Ardrossan Heritage Museum

Few inventions changed South Australia like the stump-jump plough — a plough whose shares ride up and over buried mallee roots instead of snapping against them. Devised in 1876 by young Richard Bowyer Smith and perfected by his brother Clarence Herbert Smith, it unlocked millions of acres of scrub country for grain growing, much of it right here on the Yorke Peninsula.

Clarence Smith built his factory at Ardrossan in 1880, and at its height it employed around 70 men turning out 14 ploughs a week, powered by a steam engine that generated the peninsula's first electricity. The Ardrossan Heritage Museum now occupies the factory's 1907 powerhouse, gifted to the National Trust and opened as a museum in 1973.

Inside you'll find original stump-jump ploughs and tillage machinery alongside displays on the town's shipping and farming life; outside, Ardrossan's red cliffs and big working jetty carry the same story into the present. Round out the visit with the clifftop view from the Ardrossan Lookout south of town.