Wednesday 1^st August

This morning we returned to the mine site to finish the tour we began yesterday and which we cut short due to the cold weather and being on our bikes.

Firstly we found a lookout into the open cut mine as well as over the town of Burra and beyond.  

Peacock’s chimney was originally on the mine site, but was deconstructed with each brick being numbered in order for it to be re-built in this present location.

The powder magazine which is Australia’s oldest mine building was the next stop within the mine precinct. Gunpowder was stored here and hence the walls are 60 cm thick.  

The walls were originally lined with sheepskins to reduce the risk of a spark induced explosion. Gunpowder was used underground to blast rock which could not be broken by pick.

Redruth Gaol was erected in 1856 and was the first gaol in South Australia outside Adelaide. 

It provided for thirty prisoners, male and female.  After it closed in 1897 it was renovated and opened as a girl’s reformatory and this ultimately closed in 1922. For about 25 years the gaol was used as a residence for two families and then in 1979 it was used for part of the filming of “Breaker Morant”, an Australian movie. 

The top of the walls were embedded with broken bottles – I would suggest they were a harsher deterrent than barbed wire perhaps?

Hampton (no not “The Hamptons” as in New York), was a township modelled on an English village and home to 30 miner’s cottages and a Bible Christian Chapel. It was the site of stone quarries that supplied stone for many of Burra’s buildings. 

We keep noticing the vast amount of stone used throughout the region, and this photo is an example of a stone wall, one of many throughout this township.  

With the closure of the Burra mine in 1877 and the retrenchment of 300 miners, Hampton began to decline, people left and buildings fell into disrepair.  Interestingly the names of the occupants of each house is on a board outside the house.