Burra

Burra is a country town in South Australia located 160km north of Adelaide. Burra is really a collection of townships each with their own story. These townships and their establishment dates are as follows:

Kooringa (1846), Redruth (1847), Aberdeen (1849), Llwchwr (1849), Hampton (1857), Copperhouse (1858), Lostwhithiel (1858), New Aberdeen (1872) and Graham (1875).
In 1940 the name of Burra was officially adopted to include Aberdeen, New Aberdeen, Kooringa, Llwchwr, Redruth and Graham.

Burra North is often used for the townships of Redruth, Aberdeen and New Aberdeen.

Burra Mine was world famous for the richness of its copper ores and, for the first ten years of its life, was the largest mine in Australia. Wealth from the mine made fortunes for many of its original shareholders and its discovery marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented growth and prosperity for South Australia.

The story of the mine began in 1845, with the chance discovery of copper ore by a shepherd near Burra Creek. Soon after, a similar find was made by another shepherd further to the north. News of the discoveries reached Adelaide, a town already infected with mining mania because of the success of the recently opened Kapunda Mine. The struggle for possession of this new copper-bearing land quickly followed.

The interested parties resolved into two groups: the 'Nobs' and the 'Snobs'. The Nobs were capitalists and included the owners of the Kapunda Mine. The Snobs were shopkeepers and merchants from Rundle and Hindley streets in Adelaide, who formed the SA Mining Association.
The government insisted that mineral rights to the two deposits could only be obtained by purchasing the ore-bearing ground and land between. A special survey was carried out in 1845 and the rival groups jointly bought the land, now known as 'The Monster Mine', and agreed to divide it equally, with each half containing one of the copper deposits.
Lots were drawn and the Nobs drew the southern half, naming their mine the Princess Royal. Unfortunately, the amount of mineable ore proved small and the mine closed in 1851. The northern half, drawn by the Snobs, became the Burra Mine. This developed rapidly into one of the great copper mines of the world.

 

Burra Burra Mine, South Australia

The Burra Mining Company imported Spanish-speaking mule drivers from Uruguay to transport copper from Burra to Port Wakefield. At the same time there were dozens of bullock drivers (mostly Irish) bringing copper to Port Adelaide through Riverton. The mules were obviously faster as the bullocks were only capable of doing 9 miles (14.5 km) a day consequently a series of tiny towns grew up at 9 mile intervals along the route. These were the evening watering holes for the bullock drivers who took the copper ingots to Port Wakefield and then brought coal much of it from Newcastle, back to fuel the smelters at Burra. The route was Burra through Saddleworth and Riverton and so on until it got to Port Adelaide.

By 1849 reports were filtering through of the excellence of the location Port Wakefield (Originally called Port Henry) as a port. In the Register, a local newspaper appeared the following report:

'An important discovery has been made at the head of Gulf St Vincent by Mr Buck, lighterman, being nothing less than the existence in that quarter of an available harbour for coasters of some burthen, with good natural accommodation for the purpose of loading and discharge. The harbour is the embouchure of the River Wakefield, and, though anything but obvious to a mariner uninitiated in the mysteries of the locality, is nevertheless easy to approach and secure.'

The result of this was that Mr Buck managed to persuade the copper manufacturers at both Burra and Kooringa to send their copper to Port Wakefield thus reducing the trip from the mines to the sea by some 50 miles. Given that bullock teams travelled 9 miles a day this reduced the land journey by nearly six days.

Between 1850 and 1877, when the mine at Burra stopped sending copper to the coast, Port Wakefield was a prosperous and important seaport.
By 1850, Burra was the largest metalliferous mine in Australia and produced five per cent of the world's copper up until 1860. More than 1,000 men and boys were employed during this period, most of them from Cornwall in England.
Miners, managers and speculators poured in from all around the world, with Cornish immigrants predominating.  By 1851 the population had jumped to around 5,000. 
James Jenkins, a Cornish miner, described what the journey from Adelaide to Burra was like in 1851.

‘Many who came out with us wished they had never saw the place. When people come out to Australia they have no depot to go to and blessed is the man  who has plenty of money or a friend to go to when he lands. We were allowed to stop 14 days at the port but we went off to the city eight miles off. The miners took houses for their wives and children and started off for the Burra Mines 100 miles from the city. Those who have the money ride up and those who have none are obliged to walk.’

Bibliography: Living In South Australia: A Social History by Elizabeth Kwan

Thomas and Elizabeth Broad (nee Fradd) and their two children Margaret and Nicholas arrived in South Australia on the 30^th of July 1851. Thomas’s occupation was listed as a Farm Labourer. Thomas, Elizabeth, Margaret and Nicholas were aged 25, 20, 2 and 1 respectively.

The next to emigrate was Elizabeth’s youngest brother John Joseph Fradd. Aged 18, he arrived in 1857 and his listed occupation was that of Agricultural Labourer.

First-cousin to John Joseph, Jane Sophia Fradd emigrated to Australia in 1866 as wife of John Sincock and in company with their 4 year old son William John.  John Sincock was a Blacksmith by trade and it is not known where he settled upon arrival.

Elizabeth and John Josephs eldest brother William Philip Fradd was next to ‘move to South Australia’ in 1868, the same year that their mother Jane had died.  A warrant for William’s apprehension was issued because he had absconded from the vessel “John Nicholson” upon arrival. He later purchased land from the government of South Australia so it is assumed that the warrant was not only served, but paid in full in some kind.

John Fradd, the father of Elizabeth, William Philip and John Joseph was the next to emigrate in 1869. I guess with his children abroad and with the death of his wife Jane, he had no cause to stay in Cornwall.

All took up life on the land around Burra although John Joseph Fradd was Publican of the Sod Hut Inn and also a Burra Councillor at one stage while his father John was also listed as a Postmaster at the Copperhouse Parcel’s Post Office in 1922.

Farms took longer to establish than sheep runs and costs were high: £ 60 to £70 to fence 79 acres with a three-rail wood fence. Despite this, by 1860 farmers were growing wheat from Encounter Bay in the south of Adelaide to Clare in the north. Farmers had to experiment in the new conditions by using various types of seed wheat and by sowing at different times of the year in a climate very different to that of Cornwall.

For several years crops were harvested with sickle and reap-hook and threshed the wheat by hand in the barn. They cut their hay with scythes. However, during the 1850s more farmers began to harvest wheat using a reaping machine (stripper) which had been invented in 1843.

This changed farming methods throughout Australia, especially in South Australia, which was so suitable for growing wheat. The export of wheat and flour boomed.
Between 1845 and 1877, the mine produced about 50,000 tonnes of copper metal valued at about £5 million. Sod Hut Inn opened in 1850. This included a lean period of 2 years from 1852 where the mine was virtually at a standstill because miners had deserted the district to Victoria during a gold rush.
In 1860 and 1861, miners also began to move to the new fields of Wallaroo and Moonta Mines while some headed to mines in Queensland and NSW as well as to smaller mines north of Burra in the Flinders Ranges etc.

Mine production declined after 1860 and eventually underground mining ceased in 1867.

This became a year of desperation with mass unemployment in Burra and Adelaide. There was no unemployment relief except for a meagre ration for families without an able bodied man in residence. In Burra when people left, cottages were demolished and shops and businesses were abandoned. To make matters worse the wool producers were in the grip of a drought, which extended from 1864 to September 1869 on the eastern plains.

In 1869 the passage of the Waste Land Amendment Act (Generally referred to as the Strangways act) permitted purchase of land in blocks of up to 640 acres on credit.  This resulted in a rush of farmers to the district as some areas to the north of the town and later to the east became available for closer settlement.  This was important for the town’s survival when the mine closed.  The district produced 18,633 bushels of wheat in 1868, but in 1870 this had increased to 108,931 bushels and the next couple of years were to see the area under wheat double. William Philip Fradd purchased 585 acres of land south east of Burra in Hundred of Bright in 1882.

From 1870 until its closure in 1877, the mine was worked by the revolutionary open-cut method. This was one of the earliest attempts to open-cut low-grade metalliferous ore in Australia, but it proved unprofitable.

On the agricultural front rabbits arrived in 1870 and multiplied rapidly to become a plague that would soon threaten the survival of pastoralist and wheat farmer alike. By 1875 pastoralists were losing sheep due to starvation as a consequence of rabbits and some farmers were reaping less wheat than they sowed.

By the time the mine closed in 1877 it was already also serving as a transport centre for the north-east of the colony and parts of western NSW and SW Qld. 

In 1886 many unemployed families in Burra left for Broken Hill. Francis Fradd (son of John Joseph Fradd) left Burra for Broken Hill sometime after 1907. John Josephs other son William Phillip Fradd (not to be confused with John Josephs brother) , left for Minburra Station near Orroroo in 1892 before settling in Beetaloo Valley, South Australia – near Laura.

In the following decade Burra served the growing wheat farming areas to the west and for a while, the untimely doomed expansion in the drier areas to the east. 

In the late 19th century and early 20th century it was South Australia’s main centre for sale of sheep and became renowned as the main town in an area famed for stud merino sheep breeding.  As the 20th century progressed the sheep sale and transport function declined. 
The mine was reworked between 1971 and 1981 by a modern open-cut to a depth of 100 metres. Ore containing about 24,000 tonnes of copper metal was produced during this period. The ore was converted to black copper oxide in a nearby plant.