Flinders Ranges. Outback South Australia. Beltana Railway station 1920. State Library photo. B58254 : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Flinders Ranges. Outback South Australia. Beltana Railway station 1920. State Library photo. B58254 / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Beltana. Europeans have known since the Crusades (1096 to 1291) that desert watercourses or wadis only flow periodically after rains. And the early pastoralists of SA knew that wadis bordered with gigantic River Red Gums meant that there was plentiful supplies of underground water besides. With many watercourses coming down from the Flinders Ranges towards Lake Torrens they knew that this was good pastoral country. Beltana run, named after the Aboriginal word for running waters, was taken out in 1854 by John Haines. In 1862 Robert Barr Smith and his family partner (Sir) Thomas Elder took over the run. Barr Smith had had the adjoining Nilpena run since 1854. In 1867 Thomas Elder took over both these runs alone and nearby Mount Deception run which covered hundreds of square miles. Beltana became his major northern sheep station. When the Overland Telegraph was being constructed by the team led by Sir Charles Todd in 1870-71 Beltana was selected as a repeater station and Elder’s station was used as a work camp and source of camels for the line’s construction. All this activity put Beltana on the map and the Royal Victoria Hotel opened in 1874. During 1873 the government surveyed the town of Beltana next to Elder’s headstation with 115 town blocks, surrounding parklands and suburban lands. Over the next few years the hospitality of Thomas Elder meant that exploration parties often set out for northern parts from Beltana. They included Ernest Giles in 1875 and 1876 to Eucla and WA, Peter Warburton in 1872 Alice Springs, John Ross in 1871 to Darwin and 1874 to the WA border and Lawrence Wells in 1883 to survey Poeppel Corner. There is a memorial to Giles at Beltana. When Sir Thomas Elder died in 1897 the Beltana Pastoral Company was formed with a partnership of Peter Waite and Sir Lancelot Stirling. The Company also ran Elder’s Mount Lyndhurst station and others. The Company held almost 500 square miles for Beltana run in 1965 which only sold of the last of its leases in 1984. In its heyday Elder employed Afghans to breed camels for desert transportation of wool and they were exported to QLD, WA, NT etc. He first shipped 109 camels to SA from the Middle East in 1865. The first Afghans arrived in SA round the mid-1860s but camels were used earlier including by John Horrock’s expedition in 1846. Apart from station supplies and the Telegraph Repeater station the town prospered for a while when the Sliding Rock copper mine operated from 1871 to 1877 and then the Great Northern Railway reached the town in 1882. The Telegraph station opened in a tin shed in 1872 but the stone Post Office and station was completed in 1875. It closed in 1914 and was sold in 1919 and the Post Office moved elsewhere. The Post service closed in 1981. The old Telegraph station was privately restored in 1984. In the 1890s Beltana had around 500 residents and two hotels, bakery, blacksmith, saddlery, several stores, stone Police Station (1881) and cells, a tin school room and a large stone railway station built in 1882. Near the railway station was rail workers cottages. The current stone school room was built in 1893. The second hotel the Beltana opened in 1877 and closed in the mid-1890s. The Royal Victoria Hotel closed in 1957 when the new railway to Leigh Creek bypassed Beltana and the Police Station closed in 1958. The school kept going until 1967. The railway station closed in 1980 when passenger trains ceased and the town became a ghost town. The Beltana cemetery opened around 1880 and had around 90 burials including some Afghans. Today Beltana has around 30 adult residents and no children. The Smith of Dunesk Presbyterian Mission and church operated from 1894 to 1932. A committed Presbyterian Mrs Henrietta Smith (a daughter of the Earl of Buchan) of Dunesk Scotland, who never visited Australia, gave bequests that led to the Smith of Dunesk Mission station at Beltana and later assisted in the establishment of Jean Flynn ‘s Australian Inland Mission- also a Presbyterian association. Mrs Smith bought 480 acres in SA in 1839 and donated it in 1853 to the Free Church of Scotland. Sir Thomas Elder administered the income from the land and some went to Point McLeay Aboriginal Mission but most rents just accumulated until 1893 when £3,000 went to the Presbyterian Church of SA. The Presbyterian minister at Port Augusta proposed a mission station and church at Beltana and he, Rev. Mitchell, opened the Smith of Dunesk mission in 1895 and he remained there until 1899. In 1905 the Beltana mission station appointed an inland nurse who was stationed at Oodnadatta. Rev. Jean Flynn was appointed to Beltana in 1911 and in 1912 he convinced the church to establish the Australian Inland Mission - AIM. In 1928 Flynn established the first flying doctor service from the AIM base in Cloncurry QLD. Although the church and old manse in Beltana closed in 1932 they have been restored in recent years. |
| 撮影日 | 1920-01-01 00:00:00 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | Beltana, South Australia, Australia 地図 |