To Broome and Back!: Day 108. Port Augusta to Burra. 27/08/2015

Departed Port Augusta after a little sleep-in this morning and travelled South via the Sturt Highway. We drove for many miles with a water pipeline running directly alongside the highway, and we think it is the same pipeline that we have been seeing since we left Ceduna. More farming land on either side and we did see an Alpaca farm as well as a very large wind farm along the coastline. We saw both Port Pirie and Iron Knob in the distance but did not turn off the highway to visit. Our journey took us onto the Goyder Highway that would take us towards our destination of Burra.

A beautiful drive over undulating hills with magnificent scenery of lush farming crops of Wheat, Barley, Canola and sheep farms.

We stopped at the very lovely township of Crystal Brook where we found a fantastic Bakery that provided our coffee and bakery treats for morning tea. John remarked that his pastie was as good as his Mum used to make - it must have been pretty good. Crystal Brook is one of those lovely quaint farming townships in the wheat belt of S.A. that has a lot of history and is definitely worth another visit at some other time.

A little further on we drove through the township of Spalding where we saw a magnificent herd of cattle that had the most amazing reddish/brown hides that were almost like fur and with gorgeous faces (I love Cows). Again we saw another huge windfarm on the ridges of the rolling hills. At this point we lost sight of that water pipeline - don’t know where it disappeared to!

Arrived in Burra about 12.30 pm. and after settling in and a quick lunch, we left to acquaint ourselves with this very lovely and interesting town that has large heritage settlement.
Burra is an old mining town and there is still plenty of evidence throughout the area that at one time this was a very successful mining town. In fact the Burra mine was one of the richest copper mines in the world. We visited the open cut mine site that still has the remnants of the old mine buildings.

There are many mining cottages from the 1840’s and plenty of very attractive heritage buildings in the township. Visited the Burra Cemetery (I love a good Cemetery). Oldest grave is dated 1850 and there are 3994 grave-sites which is a really large Cemetery. I imagine that it is the resting place for the residents of not only Burra but nearby communities as well.
The restored train station museum was closed when we arrived but we will see the displays in the future.

We have decided that maybe next year we will come back into this area to spend some time enjoying Burra, Crystal Brook and nearby surrounding towns such as Hallett, Eudunda, Robertson and the Clare Valley region.