Port Wakefield with Keith Conlon
A century-and-a-half ago, its long wharf creaked with thousands of tonnes of cargo, but now the container loads roar through on trucks on Highway One on the edge of Port Wakefield. This then, is a postcard from behind the famous roadhouse strip on the main road north, a picture of Pt Wakefield that is much more sustaining than a chiko roll and chips.
The two-storey Pt Wakefield Hotel, for instance, is a classic country pub on a corner close to the port. The first grog shop was here even before the township was surveyed, and it soon had five hotels. Why? And why was there a port here at the top of Gulf of St Vincent anyway?
The answer lies to the east, beyond the Clare Valley, at the Monster Mine at Burra, with its fabulously rich copper lode. The ore was first sent by bullock wagon to Port Adelaide, and in winter it was a claggy quagmire of a trip. When a tidal inlet in the mangroves was discovered, the instant port on the River Wakefield cut eighty kilometres and weeks off the winter trip.
The new town was described as "a place unmentionable"...too many teamsters and too much booze! That's where the now restored Police Headquarters came in (a long limestone row, it's back to its 1858 best). One problem though, by the time it was completed, Burra didn't need Pt Wakefield anymore. The new rail link to Kapunda was much closer. We caught glimpses of how the town survived on our historical tour.
Pt Wakefield was and four-square in 1850, and it retains its wharf on the gulf side of town, where it meets swamps and mangrove forests. The rarely running Wakefield River turns into a tidal creek almost at the top of Gulf of St Vincent. Captain Matthew Flinders charted the coast for Britain in 1802, as a memorial by the town's swimming pool and park notes. He couldn't bring HMS Investigator closer than five kilometres offshore because of the shallow water, and so he missed the tiny gap in the dark green of the mangroves.
The tide was out and so was the swimming pool's plug as the Postcards team visited in winter. Usually, the old sluice gates allow fresh seawater in on a high tide, and retain enough for the pool (complete with long sandy beach) to be a very popular spot.
On the seaward side of town, there is an old Inn that pre-dates the port. It eventually became a stagecoach station and is now lovingly tended as a cuppa stop, gallery, and dryland cottage garden. Round a bend, the old RSL Hall was once a refreshment room for the long gone railway station. Port Wakefield boasted a horse drawn tramway out into new wheat areas to the east.......and then a train.
At the port itself, there is still a section of wooden wharf operating. The Smelting Company at Burra had a structure erected here within months of the discovery of the narrow inlet. Once, it was dredged and widened, but the mangroves have slowly reclaimed their patch so that they now form an impenetrable jungle-wall only a few metres across the mud.
There is a sailing ketch memorial at one end of the wharf, reminding us that the coastal mosquito fleet called here for eighty years. After copper, wool took over as the main cargo and then wheat farmers cleared the mallee scrub, bringing massive stacks of wheatbags in from the 1870's on. The stacks area has become a small shack extension of the town, and when the tide is in, they look out on a picturesque and unlikely port, with a yellow crane for unloading a yacht, a crows-nest lookout for fish spotting, three bobbing boats at the wharf and a tantilising glimpse of the wide waters of the gulf down the mangrove-lined channel.
Within the town's streets, we were gathering convincing evidence that there is more to Port Wakefield than fast food and "fill-er-up". There is a second Victorian era two-storey pub-on-a-corner, "The Rising Sun" for instance. It stands on the corner of Edward and Walters Streets. Edward Street is named after Edward Cribbon Wakefield, the brilliant young schemer who eloped with an under-age heiress and lobbed in Newgate Prison. There, however, he wrote about systematic colonisation, the theory upon which the free colony of South Australia was founded. And Walters? He was the Burra smelting company manager who pushed for a new port and got it - here!
Long after copper, Pt Wakefield survived with rows of shops. "Rumbles" general store stayed open right through from 1855 to 1999. Railway workshops helped sustain the town for a time, and Pt Wakefield has become a tourist town, with plenty of jobs on the highway since local identity Possum Kipling (of Redex Trial fame) started the first roadhouse in the 1950's. On the old railway reserve by the long swimming pool, the shaded Caravan Park is booked out every long weekend and holiday season.
Collecting shots of solid old residences, we came across one of the town's commercial fisherman, weighing a good catch of garfish and whiting. It's a trade that has been part of the town since it began.
There's a distinct flavour to old Pt Wakefield...."all limestone and peppertrees", someone wrote. Our camera-maestro, Jeff Clayfield, composed some evocative detailed shots as old walls glowed and ancient peppertrees glistened in the winter sun. This is almost entirely a nineteenth century town, in various states of repair. "The Doctor's House" is in handsome nick on one corner, not far from "The Hospital". It's the location for part-time visits by medical practitioners these days.
We found Pt Wakefield had churches to match its pubs. Within a few years of each other, the Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists all raised quaint limestone churches in praise of the Lord. On one intersection it was all prosperity and postage. The old Post Office is now an antique shop. The first mails left here in 1951 by ketch, and eventually by daily stagecoach. In the 1870's, The National Bank obviously thought the town was here to stay. It erected a handsome banking chamber with attached manager's residence, and its fine wooden rod and dowell fence is intact.
This commercial building has gone the way of almost every other, however....closed! There is one unusual aspects of Pt Wakefield - there is no main street and the interesting buildings are scattered throughout the small town. The best way in, then, is to come past the old bakery on Highway One and drive on till you come to The Rising Sun or the Caravan Park. They both have copies of a helpful Historical Walk brochure. You'll be pleasantly surprised by what you find - and so leave plenty of time to discover there really is a port - and much more in Pt Wakefield.
Details:
Pt Wakefield Caravan Park
Wakefield Street
Pt Wakefield
Phone: (08) 8867-1151Wendy's Way Gallery
(devonshire tea and coffee)
Open everyday (except Tuesdays) 10am - 5pm
20 Wharf Crsnt,
Pt Wakefield
Phone: (08) 8867-1226(Wendy Garvie gave me great research assistance and is soon to publish a 150th anniversary calendar for Pt Wakefield).
For details email info@postcards.sa.com.au
