Beltana, South Australia

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Beltana
South Australia

Beltana population through the 20th century
Population: 20 (approx)[1]
Established: 1873
Postcode: 5730
Elevation: 296 m
Location:
LGA: Outback Areas Community Development Trust
State District: Stuart
Federal Division: Grey

Beltana is a semi-ghost town 540km north of Adelaide, that has struggled on refusing to lie down and die long after the reasons for its existence have vanished. The towns history began in the 1870s with the advent of copper mining in the area, construction of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line and The Ghan railroad and began to decline in 1941 with the beginning of coal mining at Leigh Creek. The fortune of the town was sealed by the 1983 realignment of the main road away from the town. [2] The town, adjacent cemetery and railway structures are now part of a designated State Heritage Area declared in 1987. [3]

Beltana has important links with the overland telegraph, transcontinental railway, mining, outback services, Australian Inland Mission and also has Afghan sites relating to it’s past as a camel-based transport centre. [3]

The town has had horse racing since 1876, and the annual picnic races and gymkhana and biennial pastoral field day are still continued[1] There are no services or accommodation available although there is an interpretive history trail and self-guided tour around the town. The Beltana roadhouse, now 12km from Beltana on the main highway between Parachilna and Leigh Creek, acts as the towns’ local store.

Contents

[edit] Original inhabitants

The original inhabitants were the Adnyamathanha aboriginal people who used the area as a camp due to the nearby springs. With the arrival of Europeans their traditional lifestyle was disrupted and many of them began working as stockmen on pastoral runs. [2] During the early years of European settlement they kept a camp near Beltana Station but later moved closer to the town at Warrioota Creek. As the town was gradually depopulated some aborigines occupied the abandoned buildings so by the late 1960s they again formed the majority of the population [4]

[edit] Landscape

Beltana lies 240m above sea level between the often dry Warrioota and Sliding Rock creeks near Mount Deception.[5] Due to the flatness of the country, the town’s proximity to the creeks and the area’s usually unpredictable weather, heavy rainfall has often leads to flooding. Beltana has experienced six months with no rain (1960-1961) and six months with over 300mm of rain (1975-1976) and drought has caused the area to be unstocked for long periods (1903-1909) [6]. Rainfall has ranged from 57mm in 1902 to a record 408.6mm in 1974 with a long term average of 205mm. [7] There are occasional winter frosts, hailstorms and one recorded snowfall (on Mount Hack and Mount Stuart in July 1971).[8]

Saltbush, bluebush and other acacias are native plants that, with the reduction in stocking over the last decades of the 20th Century, are beginning to return to the town area. River red gums line the creeks and there is a nearby yellow-footed rock-wallaby population.

[edit] History

[edit] Naming

Beltana was originally the name of a sheep station, west of the current town, which provided a stopover point for travellers, missionaries, explorers, and miners. [9] The name Beltana may have come from the Adnyamathanha for running water or crossing of the waters or may be an adaptation of veldana for skin or cloak. [10] It may also have come from the village of Beltana, Tasmania, or a word about bravery or courage from Ireland, and finally one of the station managers believed it simply indicated the place where the station bell was rung.[5]

[edit] The Town

Land in the area first taken up for pastoral use by John Haines in 1854, taken over by Thomas Elder in 1862 and amalgamated in 1867 into the Beltana Pastoral Company of Thomas Elder and Samuel Stuckey. In 1866 Elder and Stuckey shipped in 109 Afghans and their camels, forming the basis for the areas mid 19th Century transport. [3] The town’s first building was Martin’s eating house which was built in 1870 to take advantage of the discovery of copper at Sliding Rock 20km east of Beltana. The town`s location had already been chosen as a repeater station site for the Australian overland telegraph and in 1870 the telegraph contract of Charles Todd brought more life to the area, with a telegraph station set up next to the only house on the site. In 1873 the town was surveyed and laid out with an enthusiastic 115 allotments, room allowed for parklands and further expansion, with reserved allotments for a school, police station and hospital. In 1877 significant water was struck at the Sliding Rock mine and the mine failed with many moving to Beltana. This coupled with the 1881 arrival of the railway brought an influx of families and within 5 years there was a brewery, store and school. Other copper mines in the area began working and the town became the railhead for copper ore, sheep and wool. In 1869 a ship, the Beltana, was a new ship built for the Port Augusta to London run and operated until 1897 [11]

Beltana’s best time was between 1875 and the 1920s. During these years mining activity was at its height. The town supported a brewery, two hotels, post and telegraph office, school, police station, doctor, court-house, church, baker, butcher, blacksmith, hospital, railway station, cricket team, race meetings, a saddle maker, carriage maker, mining exchange, several shops and, at times, as many as 500 people.[12]

Mechanisation, mine closure, drought and depression lead to the slow decline of beltana as a service centre for the region from 1920 onwards. The railway realignment consequent to gauge change in 1956 and road movement in 1983 completed the reversal of the towns fortunes. [13]

[edit] Explorers

The town was, for some time, the starting point of many central Australian expeditions and explorations including those by Ernest Giles in 1872, Peter Warburton in 1873, Ross in 1874, Lewis in 1874-1875, and Lawrence Wells in 1883.[5]

[edit] Beltana Station

Thomas Elder took over lease no. 370 in 1862 forming Beltana Station and until the early 20th Century there were as many as 60 living on the station. [2] Beltana Pastoral run for many years was the head station of the Beltana Pastoral Co. The station ran livestock, and a camel breeding program for work on the telegraph, exploring and it’s own use.[1] Today the station covers 410,000 acres, holds up to 8,500 livestock and offers 4WD driving tracks and accommodation. [14]

[edit] Beltana Today

With the loss of the railroad, main road, mining, telegraph and the expansion of nearby Leigh Creek all of the original reasons for the town to exist have vanished. The population reached 9 in 1984 and today the town survives as a historic tourist site and living ghost town. [5] Most surviving buildings are now in private hands and not open to the public. There is an interpretive trail with signs detailing the history of many of the buildings in the town but no shops or services are available.[3]

[edit] Town Buildings

[edit] Australian Inland Mission

The first Presbyterian manse was purchased in 1898, having been rented by Rev Robert Mitchell for 4 years before that, and served as the manse for Reverend John Flynn, later of the flying doctor service, in 1911. It became the Beltana Australian Inland Mission nursing home in 1919. The nursing home continued until hospital facilities became available in mid 1950s at Leigh Creek. [2] The second Presbyterian manse was on Lot 93 corner of Second and Fourth Street, was purchased in 1912 and held by the church until 1953.

The Beltana Mission Hall, which dates from about 1878, was offered to the Church in 1902 for £60 and purchased. Previously it had been used for a Sunday School but originally had been part of Doig's Carriage works and had double door towards the rear of the north-east wall. An extra room accessed through this opening was added when the building was thoroughly renovated during the term of Rev H.E.Carey, the Smith of Dunesk Missioner 1916-18. The extension was later removed but the building has been kept in fair condition and is still used for occasional services.

[edit] Police Station

Due to concerns over the behaviour of workers on the railway line a mounted policeman was appointed in 1879 to manage the land from Parachilna to Kopperamanna. In 1881 a permanent police building was finished and a police sergeant with 2 mounted constables were housed. Cyril Allen, Beltana’s last official policeman, closed the office in 1958 with policing now covered from Leigh Creek. [2]

[edit] School

With the closure of the Sliding Rock mine, its school ( at the mining township of Cadnia) was dismantled and relocated to Beltana in 1878. The school was always a single-teacher school with a peak enrolment of 52 students in 1904. It was closed in 1967 with students now bussed to Leigh Creek area school. [2]

[edit] Telegraph Station

A temporary repeater station was opened in 1872 followed by a permanent station in 1875. Staffed by a staff of up to 6 it relayed morse telegraph messages on the Port Darwin-Adelaide telegraph lines. The station received its first phone message in 1878, was moved in 1940 to a telephone switchboard at the local shop, and closed by 1956 as an automatic exchange had been installed. [2]

[edit] Railway Station

On 19 January 1878 Sir William Jervois symbolically turned the first sod on the new northern railway (called The Ghan) at Port Augusta. The line reached Hawker in June 1880, Beltana on 2 July 1881, Maree on 6 January 1884, Oodnadatta on 7 January 1891 and Alice Springs on 2 August 1929. In 1956 the narrow gauge line through Beltana was replaced by a standard gauge line that bypassed the town and the line is now closed.[2]

[edit] Trivia

  • Although the town appears uninhabited and it appears that you can freely walk into any building you like, the buildings are privately owned and some are inhabited so many inhabited houses have "Keep Out" signs posted on them.[5]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Communities - Beltana. Outback Areas Community Development Trust (2003). Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Interpreting Beltana’s History, interpretative signs around the town. Heritage South Australia, Government of South Australia (2006). Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
  3. ^ a b c d Beltana State Heritage Area. Heritage South Australia, Government of South Australia (2006). Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
  4. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.12
  5. ^ a b c d e Beltana, Superb semi-ghost town on the edge of the desert. Sydney Morning Herald (2005-02-17). Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
  6. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.151
  7. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.155
  8. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.158
  9. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.9
  10. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.7
  11. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.11
  12. ^ Aird G 1984,pp.14
  13. ^ Aird G 1984, pp.15
  14. ^ Beltana Station. about-australia.com. Retrieved on September 10, 2006.

[edit] References

  • Aird, Graham; Klaassen, Nic (1984). BELTANA, The Town That Will Not Die. Beltana, South Australia: Graham Aird and Nic Klaassen. ISBN 0-9591081-0-6. 

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 30°48′S, 138°25′E

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