Blinman

Date of Adventure 4-5 January 2025

This is just a quick report on an interesting couple of days in the northern part of the Flinders.

Blinman is a small town with only a few permanent residents at the northern end of the Flinders Ranges. I was hoping to visit a couple of abandoned mines in the area but one of them, the Nuccaleena ruins were closed. They are on private property and normally open. But a week or so before I got there someone exploring the ruins, climbed over one of the protection fences and fell into a mine shaft. They had to send a rescue team to get him out and so they’ve closed the mine ruins until they can change things. But the town itself was the site of a very productive copper mine. The mine is now abandoned. For a price, $30, you can get a tour. I was kind of surprised, there were about a dozen of us on the tour the afternoon I took it. It’s been hot and way off season for the area so I didn’t think there would be many people on the tour.

Mike, the guy who led the tour was fantastic. He’s also the owner of the “eco park” where I camped. This mine was operated before mechanization and he tried to give us all the general sense of what it would have been like mining with hand tools and using only candle light. I still can’t imagine it. Most of the miners were from Cornwall and were pretty small people. And their general living conditions, in this desert, would have been unbelievably hard.

These pictures were all taken inside the mine. A few of them were taken where the mine shafts from above intersected the side tunnels. This tour was very much worth it!!

The town itself was mostly closed down. A little unfortunate because there is a store with local stuff that I would have liked to visit.

Like many of these abandoned or almost abandoned towns in the Flinders, Blinman has an interesting cemetery. I couldn’t tell much about any sort of event that killed people but there are headstones that go way back in the 1800’s. And a few that have been replaced with more modern gravestones.