Port Augusta Railway Station centenary of Transcontinental railway opening. 1917 to 2017. Old Chrysler SA Police highway patrol car.
Image by denisbin
Pt Augusta has a population of 14,000 people of which almost 20% are of Aboriginal descent. Nationally 2.3% of the Australian population is Aboriginal. Port Augusta is the fourth largest town outside Adelaide after Mt Gambier, Whyalla and Murray Bridge. Part of the reason for the current large Aboriginal population of Port Augusta stems from the early establishment of an aboriginal mission near the city. In 1937 the Christian Brethren Assemblies established an aboriginal mission in the sand hills just north of the town. The mission was originally called Umeewarra. In 1964 the government took control of the mission and renamed it Davenport Reserve and in 1968 an aboriginal community council took charge of the Reserve. During the 1970s most of the Aboriginal children fostered out to white families came from Davenport Reserve. Davenport Reserve closed in 1995.
Matthew Flinders had mapped the Port Augusta area in 1802. Europeans named it Port Augusta on May 24 1852 when a survey was undertaken. Land was put up for auction in 1854 signalling the start of the town. Previous to this in 1851 the first leases had been granted in the district to James Paterson, and Messers White and Pollhill. By 1854 these runs and others further north in the Flinders Ranges were carting wool to the town for transhipment to England. Then by around 1857, copper was being transported from the Blinman copper mines to Port Augusta for shipment overseas. Some copper was smelted in the port before shipment. The Blinman mining company erected their own wharf in Port Augusta in 1863, the first of several private and government wharves. Consequently one of the first significant buildings in the town was the Customs House, erected in 1861 on the site of the present day yacht club. The first bank in this growing commercial centre was the National Bank opened in Gibson Street in 1863. In later years grain and flour from the mills in Quorn and Wilmington were shipped out from the port too.
The first hotel, the Port Augusta Hotel, was licensed in 1855. In 1864 the Northern Hotel was first licensed. More hotels were so that by 1878 there were six hotels in the town! Once the railway to Quorn opened the first Railway Terminus Hotel was licensed in 1880. The brewery, which is now part of the Northern Gateway Shopping Centre, first started operations in the early 1870s. In 1879 it was greatly extended by new owners with a high tower, large cellars and more machinery. Aerated waters were produced as well as beer. Mr. Perrers, the brewery owner also owned the Laura brewery in the 1890s. He sold both breweries to SA Brewing Company in 1894 which closed them.
From the earliest days a water pipe had been laid from springs on Woolundunga Station 14 miles away to the town. The 1860s and 1870s were boom years for the town and it progressed greatly. Private schools were replaced by the first government school in 1878; the Anglican Church was opened in 1868; the first Bible Christian Church had opened earlier in 1866. The town’s post office was built in 1866 with a telegraph service starting four years later. The town’s first newspaper started in 1877; the corporation of Port Augusta was gazetted in 1875. A wharf had been established in 1871 at Port Augusta West, a new subdivision and a large new government jetty was erected in 1877. Large pastoral companies, like Sir Thomas Elder’s company which had been set up in the town in 1855, had their own wharves. Towards the end of the 1870s a Wesleyan Methodist church was built (1878) and the town was preparing for the exciting advances of the 1880s.
A wooden hut served as the first police station in Point Augusta from around 1855 where Mr. Minchin the Sub-Protector of Aborigines also worked. It was sent by ship from Port Adelaide and assembled upon being landed. A new stone police station and court house was built in 1867. This was where the first police barracks were located. Later in 1884 the current Court House was erected and the old wooden police station was dismantled. Note the VR for Victoria Regina above the doors. The big events of this decade were the arrival of the train service from Quorn in 1882, and the erection of the lavish and grand town hall in 1887. The great northern railway started in 1878 and reached Quorn in 1880 and Farina beyond Hawker in 1882. It was eventually extended to Oodnadatta in 1892.
From 1875 the first council meetings were held in the old institute building. The corporation then borrowed £6,000 for the erection of a town hall suitable for a progressive town like Port Augusta. This impressive classical style building situated in the main street is sadly now vacant and in disrepair. It was made of stone quarried near Quorn, with Ionic columns and a square tower topped with a pyramidal dome and cupola. The summit was 72 feet above the footpath! From its opening day the town hall had electric lighting from its own generating supply. The Catholic Church and presbytery were also erected in the 1880s, finally opening in 1883. A few years later the first Bishop of Port Augusta (Willochra) diocese was consecrated and the first cathedral services held in 1888.
Industrially in 1880 John Dunn, the flour miller from Mt Barker with mills in many SA towns opened his flour mill in Port Augusta. This finally burnt down in 1926. The 1881 census showed that Port Augusta had over 2,100 citizens. During the 1880s Port Augusta was the second port for the state after Port Adelaide before Port Pirie surpassed it. It finally closed as a working port in 1974. The first bridge across the Gulf to Port Augusta West was opened in 1927. With Federation in 1901 came the promise to build a transcontinental railway line to link Kalgoorlie (and Perth) with Port Augusta and the eastern states. This line was finally completed in 1917 and Port Augusta then became a hub for Commonwealth Railways, in addition to South Australian Railways. The Commonwealth government established their major railway workshops in Port Augusta which was a major employer in the town until 1997 when Australian National Railways (the former Commonwealth Railways) were privatised. However, there was hope of new railway work when in January 2004 the first freight train rolled out of Port Augusta on its way to the new rail had of Darwin and the enlarged Port of Darwin. Prior to this time the northern railways had terminated in Alice Springs.
