Port Augusta. The Arid Lands Botanic Gardens cafe and shop. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Port Augusta. The Arid Lands Botanic Gardens cafe and shop. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
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| 説明 | Port Augusta. Population 14,100.Pt Augusta has a population of 14,000 people of which almost 20% are of Aboriginal descent. Nationally 3.8% of the Australian population is Aboriginal. Port Augusta is the fourth largest town outside Adelaide after Mt Gambier, Whyalla and Murray Bridge. Part of the reason for the current large Aboriginal population of Port Augusta stems from the early establishment of an Aboriginal mission near the city. In 1937 the Christian Brethren Assemblies established an Aboriginal mission in the sand hills just north of the town. The mission was originally called Umeewarra. In 1964 the government took control of the mission and renamed it Davenport Reserve and in 1968 an Aboriginal community council took charge of the Reserve. During the 1970s most of the Aboriginal children fostered out to white families came from Davenport Reserve. Davenport Reserve closed in 1995. Sadly it has been in the news recently for vandalism, degradation of facilities and youth crime rates. Matthew Flinders mapped the Port Augusta area in 1802. Europeans named it Port Augusta (after Governor Fox Young’s wife) on May 24 1852 when a survey was undertaken. Land was put up for auction in 1854 signalling the start of the town. Previous to this in 1851 the first leases had been granted to pastoralists in the nearby Flinders Ranges - to James Paterson and Messers White and Pollhill. The story of Port Augusta’s growth after this time was influenced by a series of major milestones which developed its industrial and iron/steel usage. Firstly it was the growth of the port for wool and copper ore. By 1854 pastoral runs in the Flinders Ranges were carting wool to the town for transhipment to England. Then by around 1857, copper was being transported from the Blinman copper mines for shipment overseas. Some copper was smelted in the port before shipment. The Blinman mining company erected their own wharf in Port Augusta in 1863, the first of several private and government wharves. Consequently one of the first significant buildings in the town was the Customs House and Harbour Masters house, erected in 1861 on the site of the present day yacht club. The first bank in this growing commercial centre was the National Bank opened in Gibson Street in 1863. In later years grain and flour from the mills in Quorn and Wilmington were shipped out from the port too. Alexander Tassie was one of the first settlers and the leading merchant in early Port Augusta thus the naming of Tassie Street. Large pastoral companies, like Sir Thomas Elder’s company which had been set up in the town in 1855, had their own wharves. During the 1880s Port Augusta was the second port for the state after Port Adelaide before Port Pirie surpassed it. It finally closed as a working port in 1974. Before that time railway engines, and all sorts of heavy equipment and supplies were all shipped to Port Augusta and lifted from the sailing ships and steamers by cranes. Second the town got a reliable water supply. In 1865 a water pipe was laid from springs on Woolundunga Station, 14 miles away from Port Augusta. To protect this vital resource the state government stationed a Water Works Superintendent in Port Augusta and built the Water Works Barracks on the town square to house the guards and generally control the town. The heritage listed barracks were erected in 1862 with a Water Works Office next door facing on to Gladstone Square. Third Port Augusta boomed with the construction of the Overland Telegraph from Port Augusta to Darwin which provided the first cable connection between England and an Australian city- Adelaide. Sir Charles Todd was in charge of the 2,300 kms line which was a remarkable engineering achievement across harsh, sparsely populated, terrain from Port Augusta to Darwin. Everything for the start of the Overland Telegraph from horses, camels, bullocks, hundreds of miles of copper wire, insulators, batteries for repeater stations at every 250 kms (13 in total), supplies for the men and posts for the actual line were unloaded on the wharf in Port Augusta. The line was completed in 1872 after two years of work and the erection of 36,000 poles. Port Augusta already had a telegraph to Adelaide and overseas cables had reached Darwin allowing telegrams to be sent to London. The isolation of Australia stopped by the efforts of Port Augusta. The telegraph was replaced in the early 1970s by microwave radio relays.Fourth the town was chosen as the site for the Commonwealth Railways to have their major base. When the Federal parliament passed a bill to build a transcontinental railway from Port August across the Nullarbor Plain to Kalgoorlie this provided a rail connection from Eastern Australia to Perth and Western Australia. The building of this railway was to fulfil a promise upon which Western Australia joined the Australian Federation in 1900.Fifth the Playford government passed legislation to establish a state wide electricity supplier using brown coal mines being developed at Leigh Creek. The first major power station in South Australia was then to be built in Port Augusta. Industrially Port Augusta was also boosted by thirsty male workers. The first hotel, the Port Augusta Hotel, was licensed in 1855. In 1864 the Northern Hotel was first licensed. More hotels were built and licensed so that by 1878 there were six hotels in the town! Once the railway to Quorn opened the first Railway Terminus Hotel was licensed in 1880. The brewery, which is now part of the Northern Gateway Shopping Centre, first started operations in the early 1870s. In 1879 it was greatly extended by new owners with a high tower, large cellars and more machinery. It faces on to Gladstone Square. Aerated waters were produced as well as beer. Mr. Perrers, the brewery owner also owned the Laura brewery in the 1890s. He sold both breweries to SA Brewing Company in 1894 which closed them. The town had other industries as in 1880 John Dunn, the flour miller from Mt Barker with mills in many SA towns, opened his flour mill in Port Augusta. It received grain by train from Hawker and Quorn districts. The mill finally burnt down in 1926. It was the opening of the Great Northern railway in 1878 which prompted Dunn to build his flour mill. The railway reached Quorn in 1880, Hawker soon afterwards and Farina in 1882.The 1860s to the 1880s were boom years for the town and it progressed greatly. Private schools were replaced by the first government school in 1878; the Anglican Church opened in 1868; the first Bible Christian Church had opened earlier in 1866 and was replaced in 1885. The large Catholic Church was built in 1883. A few years later the first Catholic Bishop of Port Augusta diocese was appointed and the first cathedral services held in the church in 1888. The first Bishop resided in Port Augusta, the second Bishop lived in Pekina and the third moved his Bishop’s Palace and the Pro Cathedral to Peterborough in 1912. The seat of the diocese was moved from Port Augusta to Port Pirie in 1951 when the Diocese became the diocese of Port Pire. The town’s Post Office was built in 1866 with a telegraph service to Adelaide starting in 1871. The town’s first newspaper started in 1877; the corporation of Port Augusta was gazetted in 1875. A wharf had been established in 1871 at Port Augusta West. A wooden hut served as the first police station in Point Augusta from around 1855 where Mr. Minchin the Sub-Protector of Aborigines also worked. It was sent by ship from Port Adelaide and assembled upon being landed. A second wooden Police Station and Courthouse was built in 1867. It was replaced in 1884 by the grand stone Courthouse. Note the VR insignia for Victoria Regina above the doors of the old Courthouse. The big event of this decade was the start of the train service to Quorn in 1878 reaching Quorn in 1882 and it was finally extended to Marree by 1884. From 1875 the first council meetings were held in the old Institute building in Commercial Street. The corporation then borrowed £6,000 for the erection of a Town Hall suitable for a progressive town like Port Augusta. This impressive classical style building next to the Institute was sadly vacant for decades. It has recently been restored and operates as an up-market motel. The building was made of stone quarried near Quorn, with Ionic columns and a square tower topped with a pyramidal dome and cupola. The summit was 72 feet above the footpath! From its opening day in 1887 the Town Hall had electric lighting from its own generating supply thanks to the efforts of a local Councillor and the superintendent of Water Works in Port Augusta Mr Hullett. In 1885 he developed a small hydraulic engine plant at his residence to provide electric lighting for his dining room. This was the first house in SA to have electricity. Mr Hullett was responsible for the electricity plant for the opening of the Town Hall. Also in 1884 he invented and patented a double track railway truck. In 1886 he presented the Council with a plan for electric street lighting in Port Augusta. Power was to be supplied by Dunn and Co millers on the wharf. When the lights of the Town Hall were first switched on the town was agog with the new marvel of electric lighting. The 1881 census showed that Port Augusta had over 2,100 citizens. The first bridge across the Gulf to Port Augusta West opened in 1927 and the town received its first reliable water supply in 1944 from the Morgan to Whyalla water pipeline. There is a memorial arbour to Ada Woodcock in front of the old Institute as she was a long time Councillor, a community worker and writer of the social columns of the Port Augusta newspaper. In 1888, John Henry Reid discovered coal-bearing shale in the Leigh Creek area. This discovery led to the establishment of underground workings but only small quantities of coal were extracted and operations ceased in 1894. It was not until 1940 that work started again on searching for useable coal, with plans for an open cut mine. Premier Sir Thomas Playford saw that the electricity supply industry would be the largest user of Leigh Creek coal, and control of the coalfield was transferred by the government to the Electricity Trust of South Australia in 1948 by act of parliament. The story behind this is one of the drive, foresight and determination of Premier Sir Thomas Playford. SA was the only state with no good supplies of coal and during World War Two SA was left with no power supply on occasions due to strikes and war needs in NSW. Playford wanted SA to be self-reliant for power but the progress to develop brown coal for power generation was difficult. Brown coal had not been used anywhere in the world, and some scientists said it could never be used, to produce electricity. SA pioneered its use. The first bill introduced to parliament was defeated in the Legislative Council. Playford then courted some upper house members and finally got his bill through parliament to establish the coal field in 1946. He had started out on this course in 1943. Part of the political deal was to supply electricity to country towns and regions. If the bill had been defeated Playford would have resigned. ETSA had control of the coal field and after seeking tenders for special boilers to burn the brown coal at the Osborne Power Station, decided to establish a power station at Port Augusta. The new power station was named the Playford power station when it opened in 1954. A second power station was built in 1963 and together they produced around 70% of SA’s electricity in the 1960s and reduced to about 40% once Torrens Island power station opened in 1967. Both Port Augusta power station are now closed (2016) and totally demolished. They used to employ around 450 people in Port Augusta and Leigh Creek but sadly that has all ended too. The Leigh Creek coalfields closed in April of 2016 with SA reverting to reliance on the eastern states of Australia through a probably unstable interstate connector, supplemented with wind and solar power from SA. With Federation in 1901 came the promise to build a transcontinental railway line to link Kalgoorlie (and Perth) with Port Augusta and the eastern states. In 1912 the Commonwealth Railways was formed to build the transcontinental line from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie. Like the Overland Telegraph this was major engineering feat through harsh, waterless country with extremes of temperatures. Politicians wavered and it was 1907 before the legislation for the route survey was passed and 1911 before the money bills were also passed and agreed upon. The first ships with materials from Newcastle steel rails and sleepers to tools arrived on Port Augusta wharves in 1912. Similar materials were railed to Kalgoorlie at the other end. The line was to be 1,700 kms long. Up to 4 kms of track was laid each day and it took about 2.5 million sleepers with about 1.3m landed at Port Augusta. The two tracks met at Ooldea in October 1917. One of the first engine drivers for one leg of the trip from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie was George Hogan, Anne Woodcock’s grandfather. With the railway completed Port Augusta became a hub for Commonwealth Railways. South Australian Railways also serviced Port Augusta with a line to Adelaide via Quorn and Peterborough. In 1937 that changed to a direct line via Port Pirie. The Commonwealth government established their major railway workshops in Port Augusta which became a major employer in the town. Around 85% of the Commonwealth Railways tracks were focussed on Port Augusta. Over the years the Commonwealth Railways added more lines to Sth Aust. with a new line to the Leigh Creek coalfields in 1956, by passing Pichi Richi and Quorn. They extended that line to Maree where a change of gauge occurred for the continuing Old Ghan railway to Alice Springs. Commonwealth Railways also built a new line to Whyalla in 1972.After the bombing of Darwin the Commonwealth Railways decided all railway station signage should be removed, and all stations and the Port Augusta workshops were to have blackout conditions. This was relaxed some time later when the Japanese threat was less likely. Also during the war there was a great shortage of labour and so for the first time in 1942 the Commonwealth railways employed 33 women as train cleaners. The CR also used some 300 Italian prisoners of war in six work camps along the transcontinental line to assist fettlers and track maintenance. After the war in 1952 CR introduced diesel electric engines to obviate the need for good water supplies across the Nullarbor Plain. This had always been a problem. The engines were made by Clyde Engineering in Sydney and shipped to Port Augusta and unload on the wharf. From then onwards they were overhauled and maintained in the Port Augusta workshops. Most of the passenger carriages were totally made in Port Augusta and rolling stock and freight cars were overhauled there too. By 1951 some 350 men were employed in the railway workshops plus the clerical staff, the supplies store staff and train crew members. Commonwealth Railways was the major employer with well over a 1,000 employees based in and around Port Augusta and scores more out on the railway lines from Port Augusta. This figure doubled to about 2,000 employees in the 1970s and 1980s. The Stores department not only provided uniforms, fuel, materials etc but they also provided groceries, fresh meat, clothing and more to the fettlers and their families stretched across western SA and the Nullarbor Plain. The famous Tea and Sugar train carted these supplies and medical supplies to these isolated people. For the children Father Christmas made the journey as well in December each year. Little remains of the extensive railway workshops in Port Augusta but the scale and importance of them can still be gauged from visiting that area. In 1975, just 8 days after the federal election Premier Don Dunstan gave the South Australian Railway network to Prime Minster Gough Whitlam and the federal government. The deal was arranged between the two men before the federal election. Most of the South Australian Railways staff were transferred to the Commonwealth Railways albeit reluctantly in some cases. A little later Commonwealth Railways took over the Tasmanian railways too and Commonwealth Railways became Australian National Railways. From 1980 it was known as Australian National. In 1980 Australian National built a new line from Tarcoola to Alice Springs resulting in the closure of the old line through Leigh Creek and Maree. This project included a spur line from Pimba to Woomera. In 1997 when Australian National was wound up, the sale cost the federal government around $2 billion dollars as the system had failed and was not successful. Around $779 million was owed in debt and $580 million was needed for superannuation liabilities etc. Passenger services were privatised at that time with Great Southern Rail taking them over and then they basically closed all lines down except for the Adelaide Perth line and the Adelaide Sydney line through Broken Hill and the Adelaide Melbourne line. Shortly afterwards in 1998 Australian RailTrack Corporation (government) was formed to own and control the tracks and left most of South Australia’s rail network to rot or to be removed. However, in 1997 there was hope of new railway to Darwin which was completed in January 2004 when the first freight train rolled out of Port Augusta on its way to Darwin and the enlarged Port of Darwin. It too is operated by Great Southern Rail.The current major employer of Port Augusta, since the closure of the two ETSA power stations, is the high security prison. The Port Augusta Prison houses 617 prisoners including a special unit for 36 Aboriginal offenders and another for about 25 female offenders. The first prison was built in Port Augusta in 1869 and it remained with little change or additions until 1972 when a new prison as built at Stirling North. This 1972 prison has since been upgraded. The old prison was known as Greenbush and nearly all prisoners were Aboriginal and Aboriginal people still make up a high proportion of inmates at Stirling North. Port Augusta prison is the largest regional prison in SA and employs around 400 workers. |
| 撮影日 | 2025-01-30 10:08:47 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSC-HX90V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.003 sec (1/400) |
| 開放F値 | f/3.5 |