Blinman - A Rich Lode Of North Flinders Heritage: In the Outback region of South Australia

The giant rusting relics on the ridge are a silent symbol of a banging and clattering mine on the hill and the busy clutter of its township below.

It's a historic outpost in the middle of the Northern Flinders Ranges - Blinman. When you see how far away it is from everything it's a wonder it ever survived. The town was over a week's journey by bullock wagon just to take the copper down to Pt. Augusta but somehow, despite Blinman's isolation, it managed to survive. Now, it's just 6 hours from Adelaide to get to a town and old mine workings that are full of character.

The bush hamlet of today invites a self-guided wander but the best way to take in the sheer scale of the copper mine that created the once sizeable town is to book in with long-time resident and guide Irving Cains. He'll take you right back to the green copper outcrop that started it all.

"It was exposed on the surface and that was how it was discovered by Robert 'Pegleg' Blinman and basically then it was just following it down to depth."

And that depth was 165 metres - about 50 storeys down! Pegleg Blinman, a sheepstation shepherd, was no doubt amazed. In 1859, he gambled a few weeks' wages on his find to secure a mining lease here. Of more than a hundred leases taken out through the Flinders this was the motherlode! Blinman's became the largest, longest running and most productive mine of them all.In 1862, Pegleg and a handful of investor mates sold the potential mine to a British Company for a fortune!

Along with the miners, ore sorters, woodcutters and carters, bullock drivers and more, came their families. The government surveyed town was three kilometres south but the cottages grew here and so by the time the pub went up in 1869 the population was a healthy 1500 people.The Blinman Hotel is busy again with tourists who leave their business cards on the wall of the front bar. It's a visitors book with a difference! The old slate floored alley between the original section and its stone kitchen is transformed into a photographic history of the remote community in the days when the first publican, Charles Faulkner, was running his own 'gold mine' below the copper workings.

But the town's best days were not to last for long.

Named after the indigenous peoples of the Flinders Ranges, the Yudanamutana Copper Mining Company rang the miner's shift bell for the last time in 1873 and was wound up. Irving explains some of the problems.

"It was just so remote and the 200 kilometres to Pt Augusta by bullock dray was quite a slow drawn out affair and it was such a dry environment that feed for those animals was hard to come by. There were very few watering points and subsequently the teamsters charged quite dearly for the transport."

The copper quality, and sometimes the prices too, dropped and Blinman mine turned into a black hole that devoured the investments of several more companies. Most of the workings relics we can see today come from a huge capital investment in a smelting operation that took place between 1904 and 1908. The Tasmanian Mining Company revived the mine and then killed it off for good when it efficiently processed the remaining ore until it was all gone - well before they recouped their money.

The town in the valley hung on all through those ups and downs, even acquiring its own unique galvanized iron library (recently refurbished). Blinman became a valuable centre for pastoral and property people like John Hennery from nearby Alpana Station. John's great grandfather started there in the 1870's growing crops to feed the hungry bullock teams serving the mine. And John's own connection with the town goes back to his school days.

" I started at school here in Grade Two, about 1948, and then it closed and I know that date fairly well because it was my daughter's last year at primary school and that was 1980. The school numbers dwindled to about three after she left and they wouldn't keep it open any longer."

The old school house, where the kids were,"stuffed together like herrings in a barrel", is a sign of the times. Nowadays, travellers come here to enjoy a coffee and artworks and savour the leisurely pace and the quiet of a township with a history that has been anything but.

Up above the township is the top of the hill where Robert 'Pegleg' Blinman started it all. He found that outcrop of copper that led to substantial mine workings now indicated by a massive shiny black slagheap. That's a remnant from the big smelter days up to 1907, by which time they'd taken out some 10,000 tonnes of copper. The mine was finished but not the little town of Blinman; it lives on and in fact now has become one of the best reasons to get up here into the Northern Flinders Ranges.

The Blinman Hotel is alive and well appointed to offer you a good feed and modern rooms. They'll put you in touch with Irving Cain, who lives across the road in the old post office.

And check with the South Australian Travel Centre to contact the B'n'B miner's cottages for hire.

Blinman Hotel
Blinman
South Australia 5730
Ph. 8648 4867
www.blinmanhotel.com.au