19/5/2022 – Thursday –

Off to Moonta this morning, only a short drive & we head to the Moonta Mine Museum, bad luck, it opens at 1pm.  The little train that takes you around the old mine only works on Wednesdays, Saturday & Sundays, bad luck, we missed out! So off to Kadina, another short drive. Kadina is a very nice & well-kept town. We stop & walk around the main shopping area, full of beautiful old stone buildings built mainly in the late 1800s when the area had lots of wealth from copper mining. There are some beautiful murals painted on some of the walls around town & on the old rail water tower. The park opposite the town hall is beautiful & well maintained with a nice rotunda, built in 1897.

Moonta Bay is our next destination.  The local council decided to do road maintenance & closed the roads that would lead us to the bay. After some driving around some streets we ended up at Port Hughes.  A real treasure.  There is a long jetty, if there is a jetty we have to walk out on it.  There are a few people out fishing but it seems that only the Chinese family are lucky, they caught some red looking fish, we are not sure what they are, but they are excited.  This jetty is apparently a mecca for catching squid, the evidence of ink stains are all over the jetty.  We walked back to the Port Hughes café on the beach & for lunch sampled their freshly caught squid. Yum, it is delicious.  When we are anywhere near the sea we mainly eat seafood – it is healthy, the only problem is that they always serve it with chips.  Potatoes are potassium rich, so they are healthy too.

Time to return to the Moonta Mine Museum, formerly a school for the mine worker’s children.  At one time the school had 1,100 children enrolled. The school closed in 1968 due to low numbers of students & was taken over by the National Trust. On arrival we see the little train with people sitting in it.  The driver hurries us up, while explaining that it is a special train for a group, but they didn’t all turn up.  Well, we lucked the train in! Very pleasant informative way to see & hear all the stories about the mine & mainly Cornish people who emigrated for free to work in it.  Moonta had the most Cornish people living outside of Cornwall in England.  On arrival back at the Moonta Mine rail station we rushed in to see some of the museum, once again very interesting, we wish we had more time but we could not let the poor stay too long behind his closing time.

After the museum closed we drove out onto the mine site & looked at some of the scattered remnants of the mining site. At the old Crusherhouse from 1869, which is next to a giant tailings heap, it has a rough walkway to the top, we walked up & enjoyed a great view over the former mining site. There are still relics of stone structures scattered around the landscape. We then had a look at the Methodist church built for the miners, it could hold 1200 people, they had to build an additional mezzanine to accommodate everyone. It was compulsory to attend church (unless you had a good excuse). Next we drove around some of the old miner cottages that are left & some are still inhabited today. Life was very hard for these people. Back to Wallaroo & we watched a beautiful sunset over the ocean from the beach in front of the van park, a great way to finish a great day.