
Detailed map of Aberdeen
(click for larger map) |

Aberdeen in the 1930s |
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This is a subdivision of section 4 Hundred of Kooringa by Robert A.A.
Morehead and Matthew Young in 1849. It reflects an attempt by the
owners of the failed Bon Accord Mine to make some money from their
holding. Presumably it takes its name from the Scottish city of
Aberdeen which derives its name from its location near the mouth (aber) of
the River Dee.
Except for a slight irregularity in the southeast corner, the plan was a
simple grid, but in 1862 the main road to the north was cut through the
northern portion of the town in a wide arc and more recently the road to
Morgan has extended this disruption somewhat.
By and large the attempted sale of Aberdeen failed and by 1873 there were
10 houses, 2 hotels and 2 shops. All, but one of these were located
along the main road. The development of this subdivision proceeded
very slowly from the arrival of the railway in 1870 to the present time.
The 1875 petition for a Town Council claimed there were then 39 houses.
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Ashmore |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

A subdivision of section
78, lot 2, of the Hundred of Kooringa in 1859 by Matthew Henry Furniss,
accountant of the Burra Burra Mines. The rubble by the shed may be
the remains of one of the only two houses known to have been erected on
this subdivision. This photo was taken in February 2001. |
This is a subdivision of part of section 78 of Hundred of Kooringa,
adjacent to Westbury. It comprises only 14 allotments
and has now reverted to farmland.
The available plan of it is hard to read, but appears to bear the date
1859. In 1873 there were two poor quality houses on it.
Manning does not suggest an origin
for the name, but there is an Ashmore in Dorset.
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Burra |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Detailed map of Burra
(click for larger map) |
Though the mine was always called
the Burra Burra Mine, Burra as the name for the town was only official
from 19 September 1940. The origin of the name is disputed. The original
pastoralist, James Stein, had Indian coolies working for him as shepherds
and Burra Burra was said to come from Hindustani for ‘great great’ in
reference to the creek that ran through the property. Stein came from
Scotland where the name also occurs in the Shetland Islands, derived from
Old Norman borgarfiord for a fortified hill. In other parts of
Australia burra occurs in a number of Aboriginal languages meaning
people or tribe. The Hindustani origin seems to be the one most favoured. |
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Charleston |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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A part of section 2070, Hundred of
Kooringa was named Charleston by Johann C.C. Meyer who subdivided it in
1859, having acquired the section by land grant in 1853. I have not been
able to find a complete map of the subdivision, but there is a partial one
from 1882 when the area was brought under the Real Property Act. This
shows a truncated grid pattern of streets which were presumably more
extensive originally. Only five allotments are marked: 1-4 and 62. In
the 1873 assessment there were 2 houses here.
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Clonmel |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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In the Adelaide paper the
Register, 2 August 1858 we read:
‘The township of Warrapoota was
offered for sale at the Burra Hotel on Thursday in blocks of one, two,
three and five acres, but there were no purchasers. It was again offered
on Saturday with the like result. This is rather disheartening to those
who are at present offering their land for sale in this manner, there
being a considerable quantity in the market at present, viz.
Millerton, Clonmel, Copperhouse, Hampton, Roachtown, Nelson,
Yarwood and Warrapoota, besides Redruth Aberdeen and Kooringa.’
Absolutely no other information is
available about this subdivision. |
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"Coolinga" |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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Manning cites the Register
1 April 1846, p.2.
‘The directors of the SA Mining
Association, who had determined on giving the name ‘Truro’ to a township
at the Burra Burra Mine, have since resolved to adopt the very euphonious
name of a locality and the town of ‘Coolinga’ is now duly laid out. Mr
Crawford of the Hindmarsh Brewery has contracted to erect an inn there on
a scale of magnitude not yet attempted in the colony . . . and it is said
he will attach a brewery to the new establishment.’
The evidence of the hotel and
brewery make it clear that ‘Coolinga’ is in fact a mistake for Kooringa.
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Copperhouse |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Lot 6. The rubble in
the foreground of this January 2001 photo is probably from the house of
Ellen and John Sanders. The fenceline immediately to the right of
the tree is the Copperhouse-Lostwithiel boundary.

Another view of Lot 6 with
the ruins of the Race Course Hotel in Lostwithiel by the tree along the
main road. |
This village was laid out on part
of section 52 Hundred of Kooringa, contiguous to Lostwithiel, by William Oliver, licensed victualler
of Redruth, in 1858.
The name comes from Copperhouse in
Cornwall.
It was a simple plan with one
street of houses, Alankeen St, extending east-west from the north-south
government road. There were 30 blocks and a reserve.
In 1873 there were
14 houses, one of which was probably the former Commercial Inn, and a
Primitive Methodist Church.
There was a school which may have utilised
the church building as after 1900 the Education Department bought it and
modified it for that purpose.
The town slowly declined from the closure
of the mine in 1877 to the middle of the 20th Century.
Today
two houses remain and the school building.
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Graham |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Graham today |
This was laid out in 1875 on part
of section 1 Hundred of Kooringa by the SA Mining Association. It was
named after J.B. Graham, a substantial shareholder in the Burra Burra
Mine.
It is bounded by Aberdeen to the
north and the Burra Creek to the east. The closure of the mine in 1877
meant that it failed to develop. When it was established the Smelters’
Home Hotel already occupied lot 3 and the Mine Hospital was on lot 6. Lot
21 was occupied by the house of the mine accountant Mr Furniss. Roach’s
Flour Mill occupied lot 2. New building had to wait till 1924 when the
town’s powerhouse was built on lots 8 & 9.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council claimed there were then 5 buildings.
In 1905 E.A. West laid out a new
subdivision on the eastern side of the Burra Creek adjacent to Graham. It
comprised 75 allotments. This is also referred to as Graham in Council
business, but it too failed to attract new housing until the 1920s. Since
then it has grown substantially with new housing since 1960 as well.
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Hampton |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Detailed map of Hampton

Ruins of Hampton in 2004 |
Thomas William Powell (1806-1891)
made a subdivision of part of sections 480 and 2071 Hundred of Kooringa in
1857.
In 1833 he married Rebecca A. Wixen who was born in Hampton in
Middlesex in 1810. No doubt the town is named after her birthplace. The
Old English ham-tun means ‘home town’.
At one time the town had at least 30 houses, but it was on the outskirts
of Burra and beyond the reticulated water supply. It gradually
dwindled into a ghost town from the 1960s.
It is now a National Trust heritage area and a significant archaeological
site.
Allotments are numbered to 55, but despite there being several maps lots
41 & 42 have not been located; there being a large central area where lot
boundaries are not known.
The southeast corner is the location for one of Burra’s more important
quarries for road and building stone.
The 1873 assessment indicates 20
houses.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council claimed there were then 24. [There is evidence that houses were
sometimes divided, so there may not have been more buildings.]
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Harrow Hill |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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Thomas Powell (1806-1891)
subdivided section 83 Hundred of Kooringa in 1860.
He migrated from Middlesex in 1849
and named this after Harrow-on-the-Hill in that county. The name derives
from hearg-weoh meaning ‘heathen temple’ or ‘shrine of an idol’.
There were only 10 blocks of quite
large size: ranging from about 170m x 80m to almost 300m x 120m. There
seems to be no evidence that settlement ever occurred and by 1952 the
whole area had been claimed by right of possession and was farmland.
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Helston |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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The London Mining Journal
10 March 1858 has an item about the Bon Accord Mine and notes that ‘for
sale in allotments, the township of Helston, adjoining the above mine, the
Church and Wesleyan Glebes and the Government Reserve. This description
doesn’t accord very well with reality and the area best matching the
description and lying between the Glebes and the Bon Accord property is
occupied by Millerton. There are no plans available to clarify the
matter.
There is a Helston in Cornwall and
the name may derive from either the Cornish hellas meaning ‘a
marsh’ or from Old English henlis-tun meaning ‘old court town’.
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Kooringa |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Kooringa, 1872

Kooringa today |
The main town adjacent to the
Burra Burra Mine was laid out entirely on the SA Mining Association’s
property in 1846. The Association did not grant freehold title until the
1870s and this meant that the housing constructed tended to be of poor
quality and it also encouraged the proliferation of other subdivisions
adjacent to the northern and western boundaries of the company’s property.
The town plan is essentially a
grid pattern for the most part. The oldest area lies west of the Burra
Creek, but the adjacent area east of the creek is almost as old with
substantial expansion to the south east by the 1870s and a small modern
extension in the north east corner dating essentially from the 1970s.
The town was built almost
exclusively of stone cottages, though initially the miners preferred to
live in dugouts in the banks of Burra Creek. These were cooler in summer
and warmer in winter as well as being rent-free. The disadvantage came
from rather frequent floods and after two disastrous floods in 1851 the
company refused to hire anyone living in the creek bank. At its peak at
least 1,500 had so lived. It became the civic and commercial centre for
all the Burra towns with the commercial core around the roughly triangular
shape of Market Square.
The name appears to be derived
from the Aboriginal kuri-ngga, meaning ‘in the circle’. The
kuri was ‘a dance among the northern tribes, at which the men,
ornamented with white stripes or dots on the face and chest, and green
leaves around their knees, first form a circle, then stamp with their feet
alternately on the ground, while the women sit down and sing.’
Rodney Cockburn, What’s in a
Name? Nomenclature of South Australia,
1908, gave the meaning as ‘locality of
sheoak’.
The mining company constructed
many cottages for its employees. Some of these formed long terraces and
the most significant of these, Paxton Square, remain as tourist
accommodation. The town is characterised by its many bluestone houses.
Though many of the miners’ cottages have been demolished over time, a
significant number remain and more substantial stone houses built after
1870 have added to the character of the town. The public buildings,
especially the churches, Public School and the Institute (later the Town
Hall) are impressive.
In 1873 the assessment suggested
there were about 365 houses.
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Llwchwr
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Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Detailed map of Llwchwr |
The English and Australian Copper
Co. Ltd gave this Welsh name to a subdivision of section 2067 Hundred of
Kooringa, c. 1855. The name itself means ‘a lake’, the English
translation being ‘Loughour’.
There were 44 lots and in 1855 the
company brought out Welsh migrants to work in the smelter and created this
village. Whether the Welsh colonists actually lived here seems doubtful.
There were a number of cottages closer to the smelting works on the
company’s lease and by 1873 there were only 5 houses there of which three
were occupied by German migrants.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council claimed there were then 6 houses.
Locally the spelling is sometimes
Llwchyr.
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Lostwithiel |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Ruins of the Race Course
Hotel on Lot 23, on the corner of the main road and Elizabeth St in
January 2001

Other ruins of the
Race Course Hotel |
John Stevens Reed (1806-1872)
subdivided this portion of section 52 Hundred of Kooringa, contiguous with
Copperhouse, c. 1858. He was a licensed victualler of Aberdeen and named
it after his birthplace in Cornwall. The name means ‘place in the woods’
which is rather ironic considering Burra’s surrounding were notorious for
their lack of trees.
Like Copperhouse, it has one
east-west street, Elizabeth St, running off the north-south government
road.
It shared the initial prosperity of Copperhouse
and also its ultimate fate.
There were 23 allotments and in the 1873 assessment it had 12 houses, one
of which was also a shop, and one hotel.
Today no building remains, but heaps of stones mark some of the house
sites.
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Millerton |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Detailed map of
Millerton (click for larger map)

Aberdeen in foreground and Millerton in background |
This subdivision on section 2073
in the Hundred of Kooringa was made by Henry Miller in 1858. It was
then described as being bounded ‘on the west by the town of Aberdeen, on
the east by the church Glebe and the Wesleyan Glebe and the north by the
new townships of Nelson and Yardley. . . . in fact an extension of Redruth
. . . the proposed new church and the court house are within a few hundred
yards of the township.’
Nelson actually lies a little to
the east, while Yardley cannot now be identified at all.
It was advertised for sale in the
Register 22 July 1858 and 2 August 1858.
It seems to have been a slightly better sale than others of this period
and somewhat more than 25% of blocks seem to have sold.
The 1873 assessment lists 5 houses and while there may have been gains and
losses the result has been little difference over the years.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council claimed there were then 6 houses.
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Nelson |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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Anthony Forster and Samuel Nelson
made this subdivision of section 3033, Hundred of Kooringa, with the plan
saying it was laid out 9 July 1858. It was offered for sale 30 July 1858
and the Register 6 August 1858 says all but 5 allotments were sold.
The plan shows a strangely shaped
town sprawling in a long crescent along the western boundary of sections
3033 and 3039. The southern part is only a couple of allotments deep, but
in the north it widens to a small network of streets at a variety of
angles. Despite the sales report there is little suggestion that many
houses were ever erected. Early assessments show list several houses at
Nelson, but as no allotment numbers are given some may have been on
adjacent farmland.
The 1873 assessment lists 5 houses
at Nelson and one of them has allotment numbers. Ruins today confirm at
least three within the town limits. Today it is farmland.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council claimed there were then 3.
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New Aberdeen |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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This subdivision of part section 4
Hundred of Kooringa appears to have been another attempt to get some
income from the Bon Accord property. It was almost certainly inspired by
the arrival of the railway in 1870 and the lodged plan is dated 1872.
The plan is unlike most others in
the area by not being a simple grid. The street alignments are
complicated by the pre-existing main road running north, the railway
reserve and the creeks, though the latter are ignored for the main part.
The original plan was later interrupted by the extension of the railway to
Hallett which opened on 10 May 1878. There was always however, a railway
reserve swinging in an arc across the centre of the area. This clearly
allowed for the extension of the railway to the mine site and/or the
smelts and/or Kooringa. This would have meant cutting across Aberdeen for
which no provision had been made, but given the lack of building this
would not have been too difficult. In any case no such extension was ever
made.
Despite the arrival of the railway
there seems to have been no rush to buy and develop this part of the
town. By the time of the assessment in 1873 only 18 of 144 allotments
seem to have been sold and all are said to be vacant land. The only
buildings listed are those of the old Bon Accord Mine. Like Aberdeen,
growth came slowly in the later 19th century and has
continued. Nevertheless the railway was certainly significant and did
soon cause several major developments in New Aberdeen. A flourmill, a new
hotel, a large bulk store for S. Drew & Co., importers, extensive
stockyards and the steam sawmill etc. of Sara & Dunstan were all a
response to the location of the railway.
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Princess Town / Prince's Town |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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This is a somewhat mysterious
settlement of miners etc. on the southwestern fringes of Kooringa. There
are quite a lot of references to people living there, but it does not
appear to be named on any map and the Lands Titles Office has no plan of
the town. Early council assessments and one or two references in the
local paper suggest it occupied section 2264 in the Hundred of Kooringa,
but there is a nineteenth century Hundred map showing a pattern of streets
on the adjacent section 2267.
In the absence of more explicit
information the section 2267 evidence seems most convincing, while anyone
living on part of 2264 would most likely have also used the name. The
town is on the slopes of Princess Town Hill.
There is a Princetown in Devon
which might conceivably have some connection.
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Redruth |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

Redruth and Aberdeen |
The town was surveyed in 1849
around a reserve which housed a police station built in 1847. There were
120 allotments. It is named after its Cornish counterpart. The origin of
the name is obscure. It may come from re-druith meaning ‘the
Druid’s Town’, or rhe-druth meaning ‘swift stream of the druids, or
ridruth, meaning ‘red ford’.
At its sale the representatives of
the SA Mining Association forced up prices to an unrealistic level and it
therefore failed to get the big head start on its rivals that its early
date would suggest, nevertheless it was the centre for government activity
as a result of the location of the court and police station. It had three
churches and from 1856 the Redruth Gaol was on its northern edge. Despite
being available for freehold many of the cottages built were little
different from those on the Kooringa leasehold property. The present
houses are a mixture of buildings from the 1850s to the present day with
some very nice examples of early miners’ cottages among them.
The street pattern is basically a
grid but a diagonal road runs from the police station to the gaol site.
Another curving road in the north of the plan has disappeared from the map
of today’s town.
At the 1873 assessment there were
64 houses with several shops and a hotel.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council claimed there were then 63 houses.
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Roach Town |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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In 1858 Isaac Killicoat
(1808-1886) gave this name to a subdivision of section 2071 Hundred of
Kooringa. While Roach is a common name in the area, it is probably named
after Henry Roach, Chief Captain of the Burra Burra Mine from 1847-1868.
Mr Killicoat arrived in SA in the Abberton in 1854 to take up the
position of manager of the smelter operated by the English & Australian
Copper Co. at Burra.
The only available plans for the
town comes from deeds surrendered when the land came under the Real
Property Act. There were allotments either side of a single street,
called Killicoat St. The size of the known allotments suggests there
might have been as many as 32, but this is conjecture based on very
incomplete sketches. Early assessments from the council suggest that at
least lots 1,3,5,7,11, 13, 15, 17 & 19 were bought.
The 1873 assessment lists 1 house
at Roach Town.
The 1875 petition for a Town
Council also claimed there was 1.
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St Austell |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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The 1873 assessment gives this
name for the location of one house on part section 2070.
There is no known subdivision for
this section and the reference could be a mistake for the name of the
house.
St Austell is a town in Cornwall.
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St Blazey |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

January 2001 view of
the paddock where Saint Blazey was surveyed |
About 1859 Richard Goldsworthy (c.
1806-1866), an innkeeper of Copperhouse made this subdivision of section
73, Hundred of Kooringa.
There is a town of the same name in Cornwall.
I know of no evidence for any
building on this site in the past and it is presently farmland.
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Swansea Vale |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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This is not listed in Manning, but
makes regular appearances in the early assessment books for the
Corporation of Burra. It also appears occasionally in early local
newspapers. The ford across the Burra Creek leading from the Burra Burra
Mine to the Smelting Works, opposite the Mine Stores, is referred to as
the Swansea Vale Ford. Several houses have this address and they have
neither lot numbers nor a street address. The logical conclusion would
seem to be that they were situated on the English & Australian Copper
Co.’s lease, no doubt named after Swansea in Wales and adding ‘Vale’
because a tributary to the Burra Creek entered the property in the
northeast corner and ended near the Mine Bridge.
[In By Gad to Plough: a History
of the Sandow Family in Australia’ there is a statement that the
English & Australian Copper Co. bought section 43 in the Hundred of
Kooringa which they subdivided as Swansea Vale. But section 43 is a long
way out of Burra and well beyond the boundary of the Town Council which
clearly used the name to apply to part of its domain.]
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Victoria Place |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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Like Swansea Vale, this does not
seem to have been a subdivision, but as a locality it appears in the early
assessment books and is referred to sometimes in the local paper.
From that source it is clear that
it applied to the last group of houses as you travel east beyond Redruth
along the road to the east. (Well before you reach the junction with the
road from Kooringa.) It is a name which was more likely to appeal to
people living there that the alternative of Snake Gully by which the area
is now more generally known. In 1901 three houses were given this
address. They are still there.
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Warrapoota |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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In the Adelaide paper the
Register, 2 August 1858 we read:
‘The township of Warrapoota
was offered for sale at the Burra Hotel on Thursday in blocks of one,
two, three and five acres, but there were no purchasers. It was again
offered on Saturday with the like result. This is rather disheartening to
those who are at present offering their land for sale in this manner,
there being a considerable quantity in the market at present, viz.
Millerton, Clonmel, Copperhouse, Hampton, Roachtown, Nelson, Yarwood and
Warrapoota, besides Redruth Aberdeen and Kooringa.’
Apart from the odd mention of its
name in lists of subdivisions, probably all based on this paragraph, there
is no other evidence known about Warrapoota.
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Westbury |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |

This paddock gives a
general view of Westbury in January 2001 |
George Vickery made a subdivision
of section 53 Hundred of Kooringa in 1859. On 13 March 1860 he advertised
it in the Register as ‘ . . . about one mile from the Burra Burra
and Bon Accord Mines, bounded in the south by a direct road to Clare,
Riverton, Mintaro and Kapunda, on the north by that to Mt Remarkable. The
Great Northern Railway is planned to run close to the south-east
boundary.’
It is contiguous to Copperhouse
and Lostwithiel and is a common placename in England meaning ‘western
fort’.
It is now farmland. A few blocks
were sold, but probably only about 17 or so. By 1873 there was one house
on lots 230-231 and a Wesleyan Church on 232. These were almost adjacent
to Copperhouse and after Methodist union in 1900 the Westbury Church
became the Methodist Church, allowing the Copperhouse Primitive Methodist
Church to be taken over by the school. It was as often referred to as the
Copperhouse Church as the Westbury Church. Neither it nor the house
remain.
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Williamstown |
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Section 80 of Hundred of Kooringa
was subdivided about 1858 by William Oliver. It lies directly west of
Copperhouse and is contiguous to it.
It is presently all farmland and
there is no suggestion that it ever had housing on it.
In 1873 the council assessment
suggests that 14 allotments of 106 had been bought.
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Yardley |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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It is not at all clear if Yardley
really existed. The only reference seems to be in the advertising for the
sale of Millerton which was described as being bounded ‘on the west by the
town of Aberdeen, on the east by the church Glebe and the Wesleyan Glebe
and the north by the new townships of Nelson and Yardley.
The name appears in several places
in England, for instance on the eastern side of Birmingham.
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Yarwood |
Return to Townships and Subdivisions of Burra |
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Anthony Forster and Samuel Nelson,
having subdivided Nelson on the northern outskirts of Burra, also offered
a subdivision of part of sections 2249 and 2250 Hundred of Kooringa, some
way to the south.
[The sections have subsequently
been renumbered 174 & 175.]
It was offered for sale on 30 July
1858 and the Register 6 August 1858 reports it as being
successfully auctioned. By the 1873 assessment there were 2 houses. It
is presently all farmland with ruins apparently in the vicinity of blocks
13-14.
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Towns and other places in the District
(Within an approximate radius of 25 kilometres)
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Apoinga |
Return to Towns and Other Places in the District |
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This is located about 25 km south of Burra and
derives its name either from the Aboriginal word for ‘place where there is
water’ or from ‘Appinga’, the name for the original tribe of the
locality. It was some 6 km east of Black Springs and was the site of the
first smelter in the north. Burra copper ore was smelted there first in
January 1849 and by 1851 there were four furnaces and a population of
about 100. The smelter, village and hotel were on section 1594 Hundred of
Stanley and were created by Charles Mounsey Penny. Today nothing remains. |
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Baldina |
Return to Towns and Other Places in the District |

Baldina Ford, early 1900s

A December 2000 photo of
the ford across Baldina Creek on the Eastern Road. When built this
was at least 3 metres above the level of the creek. |
The Baldina Run, east of Burra, was
established by Henry Ayers in 1851 and the Hundred of Baldina was
proclaimed on 30 December 1875.
There was no town of Baldina but in the last quarter of
the 19th century the locality around the point where the road to
Robertstown parts from the road to Morgan was known as Baldina.
The post office was on section 42W. In fairly
close proximity could be found the Baldina Wesleyan Church, the so-called
"Tin Pot Church" in corrugated iron which was replaced by the "Stone Jug
Church" in 1900. Also nearby was the Baldina
School and William Midwinter’s Baldina Hotel.
Today none of these remain and modern usage of
the name is more normally associated with the station, creek and ford to
the east of Burra.
Wesleyan Church: Iron building in 1876, stone
1900 on Section 70c
Baldina Hotel (Section 104) 1883-91 known as
the Woodcutter’s Arms
Baldina School Section 49 (1885-1929)
Cockburn says the name is an Aboriginal word
referring to the springs in the creek |
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Baldry |
Return to Towns and Other Places in the District |

Ruins of former Baldry Post
Office and residence of Steward McWaters and family, built early 1800s.
Section 166 Hundreds of Ayers. |
Dr William J. Browne subdivided section 454 in
the Hundred of Ayers, 19 km west of Burra, in 1875
He intended that it would supply accommodation
for travellers, teamsters and those in charge of stock. It never
developed as a town, though it was the site for the Booborowie Eating
House and the original Booborowie Dictrict Council Chamber.
A post office with this name was opened in
1877 on section 442, 13 km west of Burra, but the name had to be changed
to Leighton in 1888. Only a few ruins mark the site today. |
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Black Springs |
Return to Towns and Other Places in the District |
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Black Springs today |
This name was given to a subdivision of
section 3200 about 27 km south of Burra. It is at almost the same site as
the Emuville subdivision.
The Emu Hotel which was near the springs
themselves was opened in 1846 by Daniel Cudmore. In Colonists, Copper and
Corn, edited by E.M. Yelland, 1970 Chapter 21 is devoted to Black Springs
and it is there said they were discovered when the country was black after
a bush fire, hence the name. This describes the two subdivisions and says
their success would depend on the fortunes of the Karkulto Mine some 4km
to the north. The mine was not a success and there is nothing at the site
of the Black Springs now to suggest any town was there.
The settlement now known as Black Springs is
actually a couple of kilometres southwest and was originally known as
Glendore. |
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Booborowie |
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Wool shed at Booborowie |
The town of this name was proclaimed on 29
March 1877. The name derives from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘round
waterhole’. It was first used for the Booborowie Run established by W.J.
& J.H. Browne in 1843.
Though there is an old core, the town experienced
considerable growth in the mid-twentieth century resulting in a mixture of
houses of different ages. The shopping facilities, as in all such small centres have declined greatly in the last half century. |
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Davies |
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Former Methodist Sunday
School building, now used as a holiday home |
See Hanson. |
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Douglas |
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This paddock is in
the centre of Douglas in January 2001. Somewhere there was a
Primitive Methodist Church. |
The site of Douglas l |