Moonta

Moonta is a town on the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia, 165 km (103 mi) north-northwest of the state capital of Adelaide.

Moontais a town on the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia, 165 km (103 mi) north-northwest of the state capital of Adelaide. It is one of three towns known as the Copper Coast or "Little Cornwall" for their shared copper mining history.

The Moonta area is part of the traditional lands of the indigenous Narungga people. The name "Moonta" is reportedly derived from munta-muntara or moontera, an Aboriginal word for "thick scrub place" or "impenetrable scrub".

The Yorke Peninsula coastline near Wallaroo was separately navigated by Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin in 1802. The next Europeans to explore the district were John Hill and Thomas Burr. Under instructions from Governor Gawler, the pair were landed about 15 kilometres south of Point Riley, near Moonta Bay, on 28 April 1840 from the government cutter Water Witch. They then made their way back to Adelaide on horseback, traversing Northern Yorke Peninsula.They reported the discovery of 'a very excellent tract of country'. Based on that report a few pioneering British settlers arrived in the Moonta area in the 1840s, as pastoralists, but there was no significant development until the 1860s, primarily because of the lack of water.The scrub in the area was difficult to penetrate (as testified by the town's name) so the first settlers had a hard time clearing the land.Large and rich deposits of copper were discovered at Moonta in 1861 by Patrick Ryan, a shepherd from Walter Hughes' property.This became a prosperous mine, named Wheal Hughes, with other mines soon to follow. The government town of Moonta was surveyed in March 1863, while an informal township of mining workers also grew at Moonta Mines. A horse tramway from Moonta to the port at Wallaroo opened in July 1866. Starting in the 1880s, agitation for conversion of the horse tramway to a steam locomotive railway commenced.Following advertising by the South Australian Government, Cornish miners arrived in Moonta in large numbers. The government town of Moonta incorporated as the Corporate Town of Moonta in 1872. The mines at Moonta proved to be the richest mines in the whole of South Australia by 1917, exceeding the total wealth created by all other mines since 1836, the year of establishment of South Australia. The population of Moonta in 1875 was 12,000. The main copper mining operations at Moonta Mines ceased in 1923, although a number of smaller mines continued to be worked for some years. Smaller-scale operations recommenced in the area in the late 1980s but had closed by the mid-1990s.Following the demise of copper mining, the district successfully merged into dry land farming. Moonta's surrounds are used for growing barley, wheat and other crops such as legumes, canola, chickpeas and field peas. Barley from the region is considered to be some of the best in the world.