We have really enjoyed our stay at Wallaroo and would come back again.  We jagged a fantastic caravan park near the Copper Cove Marina.  It has recently had an upgrade and the camp kitchen and recreational area is truly amazing.  We would definitely come back to the park again.  We initially booked for one night and we've stayed three.

On the 11th May we decided to go to Moonta for the day.  It is only 20 kilometres from Wallaroo, so I did some washing, we had an early lunch and gave ourselves plenty of time to find the historic copper mine and get our train tickets.  When we were on the beach the night before, a couple had told us about the train that took you through the historic copper mine, which closed many years ago.  It wasn't that easy to find though, and we ended up at the historic Miner's Cottage.  The volunteer was so keen for us to stay longer!   I couldn't believe how tiny the cottage was and how low the ceilings were in the rooms.  It would seem the miners that migrated to the area weren't very tall!  The cottage did give us an insight into life as a miner and we were glad we had found it.   The volunteer ensured that we had some information to take away with us.  We had a train to catch and it had to be a quick look!  There's more info about the cottage further on in this blog.  

The Moonta Mine, located in Moonta, South Australia, was one of the largest copper mines in the world during the late 19th century. The mine was discovered in 1861 by a shepherd named Paddy Ryan, who stumbled upon a green stone while tending to his flock. This stone turned out to be copper ore, and soon after the discovery, the Moonta Mining Company was formed.  The mine quickly became a major employer in the area, attracting workers from all over the world. By the 1870s, Moonta was a bustling town with a population of over 12,000 people, many of whom were miners and their families.

Mining at Moonta was a challenging and dangerous occupation, with miners facing the risk of cave-ins, explosions, and poisonous gases. Despite these dangers, the mine continued to operate for over 60 years, producing more than 170,000 tonnes of copper and other minerals.   The decline of the Moonta Mine began in the early 1900s, as new mining methods and technologies made it more profitable to extract copper from other sources. The mine closed for good in 1923, leaving behind a rich legacy of industry and innovation.

Today, the Moonta Mine and its surrounding area are a popular tourist destination, with visitors able to explore the historic site and learn about the town's fascinating history through various attractions and experiences.  We were glad that we had stayed the extra day in the area and had our ride on the train.  Even if we did have to share our carriage with a rather large dog,  The owners were lovely though and the dog did behave.  The couple sold everything up a couple of years ago and bought themselves a caravan and have been travelling around Australia since.  It seemed the wife was the main bread winner, whilst they have been travelling, as she works online.  The husband was a builder with his own business and wasn't at all worried about starting up again.    They were starting to think about where they wanted to settle.  They did quite like this area of South Australia.   You find out all sorts of things when you are a tourist, sitting in a little carriage with another couple and their dog!

Now to the history of the 'Miner's Cottage'.  It is a historic building located not far from the town of Moonta, that was once the home of miner John Wood and his family. John was a bricklayer and he built the cottage in 1870.  He used clay from a quarry adjacent to the cottage.   The cottage is a single-story building, with a thatched roof made from local reeds. It is a typical example of the type of housing that was provided for miners and their families in the 19th century, although this one was particularly special as the dining room and kitchen are built of sun dried mud and grass brick.  The next two rooms were built by ramming mud into the gaps, a technique known as 'Wattle & Daub'.   All the walls received a coat of lime and sand plaster to seal out the weather.  I did use my piece of paper for this paragraph!

After the mine closed in 1923, the cottage fell into disrepair and was at risk of being demolished. However, in 1967, the National Trust of South Australia acquired the property and began a restoration project, with the goal of preserving the building as an important part of Moonta's history.  The restoration project involved extensive research and effort to ensure that the cottage was restored to its original condition, using traditional materials and building techniques where possible.   

 The Miner's Cottage is now a valuable piece of Moonta's history, and it serves as a reminder of the difficult and challenging lives that miners and their families endured in the pursuit of valuable minerals.  We were impressed at the amount of money the SA National Trust was investing to preserve the history of this region of Yorke Peninsula.

We had an interesting presentation by Jenny at the March meeting of  Champion Bay CWA branch.  Jenny introduced us to Chat GPT, the new artificial intelligence that has been cooking up a storm on the internet since November 2022.  The intelligent robot was trained on 570GB of text data from the internet, which OpenAI says included books, articles, websites, and even social media. Because it's been trained on hundreds of billions of words, ChatGPT can create responses that make it seem like, in its own words, "a friendly and intelligent robot".  Jenny presented us with a number of examples that blew us away.  It was a bit scary to see it all coming together so fast, but it was 'Awesome'. 

And so with the help of Chat GPT and Jenny MacKay urging me to get this blog completed, it would have been posted on the 13th March 2023, but for the power going off when I was all but done!  Fortunately I was able to copy and paste into a Word Document, as without the internet, I couldn't save the blog.  Another of those times when you are reminded that you need to 'Save' often!  So... not quite 12 months since we visited Moonta, the blog is finally done!  Jenny used  a small paragraph of simple facts about our Moonta day trip and then with some further questions to the robot, and a little tweaking... I'm done!