The three towns of Little Cornwall make a perfect day out, blending mining history with seaside ease.
Some corners of South Australia wear their history lightly. The Copper Coast is not one of them. Here the past is everywhere, in the stone engine houses on the skyline at Moonta, in the chapels and miners' cottages, in the very name locals still use for this place: Little Cornwall.
Start in Kadina, the commercial heart of the old Copper Triangle. The Farm Shed Museum is the place to get your bearings, its sprawling collections covering both the mines and the farms that grew up around them. From there it is a short hop to Wallaroo, the port where the ore was smelted and shipped, its towering chimney still standing as a marker.
By now you will have earned lunch, and there is only one thing to order. The Cornish pasty came to the peninsula with the miners, who carried the crimped pastries underground for their crib break. The local bakeries still do them properly, all peppery beef and potato.
The afternoon belongs to Moonta, where the great mine once employed thousands. Walk the heritage area among the mullock heaps and engine houses, ride the tourist railway, and let the scale of the operation sink in. Then finish where the working day always ended on this coast: by the water. The Moonta Bay jetty at sunset, or a drink at the Wallaroo Marina, is the perfect full stop on a day in Little Cornwall.
