Murphy's Haystacks, South Australia

Somewhere between 1902 and 1914 a Scottish agricultural expert was travelling in a mail coach and looked out and saw these huge rocks in the distance and mistook them for haystacks. Because the landowner's name at the time was Murphy, they became Murphy's Haystacks.

The current land owner, Denis Cash has graciously allowed hundreds of visitors access to his property to see these interesting rocks. He writes:

"When my Grandfather Denis Murphy made his selection of land in 1889 it is more than likely that an outcrop of rocks were not given much consideration, having left his family and his beloved Ireland behind in a state of famine. To provide the essentials of food, water and shelter would have been foremost in his mind.From early photographs it is obvious that these rocks were soon to be regarded as something really special. Picnics with family and friends at what became known as “Murphys Haystacks” were common. Every visitor to the farm had to see The Haystacks.

One hundred years later The Haystacks had become so popular that we decided to make entry more accessible. My family has been privileged to have had the opportunity to meet some of the many visitors to the site and made great friendships with people form all over the world."

Elliston, South Australia

Elliston has a sinister past. In the 1840's an undocumented massacre took place here. In a terrible act of reprisal, white settlers rounded up a large group of Aboriginal people and ran them off a cliff into the sea. If they didn't go over, they were shot. Three teenagers – one girl and two boys – and a baby survived the slaughter and their story has been told down through the generations.

Unfortunately, the incident was never recorded and without documentation, the settlers' side of the story is lost forever and we will never know the truth.

Coffin Bay, South Australia

The only store in town

Coffin Bay got its name from Matthew Flinders who called it after his friend Isaac Coffin. With a population of only 650 people, this is where some of the best oysters in the world are grown.

The Japanese Pacific oyster was first introduced to Tasmania in 1934 but it wasn't until 1969 that they were trialed at Coffin Bay. The trials were extremely successful and so the current industry was born.

You can see up to 20 oyster boats on the waterways every day and about 100 people are employed to work on the leases or back in the packing sheds.

Because of the popularity of Coffin Bay oysters, oysters from other regions of the state are brought here to fattening leases at Point Longnose for up to three months before being sold.

Most Coffin Bay oysters are sold interstate to Sydney and Melbourne and have an excellent reputation for taste and quality.

Port Lincoln, South Australia

Makybe Diva on the foreshore

Port Lincoln is the seafood capital of Australia and our largest commercial fishing port , worth millions of dollars to local and state economies. Abalone, mussels, the best oysters (a personal opinion), the Spencer Gulf prawn, southern rock lobster, crab, calamari and bluefin tuna all come from here.

Port Lincoln is also home to millionaires. Known as the Tuna Kings, a number of migrant fisherman became fabulously wealthy because they were granted a licence to fish for bluefin tuna, the preferred fish of the Japanese for sashimi.

Men like Tony Santic, owner of Makybe Diva, the magnificent mare who won the Melbourne Cup three times and Dinko Lukin whose son Dean was an Olympic weightlifting champion.

In July 2008 Centrex Metals wanted to operate an iron ore mine 140kms north of Port Lincoln, and ship the ore from Port Lincoln - this pristine aquaculture hub of Australia. Tuna Baron and Chairman of Clean Seas Tuna, Hagen Stehr was not amused and threatened to shift his multi-million dollar operations to South Africa or Mauritius if the state approved iron ore exports from his port.

Hagen Stehr had a dream - to successfully raise bluefin tuna in captivity. Thanks to his initiative and determination, they have finally done it and now Australia will be able to achieve total sustainability in tuna.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) were worried that the Mediterranian stock of bluefin tuna would collapse by 2012 so the future success of this new venture appears to be guaranteed.

Wyalla, South Australia

The Wyalla at the Tourist Information Centre

In 1899, BHP leased an iron ore mine at Iron Knob, 53 kms from Wyalla. In 1935 they bought Australian Iron and Steel and its Port Kembla steelworks and later a blast furnace and shiping industry at Wyalla. The Whyalla shipyard became the largest in Australia, eventually employing 1500 men.

There was a tremendous amount of work to be done and not enough men to do it so the Federal Government and BHP placed ads in overseas newspapers for fitters, turners and machinists. When they arrived, it created a housing problem and they had to live in tents until the South Australian Housing Trust could build new houses and home units for them.

Whyalla, the mighty steel city, started as a small company town, a factory in the desert, and became a boom city built on the muscle of many hard working Australians and European migrants.

After nearly 100 years, mining at Iron Knob ended in June 1998, when the last ore was taken from the Iron Monarch open cut pit.

Port Augusta, South Australia

Foreshore

View from the Arid Lands Botanical Gardens Centre

Town View

Set in the shadow of the Flinders Ranges, Port Augusta is called the Cross Roads of Australia because it has a constant stream of visitors coming and going.

From here, roads branch north east to the Flinders Ranges and the Birdsville Track, north west to Alice Springs, east to Broken Hill and New South Wales, west to the Nullarbor and Western Australia and south to Adelaide.

The Wadlata Outback Centre located at the Visitor's Information Centre is one of the most visited attractions in South Australia and a self guided tour of the Arid Lands Botanic Gardens is also worthwhile.

The Flinders Rangers, South Australia

The Rawnsley Park Station Caravan Park is right here

Warm colours

Wilpena homestead, circa 1869


Views in every direction for miles




Giant gum trees over 400 years old

It just goes on

and on

Beautiful gum trees

in every direction

One of Hans Heysen's Flinders paintings

The Flinders Ranges cover 80% of South Australia but has less than 1% population. They stretch for 250 kilometres north of Adelaide and then go on for another 800 kilometres into the outback.

A visit to the Flinders Ranges is hard to describe. The consistent granduer everywhere you look, mile after mile, is almost overwhelming, too much to take in. I've never seen anything like it before and it took my breath away. It brings to mind that famous poem by Dorothea McKellar called 'My Country'.


The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes,

Of ordered woods and gardens

Is running in your veins.

Strong love of grey-blue distance,

Brown streams and soft, dim skies -

I know but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror –

The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,

All tragic to the moon,

The sapphire-misted mountains,

The hot gold hush of noon,

Green tangle of the brushes

Where lithe lianas coil,

And orchids deck the tree-tops,

And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!

Her pitiless blue sky,

When, sick at heart, around us

We see the cattle die –

But then the grey clouds gather,

And we can bless again

The drumming of an army,

The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!

Land of the rainbow gold,

For flood and fire and famine

She pays us back threefold.

Over the thirsty paddocks,

Watch, after many days,

The filmy veil of greenness

That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,

A wilful, lavish land –

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand –

Though earth holds many splendours,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly