Day 25 - Burra

The rain stopped overnight and we awoke to a cool but sunny morning - a great day to go exploring. Burra was once Australia's largest metal mining site. The copper mine once known as "The Monster Mine" commenced in 1845 and ceased in 1877.

We began our day at Redruth Gaol built in 1856 for male and female prisoners. It closed in 1897 and was then used as a girls reformatory till 1922. The film 'Breaker Morant' was largely filmed around this area and the gaol featured in it several times. We all enjoyed looking around the cells, yards, kitchen and admin areas.

Then it was off to see quaint old miners cottages - they are built in rows rising up a hill and are all joined up. There are several examples of these cottages around the town. All are privately owned now so you could not see inside.

Next stop was Hampton - a deserted old town where all the building are in rack and ruin - most of them are more down than up. Long golden grass creeps all around so you needed to be careful where you walk.

Off to the smelter - the ruins in the brochure looked really interesting but had long since fallen down and there really was very little to see so we did not hang around too long. On route to find lunch we stopped off at the miner's dugouts - there was a massive lack of accommodation so many miners dug out simple one or two room huts in the side of the river bed. Many children lived here too in these damp and horrid conditions. In the late 1850's there was 153 deaths due to small pox, typhoid and diphtheria. Really sad to wonder how these people managed and a wonder not more succumbed to illness when there was 600 of these dug outs in 1851.

Headed off to the local bakery for some yummy hot things for lunch and back to the van for naps.

While Ethan and Gemma slept - Darrin and Zac headed off into town to look at the old lolly shop and market museum. The shop had all things old and interesting - the scary thing was that I remember using some of these things at Auntie Evelyn's home when she still lived in Hare Street, Echuca. When they came back, Zac enjoyed it so much he wanted to take Mummy with him so we walked into town and back to the museum, then off to a couple of second hand bookshops and then to the butchers and home again.

After the others awoke we set off on the rest of our journey which was to go and find an old cottage Darrin had admired in many brochures and was also on the cover of a Midnight Oil album - we found it and took a few photos.

Back to our journey around Burra and it was back to the actual mine - a bit more to see here and it gave us some great views of the town. The kids enjoyed climbing in old mining trucks and looking at the old machinery. Even got to go into the old Powder house where they stored the powder for rock blasting - the powder was stored in a smallish room with two lots of VERY thick walls. It used to have sheepskin on the walls to reduce the risk of a spark sending the whole lot sky high.

To finish off our trip we let ourselves into the former police lock up and stables - Ethan was quite interested in where they tied up the horses as there was still some rope there.

Home again and Darrin took the kids to the park while Jeanette made dinner. Kids enjoyed ringing Nanna and Grandpa to say they started the day in Gaol and finished the day in the police lockup!!!