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| Australia Mystery |
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| From the collection of Carol Campbell Lay |
| The picture was taken by "Arthur J. Page Taylor Street, Kadina" 1895-1905 We believe it is one of two surnames. HANEY or RIDGEWAY If you know who this person is please email me. Randal Hanna |
| History of Kadina, Australia Kadina Historic copper mining full of interesting buildings and ruins. Located 150 km north-west of Adelaide and 44 m above sea level, Kadina is the largest town on the Yorke Peninsula. The town owes its existence entirely to the discovery of copper. In 1866 R. P. Whitworth wrote: 'The country was never considered fit for anything until one of the oldest resident settlers, Captain Hughes, discovered that under the valueless surface, there were chances of great wealth in store for himself and others. He found traces of existing copper-bearing lodes on the beach near his station, and for years tried to follow those traces back into the country, but unsuccessfully until at length in the year 1860 a shepherd [James Boor], who was remarkably intelligent man, discovered copper ore thrown to the surface by the wombats in their burrowing under the limestone crust.' The area had been inhabited by Narrunga Aborigines prior to European settlement and it's name comes probably from their word 'caddy-yeena' or 'caddy-inna' which is thought to mean 'lizard plain'. The discovery of copper changed the entire area. From marginal agricultural land, which Walter Watson Hughes and John Duncan had been trying to graze sheep on, it quickly developed. The town of Kadina was laid out in 1861. By 1862 the Wombat Hotel (named after the animals who had discovered the copper) was open for business and a horse-drawn railway was operating at the Wallaroo Mine. The real future of the area came with the creation of a copper mining company in 1862 centred around Matta. The company was formed by raising £60,000 which was made up of 12,000 shares of £5 each. Over the next few years the company dug to a depth of 40 metres and extracted 1,500 tonnes of 23 per cent pure copper ore. By 1866 the Matta mine was bringing 50 tonnes of ore per week to the surface. The presence of copper attracted large numbers of Cornish miners to the area (there were considerable copper deposits in Cornwall at the time and they emigrated to Australia bringing with them their mining expertise). Kadina and the nearby towns of Wallaroo and Moonta form a triangle which is known as 'Little Cornwall'. By 1875 there were 20,000 people in the district and most of them were of Cornish origin. This Cornish tradition is celebrated each odd year (the next one will be in 2005) with the Kernewek Lowender (a Cornish Festival) which is held in May. The town became a municipality in 1872 and the main railway line opened in 1878. It was during the 1870s, particularly during periods of drought, that farmers used the machinery from the mines to distil water. By 1890 the copper mining companies in the district had amalgamated to become the largest industrial company in South Australia. For the next 33 years they employed between 1900 and 2700 people. Copper mining continued to dominate the town's economy until 1923 and by 1938 mining in the area had completely stopped. In their time the mines around Kapunda had extracted 3.5 million tonnes of ore. |
| I want to thank my brother Tom Hanna for the wonderful background image. |