5 September 1862 Blinman

On 5 September1862 the new copper mine at Blinman in the Flinders Ranges was christened ‘in due form, and in the presence of about 80 persons’ according to a report in the Register of 19 September. Robert ‘Peg-leg’ Blinman, the discoverer of the copper deposit in 1859 made enough money, so it is believed, from the sale of the lease to the land to purchase Roundwood Hotel at Beautiful Valley, now Wilmington.

Blinman died in Quorn in January 1880. The town of Blinman, some 300 miles north of Adelaide, at the head of Parachilna Gorge is his memorial and is still littered with remnants of the mining operations. The mine was sold to the Yudnamutana Mining Company in 1862 for £70,000 and from that time operated with some success to 1874 with ore worth £250,000 being extracted. The enterprise collapsed with the fall in copper prices in the mid-1870s. It was worked irregularly following the construction of the railway north of Port Augusta according to the fluctuations in the price of copper until it was finally abandoned in 1918.

Hans Mincham, The Story of the Flinders Ranges, Rigby, 1964, pp.191-92.

P.R.G. Dunlop, ‘Economic Importance or Moonta to S.A.’ in South Australiana, Volume X No. 1 March 1971.