We are back to super cold temperatures; 3 degrees this morning and very glad we are camped in a caravan park, on power. Further free camping is unlikely to be happening anytime soon.
But the sun was shining and the wind was not in evidence, or at least not tucked back several rows from the seashore. We set off again with lunch in the eski, ready for any eventuality, and headed around to Whyalla’s marina from which we looked out across the calm waters of the Spencer Gulf to see a couple of large cargo vessels waiting for their turn at BHP’s wharf. From here we were able to spy the long Steelwork’s wharf, and then driving up to the top of Hummock Hill were able to enjoy 360 degree views up and down the coast, over the Steelworks immediately to our north, and back over the town spread out to the west and in the distance the Middleback Ranges. Across the gulf, although the coastline itself was not clearly visible, the outline of the Southern Flinders Ranges was evident.
Whyalla is, as I have already mentioned, principally an industrial town, with iron ore mining and steel making at its very core. Up until 1945, it was a company town in much the same way that Tom Price up in the Pilbara was. In that year, an Act of Parliament was passed to change its status to a “city commission”. This meant that that an equal number of elected local members and BHP representatives governed it, with a chairman appointed by the state government. In 1961 city status was awarded and in 1970 it finally achieved full local government autonomy.
Apart from limited fresh water spring at Hummock Hill, water to service the city was delivered by barges from Port Pirie. The first unlimited supply of water was assured after completing the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline. This first delivery of Murray River water officially started in March 1944. The second pipeline was completed in 1966.
Prior to 1945, all services and amenities were provided by the BHP Company. This included the supply of electricity. The first Whyalla power station went into operation in December 1914. The electrification of the Iron Knob quarry was completed in 1928 and the first steel from the electric-arc furnace in Whyalla was produced in March 1949.
At the onset of World War II, BHP turned their efforts to ship building here; more of that shortly. However in 1978, ship building ceased obviously with huge loss of jobs. Whyalla’s population has now levelled to about 25,000, having once been the largest regional centre in South Australia; back in 1977 it had a population of 34,000. But despite that significant population, even now, the city lacks a vibrancy that any other place of such a size might exhibit. Iron dust lies across buildings, parks, roads, in much the same way it does in Broken Hill.
Hummock Hill is an excellent place to start one’s exploration of Whyalla and BHP should be given kudos for its contribution to the site’s development. This was the site of the very first settlement at the turn at the century although residences and other buildings have long been gone. During the war years it was an important defence fortification and the four or five gun emplacements give evidence of that. Unlike the half dismantled gun emplacements we have seen around the country, all but one of these has been turned into a covered picnic area with seating and tables, and apart from the dull rust colour of the installation, it is most attractive. The last gun emplacement remains with the gun still in place as a memorial of those times.
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| View from Hummock Hill |
Our next port of call was the Information Centre at the northern entrance to the town, where we booked our seats on the bus for OneSteel’s industry tour tomorrow morning and entry to the Maritime Museum right there in the Centre’s grounds.
The star of the Maritime Museum is the former HMAS Whyalla, the first ship built in the Whyalla ship yards in 1941. Today stands high and dry, two kilometres from the sea and two metres off the ground. The operation to bring it to this inland site was far lengthier than planned and a video record of that task undertaken in 1988 plays in the Visitor Centre. We had arrived just in time to see that video before joining about a dozen other grey nomads on a tour of the ship.
After the forty minute tour, we requested a pass out, sat in a sheltered spot in the garden to eat our lunch and then resumed our exploration of the museum. The publicity does paint the museum in more glowing lights than the reality; however it is worth the effort, particularly if one takes advantage of the tour of the ship.
The galleries are located in the old hall built for the ship builders during the latter years of the war and include a comprehensive display of plans and stories of the Whyalla’s construction, and celebrates all four of the sixty Australian built Corvettes, anti-submarine and minesweeping Bathurst Class vessels, that were built from this one yard; the HMAS Whyalla, HMAS Pirie, HMAS Kalgoorlie and HMAS Gawler,. Sixty six vessels were built here in Whyalla between the years of 1940 and 1978, including warships, carriers, tankers, ferries, container ships, barges and an oil rig.
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| HMAS Whyalla |
There was also a small but good display of maps and stories of the Japanese invaded and “colonised” counties, islands and areas during several years spanning the Second World War, before, during and after.
Also included is a very good display of the diverse marine life resident in the Spencer Gulf, as well as the charts and journals of Matthew Flinders. The marine life includes two curious creatures, the Banded Wobbegong and the Spotted Wobblegong, the former an extremely ornate and variegated shark growing up to three metres and the latter a robust shark sporting an upper surface yellow to green with distinctive patterns, also growing to three meters; don’t you just love the names?
I had read about the model railway, one of the largest HO gauge model railways in Australia with over 400 metres of track. The model landscape features railway lines between OneSteel in Whyalla and the iron ore mines at Iron Knob, a link between Whyalla and Port Augusta, and Port Augusta to Adelaide. This suggested to me a geographical relief model of the region and an interesting layout of rail lines. Not so; although the landscapes beside each part of the rail does reflect the places they are supposed to depict, it really is no different from any other “good” model railway I have ever seen.
From here we drove to the TAFE, the address which I had found on the Federal Election site as being the Whyalla booth for early polling. Chris was keen to exercise his vote, which of course is obligatory for Australian citizens, and making sure that it was done now rather than when we are somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Alas it seems that Port Augusta is the only place in this part of the country where a voter from another electorate can vote, so it was a fruitless trip. We will have to make sure we reach Port Augusta before the weekend.
Instead we continued along the street to the Westfield Shopping Centre, which houses the Woolworths and Coles supermarkets, Target and little else. It is a fairly old centre and unlike those which Westfield upgrades and expands on a fairly regular basis, seems to have been left in its original state. We bought a newspaper, wandered from one end to the other and left unimpressed.
Back toward the old city centre, we stopped at the Flinders & Freycinet Lookout, named after the two important explorers of the area. There are very nice views to be had from this vantage point, and interesting facts to be read of these gentlemen, however Hummock Hill beats it hands-down. You may recall I made mention of the fact that Flinders referred to his ship as “leaking and rotting”; it was interesting to learn here that this same HMS Investigator was sold to be broken up in 1810, but was instead rebuilt as a commercial sailing vessel and continued global sailing until the late 1850s. She was then converted into a storage hulk and finally after all those intervening years, broken up in 1872.
After disappointment with the shopping centre out in Whyalla Norrie, we thought we might find the City Plaza in the old part of Whyalla more to our liking. Sadly the old main street, rust brown and lined with brick structures, is now only left with banks, pubs, tattoo parlours, real estate agencies, takeaway outlets and a few boutiques not willing to sign up to a lease in the Westfield centre. Whyalla is sadly dying, in our opinion, which is a shame. Housing is cheap and there are a lot of very nice homes here, but one would be taking a real gamble to buy up real estate here, in our opinion.
We returned to camp to catch up on the day’s gaffs and wild promises of the campaigning, both of us very interested in the political carrying on. Here in Australia voting is compulsory which means those with no political nous or interest are duty bound to play any-many-miny-mo with their ballot papers. Voting should be left to those who make informed choices, even if it means that only a minority of the population fits that genre. However this is only my opinion.
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