Date of Adventure 31 December 2024
This is going to proceed way out of time sequence. I was going to do an introduction to the Flinders Ranges before getting into details but decided that there are several things of interest that I’ll do first. Maybe you’ll get the deep background in a week or so. Stay tuned.
Driving through the Flinders on the major roads I’ve seen lots of abandoned buildings.
It turns out that most of these are kind of isolated homesteads but there are a few towns. And there are some towns on my upcoming itinerary. This one kind of struck my fancy. It’s the abandoned town of Wilson. This area was homesteaded in the mid 1800’s by people trying to grow grain, mostly wheat. There were periods of rain when things went well but extended droughts drove people off the land. Many, of course, died. Some went back to the coast and more hospitable farm areas, And some turned to mining. There was significant copper mining in this general area (more later). I stopped, literally by the side of the road, to inspect this building and discovered it was the stationmaster’s home for the town of Wilson.
The abandoned buildings cover a pretty large area. The town itself must have been a couple of kilometers in each direction. In this picture you can see several buildings in the distance. The square shaped stone structure on the right is a water tank. I’ve seen a bunch of these water tanks in driving around the Flinders. Most of them are round. Wilson had a well (maybe more than one) right next to the stationmaster’s house. There are a couple of in ground tanks near the well.
This building is about 500 meters from the stationmaster’s.
And a couple of hundred meters farther on is this relatively well preserved home.
Look at the stonework in the second picture above. These guys really knew how to cut and work with stone. It’s interesting that there is considerable limestone in the local area. It was mined and fired in kilns. This picture doesn’t look like much but it’s an in ground lime kiln. They would take the limestone and layer it with wood and then light the wood on fire and keep it burning for a week or more. The result converted the limestone to slaked lime, which was further processed to make the lime for cement. No wonder these abandoned buildings still look pretty good. The stone was well mortared together.
The most interesting part of the Wilson townsite is the cemetery. It’s a bit over a kilometer off of the main highway. I guess that they buried the dead a little ways out of town. There are a bunch of graves including many with elaborate headstones. It seems a little strange to me because these headstones had to have been pretty expensive. It must have been a really tough life out here. Especially in those drought times. It seems like there would occasionally be 4 or 5 consecutive years of drought.
This particular grave was really intriguing. Someone has been recently keeping it up and adding to it. First, look at the exposed parts of the crypt. It looks like these were concrete or stone crypts, not just a pine box in the ground. And then the new marker. That is shiny and new. I’d say that the digging and marker are only months old. It rained in this area less than a month ago. I’m not sure how hard it rained.
That’s my quick story about Wilson, SA. I’ve got a few more homestead pictures that I may put into another blog soon and I’m headed for some abandoned mining areas. Unfortunately, it seems that some of these areas are closed right now. Maybe because of the heat. But it’s only been about 35 for the last few days. Beats the hell out of the 40 that I was seeing not long ago.