Wallaroo Mines Heritage Site
Where a shepherd's find sparked the Copper Coast.
The stone ruins of the great Wallaroo Mines on Kadina's edge, where copper was discovered in 1859, crowned by the heritage-listed Harvey's Enginehouse.
On 17 December 1859, a shepherd named James Boor turned up green-stained rock on the Wallaroo sheep run of Walter Watson Hughes - and the Yorke Peninsula changed forever. The Wallaroo Mines that grew from his find, together with the Moonta lodes discovered soon after, made this corner of South Australia one of the richest copper districts in the country and drew thousands of Cornish miners whose legacy still flavours the Copper Coast.
The mine workings sprawl across the south-western edge of Kadina, about a kilometre and a half from the town centre. The unmistakable landmark is the great stone shell of Harvey's Enginehouse, built in the 1870s to house a Cornish beam pumping engine and now the last of the mine's pumping stations left standing - it's listed on the South Australian Heritage Register. Around it lie capped shafts, tank stands, tramway formations and mounds of mine waste slowly being reclaimed by saltbush.
A self-guided trail threads the site, and it also features on the longer Kadina, Wallaroo and Moonta heritage drive. Come late in the day, when the low sun turns the ruins copper-coloured themselves.
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Last verified 8 August 2026 · source: Wikipedia - Wallaroo Mines
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Sources
- Wikipedia - Wallaroo Mines (accessed August 2026)
Image credits
- Wallaroo-mines-0749.jpg by Vmenkov , CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons