Burra Sketchbook

The township of Burra is one of the most remarkable in Australia, because it is a “museum piece” which preserves in stone the memories of an historic era.

This was the period of about seventy years which began with the “Coppermania” which seized South Australia in the 1840s, and ended when copper-mining became unprofitable. The principal characters were Cornish miners, and the township which they established at Burra is a replica of one of the villages which stand on the rugged cliffs and moors of Cornwall. In what was then the “outback” of the State, they built engine houses, ventilation shafts, churches, houses, and terraced cottages, which were all modelled on those of their home country.

It was a vivid and tumultous era, because there were South American muleteers, Australian bullockies, and unscrupulous speculators and prospectors as well as the hard-working Cornishmen. Ian Auhl tells the the whole story from the first discovery of copper up to the abandonment of the workings, and Maurice Perry captures the atmosphere of Burra with sketches that are full of character.