Encounter Studio: experiments + journeys

brief notes on experimental photographic journeys

at Kapunda with Lavender Trail friends

As mentioned in this blog  post  in the Eye on the Mallee website  I spent several days in mid-August at Kapunda with Suzanne's Lavender Trail friends. Whilst they walked the trail  around the Kapunda region  in the mid-north each day  I photographed. I actually spend more time photographing in,  and around,  Kapunda than  I did in the South Australian mallee. Well,  I split my time between the two different regions. 

This picture is of the Anglican church in Kapunda. It was designed by Edmund Wright,  and built around 1857-8: 

Kapunda was a copper mining town in the mid-nineteenth century until  1879 and the revenue from copper  saved South Australia from bankruptcy. The railway from Gawler, which  was established in 1860 to  service the copper mining, was the the first extension of the line from Adelaide to Gawler.  The extension continued through Eudunda then across the Murray Mallee plains adjacent to what is now the Thiele Highway to Morgan on the River Murray to  capture the  up-stream paddle steamer trade.  
 
After the copper mine closed  the Kapunda railway station became the largest wheat collection point.  Kapunda  became the rural or agricultural centre for what is known as the Mid-North of the State. The latter  is a misnomer because  geographically speaking this region is nowhere near the mid-north of the state. It is as close to Adelaide as  Victor Harbor is.   

 As  I was photographing around the Kapunda region   I realized that I had been in this region  before---in the 1980s and 1990s.  They were day trips then and so I had little sense of the history of the region.  For instance, it is only now on the extended trips that I am developing an understanding  of the centrality of the railway to this part of South Australia  for a century  or so --from 1860-1960.  The railways were built primarily for the transport of grain to the nearest port--in this case Port Adelaide.

The railway tracks were all pulled up in the 1980s-1990s and the train stations are in a state of disrepair.  This kind of history is slowly being forgotten. From 1906, cheaply constructed rail lines were pushed throughout the Murraylands (and from 1907 on Eyre Peninsula), purely to encourage agricultural settlement.