Back Road Bliss

THE OFTEN OVERLOOKED ROUTES THROUGH THE FLINDERS RANGES HIDE A TREASURE TROVE OF TOURING GOLD.

- Ron Moon

A TALL smelter stack perched on top of a hill is like a beacon that can be seen for miles across the flat saltbush plains east of the rugged spine of mountains we know as the Flinders Ranges. It’s the most obvious sign of what remains of the Waukaringa Goldfields, which were first discovered in 1872 and most recently worked on in the 1990s.

We had come up from Victoria through the Danggali Conservation Park, meeting the main Barrier Highway at the small hamlet of Yunta, west of Broken Hill. For those heading to the northern Flinders, the dirt road route from Yunta is the shortest access to the Gammon Ranges or Arkaroola Resort. Most people hurtle north with little care for the surrounding landscape, but there are a few spots along the way worth checking out.

For those keen on fossicking for gold, Waukaringa and the nearby smaller goldfields of Teetulpa, Manna Hill and Nillinghoo are worth a visit, but Waukaringa is by far the best to explore. Just 35km north of Yunta, the ruins of the old Waukaringa Hotel are the most obvious remains of the old town, while a short distance away, along with the line of a low hill, the smelter stack can be seen – one of two chimneys to be found here.

Nearby are the diggings and shafts of the Victoria, Alma and Alma Extended mines, with the main shaft reaching down more than 300 meters. The field produced gold worth more £300,000 in its first 20 years, so it was hardly a rich strike when compared to the golden hordes found elsewhere in the country. Still, that didn’t stop more work being done here in the 1930s, 1950s and again in the 1990s; the most obvious sign of which are the bulldozer scrapes scattered across the hillside.