australia, offering a fascinating wealth of historical sites for those interested in colonial Australia.

The town is located 156 kilometres north of Adelaide, to the east of the wine-growing Clare Valley, on the edge of the outback. Before European colonisation, the area was inhabited by the Ngadjuri Aboriginal people.

Burra grew rapidly as a centre of copper mining, following the discovery of copper by two local shepherds William Streair and Thomas Pickett in the 1840s. Streair brought samples into the office of Henry Ayers, the secretary of the South Australian Mining Association. News of the find was soon printed in the Adelaide newspapers, with the site referred to as ‘The Monster Mine’.

The copper mine soon attracted residents, with the town having a population of 5,000 by 1851. The term ‘the Burra’ was used to refer collectively to a number of villages around the mine – Redruth, Aberdeen, Llychwr, and Hampton – which were amalgamated in 1940. The origins of the name ‘Burra’ are unknown, though a number of suggestions have been made. Some claim that it comes from the Hindi/Urdu phase ‘Burra Burra’ (meaning ‘great great’), used by early shepherds from India, while others maintain that -burra is a common suffix in Aboriginal languages, appearing in words such as kookaburra. Others claim that the phrase was used by miners from Devon.

Until 1860, the mine was one of the largest metal mines in Australia. It produced approximately 50,000 tonnes of copper a year – 89% of South Australia’s copper, and 5% of the world total. Due to the lack of smelting technology in South Australia, the copper was sent to Cornwall to be smelted, before being sold and traded on the world market. Some historians claim that the success of the Burra mine was the thing that saved the struggling colony of South Australia during financial decline in the 1850s.

The town and the mine declined as quickly as it grew, one of the quintessential ‘boom towns’ of the 19th century. As early as 1852, the population declined, as miners left to strike it rich on the Victorian gold fields around Ballarat, Bendigo, and Castlemaine. By the late 1860s, production was falling. The mine closed in 1877, though briefly re-opened in the early 20th century and for a period in the 1970s.

Burra township was preserved as a service centre for the surrounding pastoralist districts, and became a centre of tourism thanks to its preserved 19th century streetscape and historic mine workings. The town was preserved as a State Heritage Area, constituting over 70 individual sites, in 1994.

People who have not visited Burra may find several of the towns buildings familiar, thanks to its use as a filming location for the 1980 film Breaker Morant. An abandoned house several miles south of town, located on ‘Cobb and Co corner’ was immortalised as the cover art for Midnight Oil’s 1987 album, Diesel and Dust and is now a popular location for photoshoots.

Things to see:

The majority of Burra’s sights are concentrated around the old mine and mining villages. The Historic Passport is a local tour program which includes access to 43 heritage sites. Some of the highlights include:

• The Burra Mine Site, located to the north of town. The site includes information about the history of mining in town. The nearby Powder Magazine, used to store explosives for use in mining, is the oldest building in Burra, and reportedly the oldest mining building in Australia.
• Miner’s Dugouts, primitive houses built in the 1840s for the first miners. It is still possible to walk inside these tiny dwellings, many of which were cramped and unsanitary, causing outbreaks of typhus, smallpox, and typhoid fever. In 1851, 1,800 out of a total population of 4,400 lived in these basic structures.
• The Police Lock-up and Stables, built 1847, brought law and order to the frontier town. Nearby Redruth Gaol was built in 1856. The gaol is now home to an interesting exhibition, exploring prison conditions in the 19th century. It was featured extensively in Breaker Morant, and has a room devoted to memorabilia from the film.
• Bon Accord Mine Complex is now an interactive museum, exploring what Burra would have been like when it had population of over 5, 000 in the 1850s. The complex has a blacksmith’s shop and a pump shed and shaft, used to pump water for the town.
• Burra Market Square Museum, built 1880, was converted into a museum in 1966. It features a heritage reconstruction of an old general store, post office, and a family home, all with authentic furniture from the period.

• Malowen Lowarth, meaning ‘hollyhock garden’ in Cornish is a charming row of houses, built from 1849-52. One of the cottages, the Mine Captain’s Residence, is open for inspection, and is furnished with authentic artefacts from the 1860s.
• Hampton Township, on the edge of town, was home to the English miners who came to Barra. It was once the town’s premier neighbourhood, with sweeping views of the surrounding settlement, but because of its high location was the last part of town to receive electricity. Today, the township is in ruins with no complete buildings, thanks to locals who used the bricks as a cheap source of material for their own houses.

Odyssey Traveller visits Burra as part of our new tour of the Southern States of Australia. Designed to make you re-think the way you see Australia, our tour breaks down traditional state lines, exploring the cultural continuities between western Victoria and New South Wales and eastern South Australia. Getting away from the major cities – Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide – our tour takes you through lesser-known parts of each state, uncovering fascinating local histories and making surprising connections.

The tour begins in Adelaide, heading east to Mount Gambier and along the Southern Ocean coastline to Port Fairy, Victoria. We then head to the UNESCO-listed Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, where we explore the fascinating history of this site with a local tour guide. From here we move to the town of Hamilton, from which we make a day tour to the Naracoorte Caves Park, home to fossils of ancient megafauna – Australian wildlife on a giant scale. We then head to Mungo National Park (another UNESCO World Heritage Site), where some of the oldest human remains in the world were found in the late 1960s.

From Mungo National Park we spend two days in Mildura on the Murray River, then head deeper into the Australian outback with a visit to Broken Hill. From Broken Hill, we head back into South Australia, visiting the railway hub of Peterborough and the outback town of Burra. Finally, our tour of Southern Australia ends in Adelaide.

Every Odyssey Traveller guided tour is designed especially for mature and senior travellers, who seek an authentic experience of their travel destinations. We don’t just go to the tourism Australia hotspots – Great Barrier Reef, Port Philip Island, and the Blue Mountains – but pride ourselves on getting off the beaten path on every trip.

Our Australia tours include:

• Flinders Ranges tour: Explores the natural beauty and Aboriginal culture of the Flinders, including a visit to the iconic Wilpena Pound.
• Adelaide and surrounds: Uncovers the historic South Australian capital, with day trips to the Barossa Valley, Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide Hills.
• Victoria: Explores the 19th century history of Melbourne and regional Victoria, passing through Gold Rush towns and Murray River trading spots.
• Tasmanian Wildlife: Get away from mainland Australia and explore the spectacular scenery of Tasmania, notorious (like even more remote Norfolk Island) for its history as a brutal penal colony.
• Flinders Island: Explore remote Flinders Island in the Bass Strait, one of Australia‘s hidden gems.
• Broken Hill and back: Takes you deep into the outback of central Australia, where New South Wales, Queensland, and the Northern Territory meet.
• Outback Queensland: Takes you through the quintessential Australian outback areas of Queensland, away from Brisbane and the tourist spots of the south east.
• The Kimberley: Discover the ancient landscapes of the Kimberley in far northern Australia, from the Indian Ocean beaches of Broome to the remote Purnululu National Park.
• Western Australian Wildflowers: Devoted to the stunning flora of Western Australia, including Perth and the Margaret River.

Articles about Australia published by Odyssey Traveller:

• The Kimberley: A Definitive Guide
• Uncovering the Ancient History of Aboriginal Australia
• Aboriginal Land Use in the Mallee

For all the articles Odyssey Traveller has published for mature aged and senior travellers, click through on this link.

External articles to assist you on your visit to Australia:

• UNESCO: Budj Bim Cultural Landscape and Willandra Lakes Region
• Finding Mungo Man: the moment Australia’s story suddenly changed
• A 42,000-Year-Old Man Finally Goes Home
• Fish traps and stone houses: New archaeological insights into Gunditjmara use of the Budj Bim lava flow of southwest Victoria over the past 7000 years
• ‘A big jump’: People might have lived in Australia twice as long as we thought
• Mildura, Victoria
• Righting the wrongs of the Sunraysia sultana’s confusing history
• Burra, South Australia: Travel guide and things to do

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.