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:
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.