Wallaroo Yorke Peninsula. Wallaroo was the smelting hub for Moonta and Wallaroo copper Mines. Smelters owned by Sir Walter Watson Hughes. This first smelter chimney erected in 1861. There were 13 chimneys at its peak.
Image by denisbin
Hughes and the origins of Wallaroo and the smelters.
Wallaroo is a contraction of two local Narrunga words meaning “wallabies urine.” Why did the original owner Robert Miller adopt these words to name his pastoral sheep? Why not call it quandong or some other innocuous Narrunga word? When Hughes took over Wallaroo run in 1857 he received great help from King Tommy of the Narrunga people. The Wallaroo run was situated just to the south of Point Riley which is just to the north of Wallaroo North beach. No grand homestead was ever built on the Wallaroo run as John Duncan was just the manager. In 1859 one of Hughes’ shepherds, John Boor found knobs of green copper in stone by a wombat burrow on the property in December 1859. The Wallaroo Mines were actually located at Kadina (Narrunga for lizard plain).
But the story of Wallaroo, rather than Wallaroo Mines is about smelting copper rather than mining it. Wallaroo was and still is a major SA port and so it was logical that smelters be established there near the only source of transport – shipping. The first shipment of copper left Wallaroo in July 1860; the first shipment of smelted copper left Wallaroo in January 1862. The current Hughes smelter chimney left at Wallaroo was one of thirteen smelter stacks or chimneys. Most of the stacks were built by the mid-1860s with the first built in 1861. The largest was 120 feet high. Walter Watson Hughes owned the smelter works as well as most of the shares in the copper mining companies. The township of Wallaroo emerged adjacent to the smelters as a government town in 1861 with the first Post Office opening in 1863 and the first school in 1861. The Rounsevell coach service linked Wallaroo with Adelaide via a steamer connection from Port Clinton; the Customs House was open for business by 1862; and a desalination plant owned by Walter Hughes was operating by 1862 to provide water for the smelters. Water was also a problem for the Wallaroo Mines as the water table was high and necessitated a large pump house to pump water from the deep shafts. It was 1890 before reticulated water from Beetaloo Reservoir near Crystal Brook reached Wallaroo. Within a few years of foundation Wallaroo was a significant town with the “Copper Triangle” towns of Wallaroo, Kadina and Moonta. Churches, schools, shops and businesses all made this district the major focus of the state. Because of its importance Wallaroo and Kadina had a rail link to Adelaide via Port Wakefield and Balaklava by 1878. A number of the streets of the town commemorate the names of major investors in the Wallaroo Mining Company or others involved in copper mining names such as Bagot, Hughes, Hay, Stirling, Smith ( from Robert Barr Smith), Elder, Duncan( nephew of Hughes) etc. Other streets reflecting the Cornish mining and Welsh smelting history of the town include Cornish, England, Scotland, and Wales streets. Hughes was a benefactor of “his” town of Wallaroo as he provided water from his desalination plant for the town, he donated land to the Wesleyans to build their church and in 1862 he donated land to his Presbyterian church to erect a church. As a Scot Sir Walter Watson Hughes was a staunch Presbyterian. The foundation stone of that church was laid by John Duncan senior in September 1864. Hughes and Duncan were two of the original trustees of this church and Hughes promised £150 a year to support a Presbyterian minister. In 1863 he donated land and £20 for the erection of a Congregational Church in Wallaroo. Sophia Hughes donated a fine piano to the Wallaroo Institute in the 1870s.
Wallaroo Mines.
On the fringes of Kadina are some impressive relics of the copper mining era but unfortunately most of the industrial buildings were de-constructed and the materials salvaged for sale when the mine closed in 1922. The major Wallaroo Mines began operations for Hughes and his business associates in 1859. The town of Kadina was surveyed next to the mines in 1861. But Hughes and his Wallaroo Mining Company did not have all the successful mining leases. The New Cornwall Mine opened by another company in 1861. That mine closed in 1870. The Kurilla Mine opened in 1862 and operated until 1877 when it was purchased by Hughes’s Wallaroo Mining Company and the Matta Mine began operations in 1862 before closing in 1870. After 1870 the Wallaroo Mining Company dominated the whole site. There are still some solid remains such as the impressive stone Harvey’s Enginehouse. The Harvey engine was used to pump water from the shafts and it was installed in 1876 when the tower block was erected. Beyond Harvey’s Enginehouse is the solid stone Explosive’s Magazine erected in 1865. Apart from the mine structures Wallaroo Mines township remains. It has the wonderful Wallaroo Mines Institute building, the old pioneer cemetery and the site of the former Wallaroo Mines Methodist Church. The Wallaroo Mines Institute was erected and opened in 1902 but a Mechanics Institute was established here earlier in 1862. The 1902 Institute has a classical style façade and a non-regular sloped roof line. When the nearby Methodist Church at Wallaroo Mines was demolished in 1980 this Institute became St. Piran’s Methodist Church, which was part of the Uniting Church. St. Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall and the patron saint of tin miners. The church ceased services in 2003. The burials in the Wallaroo Mines cemetery were re-interred in the Kadina cemetery when the cemetery closed. The Wesleyan Methodist Church here was built in 1867 and demolished in 1980. The parsonage is still behind the church site. The expansive and grand Wallaroo Mines School built in 1878 was unfortunately demolished in 1977. Yet the “modern” school built to replace it is now at the end of its useful life. If the government had restored the old stone school it would still service the community for another hundred years.
