Clippers in the Outback
Port Augusta
Port Augusta sits at the head of Spencer Gulf, a unique waterway that extends the sea up to the foot of the majestic Flinders Ranges and the Outback of South Australia. It is 'unique' because it serves to combine diverse ecological systems; mangrove, dolphins and marine birdlife together with arid lands vegetation, emus, kangaroos and that of the rugged ranges.
Port Augusta's geographical location results in it being known as both the "Gateway to the Outback" and the "Crossroads of Australia". Roads from Adelaide, the Flinders Ranges, Alice Springs, Perth, Eyre Peninsula, Whyalla and Outback all intersect at Port Augusta.
Northern Spencer Gulf 1802 - 1852
The very first Europeans to sail the waters of the northern Spencer Gulf were Matthew Flinders and his crew aboard 'HMS Investigator' who entered that section of the gulf on Monday, March 8, 1802. Flinders was under instructions to seek out any access to an inland sea which at the time was thought to exist within the Australian continent. However, they would have soon discovered the northern extent of the gulf.
European settlement began in the 1840s when pastoral leases extended from the Flinders Ranges north to Leigh Creek. In 1852-1853, wool merchant and MP Thomas Elder urged the government of the day to survey the harbour and lay out the township of the now Port Augusta.
Thomas Elder was one very prominent pastoralist who took up large leases in the Beltana area, including the stations of Lake Hope, Finniss Springs, Umberatana, Mount Lyndhurst, Manuwalkaninna and Blanchewater. With Robert Barr Smith, he owned Beltana Station which alone ran 17,705 sheep in 1862, and employed 90 shearers in 1878.
The town of Port Augusta was established in 1854 and is named after Lady Augusta Young, the wife of Sir Henry Edward Fox Young (1803 - 1870), the fifth Governor of South Australia. It was under Young that South Australia established its first formal parliament. The South Australian House of Assembly comprised 36 members each elected from a different area.
Port Augusta 1854 - 1886
In 1854, the schooners Daphne and Bandicoot shipped the first wool from Port Augusta to Port Adelaide. In 1859 the first ships arrived in Port Augusta to load cargo destined directly for England.
The existence of copper in the Northern Flinders Ranges had long been known by the local Aborigines. When George W. Goyder passed through the area in 1857 he did not notice any copper despite other accounts of the era suggesting copper ore was so prominent that stones of ore could be picked up off the ground. It was not until 1859, when Robert Blinman (c.1802-1880), a shepherd on the 'Angorichina Run', observed a great mineral outcrop on top of a hill whilst tending his sheep. He thought it looked promising enough to scratch together several weeks' wages and apply for a mining lease. His lease was approved on 9 February 1860. He needed financial backing and so he interested a number of Adelaide businessmen, including Henry Martin, and a syndicate was formed.
Henry Martin was involved in establishing the Blinman and Yudnamutana mines in the Flinders Ranges and as working proprietor was the driving force behind the Blinman mine. Both mines were reasonably successful for a time and dividends where returned to shareholders.
However, with an extended drought in 1864, and ever increasing transport costs, the Yudanamutana Copper Mining Company of South Australia was forced to stop mining operations at Yudanamutana and concentrate all its efforts on the Blinman mine. As a result of the prolonged drought, mining was abandoned almost everywhere in the Northern Flinders Ranges, but mining struggled on at the Blinman mine.
Mining the copper ore was not a simple process, but often the most troublesome part was transporting the ore to the smelters. It had to be taken along a tortuous track via Wilpena and Arkaba stations to Port Augusta. As a consequence, Henry Martin had cleared a new road through the Brachina Gorge to make it easier for drays carrying copper ore to reach Port Augusta.
To ensure that copper could be shipped to the markets in Britain, to minimise the cost of transport, and to exercise a level of control over the use of a ship and its freight charges, Henry Martin became a part owner in the City of Adelaide when the composite clipper was built in 1864.
When the City of Adelaide made voyages, bringing migrants and manufactured goods, to South Australia, she unloaded at Port Adelaide through August and September, then moved to Port Augusta to pick up copper ore and wool in October. The copper would act as ballast. On her maiden voyage, she returned to London with 100 tons of copper, 100 tons of ore, and 3,000 bales of wool.
By the end of 1872 the Yudanamutana Company was reorganised and was now known as the Blinman Consolidated Copper Mining Company of South Australia. However the mine only lasted until November 1873 when it was forced to wind up, after having raised copper to the value of $500,000. When the railway reached Parachilna in 1882, a new company reopened the mine and worked it until 1885 when falling copper prices again forced it to close. The cost of land transport and the shortage of water and fuel made copper mining a marginal enterprise in the Flinders Ranges.
South Australia started to build its narrow-gauge Great Northern Railway in 1878, and it greatly reduced the difficulties of transport between the pastoral and mining areas of the Far North and their nearest sea-port at Port Augusta. It wound through Pichi Richi Pass and across the western plains, creating several new towns such as Hawker, Parachilna and Beltana at each temporary rail-head in turn, until it reached Marree in 1883. (Subsequently it was extended to reach Oodnadatta in 1891, but did not arrive at Alice Springs until 1929.)
Despite various droughts, the South Australian wheat industry continued to spread northward. The first 199 bags of wheat were shipped from Port Augusta to Adelaide in late 1877 and by early the next year wheat was bound for London.
The City of Adelaide continued to service both Port Adelaide and Port Augusta for nearly a quarter century from 1864 to 1887.
In colonial times the nation of Australia was "built on the sheep's back" and Australia's prosperity was dependent on sailing ships to deliver the sheep's wool to the overseas markets. The City of Adelaide is the last survivor of the wool clippers that carried South Australian wool from Port Adelaide and Port Augusta to the London Markets and is estimated to have exported 60,000 bales of South Australian wool.
See Also
View Map of Locations Referenced in this Story
References
Partial source Flinders Ranges Research
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