This is a subdivision of section 4 Hundred of Kooringa by Robert A.A. Morehead and Matthew Young in 1849. It reflects an attempt by the owners of the failed Bon Accord Mine to make some money from their holding. Presumably it takes its name from the Scottish city of Aberdeen which derives its name from its location near the mouth (aber) of the River Dee.

Except for a slight irregularity in the southeast corner, the plan was a simple grid, but in 1862 the main road to the north was cut through the northern portion of the town in a wide arc and more recently the road to Morgan has extended this disruption somewhat.

By and large the attempted sale of Aberdeen failed and by 1873 there were 10 houses, 2 hotels and 2 shops. All, but one of these were located along the main road. The development of this subdivision proceeded very slowly from the arrival of the railway in 1870 to the present time.

The 1875 petition for a Town Council claimed there were then 39 houses.

Aberdeen in the 1930s

Ashmore

This is a subdivision of part of section 78 of Hundred of Kooringa, adjacent to Westbury. It comprises only 14 allotments and has now reverted to farmland.

The available plan of it is hard to read, but appears to bear the date 1859. In 1873 there were two poor quality houses on it.

Manning’s Place Names of South Australia does not suggest an origin for the name, but there is an Ashmore in Dorset.

Though the mine was always called the Burra Burra Mine, Burra as the name for the town was only official from 19 September 1940. The origin of the name is disputed. The original pastoralist, James Stein, had Indian coolies working for him as shepherds and Burra Burra was said to come from Hindustani for ‘great great’ in reference to the creek that ran through the property. Stein came from Scotland where the name also occurs in the Shetland Islands, derived from Old Norman borgarfiord for a fortified hill. In other parts of Australia burra occurs in a number of Aboriginal languages meaning people or tribe. The Hindustani origin seems to be the one most favoured.

Detailed map of Burra Burra Mine
Click here to enlarge

Charleston

A part of section 2070, Hundred of Kooringa was named Charleston by Johann C.C. Meyer who subdivided it in 1859, having acquired the section by land grant in 1853. We have not been able to find a complete map of the subdivision, but there is a partial one from 1882 when the area was brought under the Real Property Act. This shows a truncated grid pattern of streets which were presumably more extensive originally. Only five allotments are marked: 1-4 and 62. In the 1873 assessment there were 2 houses here.

Detailed Survey map of Charleston NW Corner
Courtesy: SA DPTI
Click here to enlarge

This village was laid out on part of section 52 Hundred of Kooringa, contiguous to Lostwithiel, by William Oliver, licensed victualler of Redruth, in 1858.

The name comes from Copperhouse in Cornwall.

It was a simple plan with one street of houses, Alankeen St, extending east-west from the north-south government road. There were 30 blocks and a reserve.

In 1873 there were 14 houses, one of which was probably the former Commercial Inn, and a Primitive Methodist Church.

There was a school which may have utilised the church building as after 1900 the Education Department bought it and modified it for that purpose.

The town slowly declined from the closure of the mine in 1877 to the middle of the 20th Century.

Today two houses remain (left) and the school building, (below).

This was laid out in 1875 on part of section 1 Hundred of Kooringa by the SA Mining Association. It was named after J.B. Graham, a substantial shareholder in the Burra Burra Mine.

It is bounded by Aberdeen to the north and the Burra Creek to the east. The closure of the mine in 1877 meant that it failed to develop. When it was established the Smelters’ Home Hotel already occupied lot 3 and the Mine Hospital was on lot 6. Lot 21 was occupied by the house of the mine accountant Mr Furniss. Roach’s Flour Mill occupied lot 2. New building had to wait till 1924 when the town’s powerhouse was built on lots 8 & 9.

The 1875 petition for a Town Council claimed there were then 5 buildings.

In 1905 E.A. West laid out a new subdivision on the eastern side of the Burra Creek adjacent to Graham. It comprised 75 allotments. This is also referred to as Graham in Council business, but it too failed to attract new housing until the 1920s. Since then it has grown substantially with new housing since 1960 as well.

Thomas William Powell (1806-1891) made a subdivision of part of sections 480 and 2071 Hundred of Kooringa in 1857.

In 1833 he married Rebecca A. Wixen who was born in Hampton in Middlesex in 1810. No doubt the town is named after her birthplace. The Old English ham-tun means ‘home town’.

At one time the town had at least 30 houses, but it was on the outskirts of Burra and beyond the reticulated water supply. It gradually dwindled into a ghost town from the 1960s.

It is now a heritage area owned by the Regional Council of Goyder and is a significant archaeological site.

Allotments are numbered to 55, but despite there being several maps lots 41 & 42 have not been located; there being a large central area where lot boundaries are not known.

The southeast corner is the location for one of Burra’s more important quarries for road and building stone.

The 1873 assessment indicates 20 houses.

The 1875 petition for a Town Council claimed there were then 24. [There is evidence that houses were sometimes divided, so there may not have been more buildings.]

Ruins of Hampton in 2004

Thomas Powell (1806-1891) subdivided section 83 Hundred of Kooringa in 1860.

He migrated from Middlesex in 1849 and named this after Harrow-on-the-Hill in that county. The name derives from hearg-weoh meaning ‘heathen temple’ or ‘shrine of an idol’.

There were only 10 blocks of quite large size: ranging from about 170m x 80m to almost 300m x 120m. There seems to be no evidence that settlement ever occurred and by 1952 the whole area had been claimed by right of possession and was farmland.

Manning cites the Register 1 April 1846, p.2.

‘The directors of the SA Mining Association, who had determined on giving the name ‘Truro’ to a township at the Burra Burra Mine, have since resolved to adopt the very euphonious name of a locality and the town of ‘Coolinga’ is now duly laid out. Mr Crawford of the Hindmarsh Brewery has contracted to erect an inn there on a scale of magnitude not yet attempted in the colony . . . and it is said he will attach a brewery to the new establishment.’

The evidence of the hotel and brewery make it clear that ‘Coolinga’ is in fact a mistake for Kooringa.

The main town adjacent to the Burra Burra Mine was laid out entirely on the SA Mining Association’s property in 1846. The Association did not grant freehold title until the 1870s and this meant that the housing constructed tended to be of poor quality and it also encouraged the proliferation of other subdivisions adjacent to the northern and western boundaries of the company’s property.

The town plan is essentially a grid pattern for the most part. The oldest area lies west of the Burra Creek, but the adjacent area east of the creek is almost as old with substantial expansion to the south east by the 1870s and a small modern extension in the north east corner dating essentially from the 1970s.

The town was built almost exclusively of stone cottages, though initially the miners preferred to live in dugouts in the banks of Burra Creek. These were cooler in summer and warmer in winter as well as being rent-free. The disadvantage came from rather frequent floods and after two disastrous floods in 1851 the company refused to hire anyone living in the creek bank. At its peak at least 1,500 had so lived. It became the civic and commercial centre for all the Burra towns with the commercial core around the roughly triangular shape of Market Square.

The name appears to be derived from the Aboriginal kuri-ngga, meaning ‘in the circle’. The kuri was ‘a dance among the northern tribes, at which the men, ornamented with white stripes or dots on the face and chest, and green leaves around their knees, first form a circle, then stamp with their feet alternately on the ground, while the women sit down and sing.’

Rodney Cockburn, What’s in a Name? Nomenclature of South Australia, 1908, gave the meaning as ‘locality of sheoak’.

The mining company constructed many cottages for its employees. Some of these formed long terraces and the most significant of these, Paxton Square, remain as tourist accommodation. The town is characterised by its many bluestone houses. Though many of the miners’ cottages have been demolished over time, a significant number remain and more substantial stone houses built after 1870 have added to the character of the town. The public buildings, especially the churches, Public School and the Institute (later the Town Hall) are impressive.

In 1873 the assessment suggested there were about 365 houses.

Kooringa, 1872

Kooringa today

Grave of Ida Kiekebusch, nee Klaebe. Aged 53
Baldina Cemetery.

Baldina Lutheran Cemetery

Burra Record 25 Jan. 1884, page 3

The Baldina Ford, recently constructed by the Midland Road Board was opened to light traffic on Tuesday by E.C. Lockyer JP. Captain Killicoat, the surveyor and a few others attended. The work is first class.

Cockburn says the name is an Aboriginal word referring to the springs in the creek

The Baldina Run, east of Burra, was established by Henry Ayers in 1851 and the Hundred of Baldina was proclaimed on 30 December 1875.

There was no town of Baldina but in the last quarter of the 19th century the locality around the point where the road to Robertstown parts from the road to Morgan was known as Baldina.

The post office was on section 42W. In fairly close proximity could be found the Baldina Wesleyan Church, the so-called "Tin Pot Church" in corrugated iron which was replaced by the "Stone Jug Church" in 1900 but would seem to have stopped being used by the 1920s and was demolished by the 1930s. Also nearby was the Baldina School (1885-1929) and William Midwinter’s Baldina Hotel.

Today none of these remain and modern usage of the name is more normally associated with the station, creek and ford to the east of Burra.

The town was founded in 1854 by Joseph and Henry Gilbert on land purchased by Henry Gilbert in July 1849.

Originally, and for several years, Mintaro was a busy watering stop for throngs of bullock teams travelling the Gulf Road between the copper mining town of Burra and Port Wakefield, transporting copper and coal for the Patent Copper Company.

Note. The Mintaro railway station is some kilometers away and was renamed Merilden in 1917.

Dr William J. Browne subdivided section 454 in the Hundred of Ayers, 19 km west of Burra, in 1875

He intended that it would supply accommodation for travellers, teamsters and those in charge of stock. It never developed as a town, though it was the site for the Booborowie Eating House and the original Booborowie Dictrict Council Chamber.

A post office with this name was opened in 1877 on section 442, 13 km west of Burra, but the name had to be changed to Leighton in 1888. Only a few ruins mark the site today.

This name was given to a subdivision of section 3200 about 27 km south of Burra. It is at almost the same site as the Emuville subdivision.

The Emu Hotel which was near the springs themselves was opened in 1846 by Daniel Cudmore. In Colonists, Copper and Corn, edited by E.M. Yelland, 1970, Chapter 21 is devoted to Black Springs and it is there said they were discovered when the country was black after a bush fire, hence the name. This describes the two subdivisions and says their success would depend on the fortunes of the Karkulto Mine some 4km to the north. The mine was not a success and there is nothing at the site of the Black Springs now to suggest any town was there.

The settlement now known as Black Springs is actually a couple of kilometres southwest and was originally known as Glendore.

The spring at Black Springs

The Black Springs to Robertstown road at the point where it runs through the Emuville site

The name, Booborowie, derives from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘round waterhole’.

In 1843 Dr. William James Browne and his brother Dr. John Harris Browne took up the Booborowie run. In 1851 they purchased a crown lease of 153 square miles and in 1853 the brothers purchased 46,978 acres of the lease.

The Browne Bros. established a merino stud and had shorthorn cattle. They went on to purchase properties on the Adelaide Plains, at Mt. Gambier, the Flinders Ranges, Eyre Peninsula, and were instrumental in establishing Katherine in the Northern Territory. This led to a large sheep and cattle drive, under the supervision of Alfred Giles, to leave South Australia in 1878.

The northern portion of the station was sold to Henry Dutton and George Melrose in 1897. The remainder of the station was sold in 1910 and 1912 for closer settlement.

The Booborowie Township was proclaimed on 29th March 1877.

The Booborowie Valley is not only prime wool, sheep and cattle country, but is also a rich cereal crop and lucerne growing area.

The township supports many local businesses and trades people in the building industry that service the local area and mid north region.

Though there is an old core, the town experienced considerable growth in the mid-twentieth century resulting in a mixture of houses of different ages. The shopping facilities, as in all such small centres have declined greatly in the last half century.

See Hanson.

The site of Douglas lies 2 km west of the Baldina Creek ford on the northern side of the Eastern Road from Burra. Today there is no indication that there was ever a building of any sort on what is now pastoral country. The town, in the Hundred of Baldina, was proclaimed on 17 May 1877 and offered for sale 28 June 1877. Unsold lots were again offered in 1878. The town was possibly named after Captain Bloomfield Douglas RN, who did mapping and marine surveying in SA.

In 1877 a school reserve was created which was resumed in 1963. It was never used. Many blocks in the town were sold, but there is little to suggest houses were built. All allotments were cancelled and roads closed in 1959 and the town officially ceased to exist, vide SA Government Gazette 8 June 1981.

The only precise reference to a building in the town that I have found is in the Burra Record of 1 December 1885 when there is a report of an inquest into the death of a man found hanged in a hut in the township of Douglas on the previous Sunday. There was a Primitive Methodist Church at Douglas, but it was some distance away from the town site well to the east of the Baldina Creek ford and near the Thistlebeds homestead.

The Primitive Methodist Chapel at Douglas was opened on Sunday 23 July 1882. After Methodist Union in 1900 it continued as a Methodist Church but was advertised for sale in 1924.

Between 1889 and 1908 it also served as the Thistlebeds School.

This was a potential town staked out by Edmund Bowman about 1860 as a subdivision of section 3201 Hundred of Stanley just east of the ‘Emu Springs Water Reserve’. The allotments lay along the Burra-Apoinga Road.

It probably never took off as a settlement, though the ruins of the Emu Hotel are on the site.

Adjacent to it today can still be seen the ‘Black Springs’ with the spring in a small stone enclosure and the old wooden water trough still in place.

The town of this name was surveyed as Hanson in 1870 and did not officially become Farrell Flat until 19 September 1940.

The name Farrell Flat, or more correctly Farrell’s Flat at that time, had been in use almost from the start though as that was the name of the railway station.

Official usage of Hanson, as for example for the school prevailed at least until about 1900.

It is sometimes a bit tricky to separate Hanson meaning Farrell Flat from Hanson meaning Davies/Daviestown in the early period.

The name is said by Cockburn to come from Rev. Dean Farrell, the second Colonial Chaplain.

H.C. Talbot says it is named for James Farrell, a shepherd employed by Joseph Gilbert of Mt Bryan. A pastoral lease survey of 1851 shows Farrell’s Creek on a property where the township now lies and this favours the Talbot version. Rev. Farrell did travel widely and was a popular visitor, so the doubt remains.

The town was a busy rail centre for wheat and quite a significant, but small service centre for farmers with a hotel, shops, churches, an Institute and sporting facilities.

As would be expected, its distance from Clare of only 19 km has meant that in more recent time shops there have taken over from local shops and the town is now mostly a group of houses without many services remaining.

Farrell Flat Hall - April 2005

In 1860 Joseph Williams subdivided section 2031 of Hundred of Stanley and in the 1870s it was described as being ‘one mile south of Black Springs and consists of a few scattered houses, a store, a chapel and a scattered population of about 70 persons’. It acquired two churches and a school in time, but now but now only one church building remains and a few houses. At some undetermined time the name Glendore dropped out of use and that of Black Springs was transferred to it. But what the official version of that is I don’t know.

The first Gum Creek school operated from 1898 to 1918 and shared the building with the Anglican Church.

The Second Gum Creek School operated form 1898 to 1957. The students were then transferred to Leighton Rural School.

The name comes from Gum Creek Estate on sections 553-583, 586-7 & 590-98 in the Hundred of Hanson.

John James Duncan purchased this from the estate of Walter Watson Hughes in 1888.

A post office on section 121 opened in 1925.

Hallett is a small town in the Mid North region of South Australia, situated on the Barrier Highway and former Peterborough railway line 32 kilometres north of Burra and 38 kilometres south-east of Jamestown, Hallett lies close to Goyder's Line, plotted in the nineteenth century by George Goyder, separating the land suitable for cropping from the land suitable for grazing. At the 2011 census, Hallett shared a population of 235 with adjoining localities.

The town of was named for pioneering pastoralist and politician John Hallett, and laid out on his property "Willogoleechee". The first allotments were offered for sale on 7 July 1870.

Hallett Original Institute

Methodist-Uniting Church (1880)

Wildongoleeche Hotel 2

Hanson (formerly Davies) is a town in South Australia located 29 kilometers north-east of Clare and 13 kilometers south-west of Burra at the intersection of the Barrier Highway and the Hanson-Farrell Flat Road in the Regional Council of Goyder. It is also adjacent to the former Peterborough railway line as the next station towards Adelaide from Burra which was the terminus for some time.

The town was surveyed in 1865 and originally known as Daviestown, Davieston, or Davies Town, named after Sir Richard Davies Hanson (1805-76), a Chief Justice of South Australia and acting Governor of the then colony from 1872 to 1873. A decision was made around 1890 to rename the town Hanson, although the name was not officially changed until 19 September 1940. The change brought the town's name into line with that of the nearby Hanson railway station. On the same date, the nearby town known as Hanson officially became Farrell Flat, also aligning that town's name with that of its railway station.

Over the years Hanson has comprised a church, a hall, a school, a shop, a railway station and a few houses

Hanson Church

Like Leighton this was a locality rather than a town and lies on the same road from Burra.

The name is descriptive and it was the site of a mine for ironstone to be used as a smelting flux.

Adjacent to the mine site there was a Primitive Methodist Church and tennis courts. Not far away was a blacksmith.

Today the church is a private home.

Ironmine Tennis courts

Ironmine blacksmith's corner

This town was in the Hundred of Bright, and was located 16 km north of Robertstown on the north bank of the Burra Creek at a place better known as World’s End Gorge. It was proclaimed on 9 August 1877. It has a namesake in Devonshire, England, with which Governor Jervois, who named it, had family associations. In the Domesday Book the English Lapford is written as eslapaforda, meaning ‘Hlappa’s ford’. The SA version ceased to exist on 13 December 1962.

It was offered for sale on 13 September 1877. There was a school reserve which was never used.

Today it is farmland.

The only precise suggestion of housing comes from this report:

Burra Record, VI, 418, 27 February 1885, Page 3

Lapford Correspondent.

[There were correspondents’ reports from many centres on a fairly regular basis, but since nothing much ever happened at Lapford the correspondent purporting to give news from there often produced a humorous article sometimes with wider ranging satirical comments.]

‘Were one seeking the hospitality of Lapford, he would fare very badly indeed; for there are only two houses and three inhabitants all told, in the entire township proper; and “entertainment for man and beast,” is but a dim and misty legend of bygone days.’

‘The survey “pegs” are here, and the streets, roads, and “blocks” are here, but all is desolation beside.’

An effort was recently made to open a school here. The school is held in an iron building once devoted to the dispensation of Wein und Läerbier.

[But the school was in a building that lay outside the town proper and closer to the World’s End Methodist Church which was nearby and eventually housed the World’s End School as well.]

This is not a town, but a locality with a cluster of functions.

The post office opened in 1877 officially as Leighton (Baldry), though Baldry was some 6 km west.

There was a school from 1880 and later a District Hall and sports grounds including a polo ground, and provision for bowls, croquet and tennis.

The Leighton Wesleyan Church was further towards Baldry as were the sporting facilities, but the Hall and School were together.

Leighton Hall before demolition in 2003

The Hundred was proclaimed on 30 December 1875.

The word "Mongolata" is Aboriginal of unknown meaning.

There is no town of this name but a school near the abandoned town of Tracy operated (1893-1899).

The locality came to prominence with the development of a goldfield there in the 1930s. This saw the establishment of a transient village with as many as 100 people at times.

There was an eating house and a Government Battery but while a couple of the larger companies made money most prospectors struggled to make wages.

Data from the Mongolata Mine can be found here

Mongolata 1991

Mongolata 1930s ruins looking to ridge scarred by workings. 1996

Mongolata School

Shelter at Mongolata 1931