Naracoorte 150th Anniversary with Keith Conlon

Born on the sheep's back on the banks of the creek of the Naracoorte Run, Naracoorte is celebrating its 150th anniversary. A thriving commercial and tourist centre, it has a fascinating past and present - home to South Australia's only World Heritage Site and hub of what's now being called The Limestone Coast.

Naracoorte is just over 300 kilometres from Adelaide (about 3 .5 hours drive), and on the way into town the award-winning Sheep's Back Wool Museum brings home the early days of the district. Into the swampy plains and sandy ridges that nurtured the Meintangle and Martidjali aboriginal people came the sheep runs.

Naracoorte probably meant "stone axe" in their language. The museum building is an old flour mill that dates back to 1869, and inside you're taken back to the hard but prosperous sheep station days that date from the 1840's.

There is an old slab gum shearing shed in the yard. It was originally a rustic family cottage, lined with calico or hessian. They've moved an old weatherboard shop from the centre of town to the back of the mill, but over the road there is a handsome original shopfront to mark a once important part of town.

Standing on the hill above the town centre, St Andrew's is a symbol of their highland home and Presbyterianism that confronted the settlers on the flat plains of the South East of the State. As Naracoorte looks back during its 150th celebrations, it sees a lot of tartan. It's adjacent town squares were the gift of George Ormond, the Scot who founded the first sheep run in 1842. Ormond Street passes on one side, and busy Smith Street on the others. Adam Smith ran another big sheep run close to the Victorian border. The Scottish laird who is lauded as Naracoorte's founder however is William MacIntosh. A new sculpted bust of him mounted on a limestone plinth will be unveiled during Back to Naracoorte Week (Nov 1 - 5, 2000). MacIntosh took up land on the creek in 1845 and founded a private town in 1850 - but it wasn't "Naracoorte". He named it after his Scottish home "Kincraig".

And so began a tale of two towns. "Naracoorte" was the name given to the Government's town started over the creed nine years later. It soon boasted a handsome stone telegraph office and police station building (now demolished) and until the bridge was built to link them, the two cheek-by-jowl towns were rivals.

Naturally, the first village gained a pub in its first years. The 2 storey verandah clad Naracoorte Hotel stands on the site of the original Merino Arms, and it was here that the townsfolk met to decide who would get the first church. The Scots won, and so the old St Andrews Church was built, soon to be accompanied by the pretty church that still stands on the rise, its tall silver spire seen from all the town below. It is one of a cluster of solid and ornate nineteenth century buildings that remind its citizens of today that Naracoorte enjoyed great prosperity in the nineteenth century. They are nicely revealed in a National Trust town walk brochure.

A few kilometres out of town, the new and sleek Heathfield Ridge winery invites visitors to get the lie of the land from high on the Naracoorte range ridge. About 100 kilometres inland from the Southern Ocean, it sits on a sand-dune line from an ancient oceanic edge. All the dozen or so ridges running parallel with the coast are Coorongs of old. The limestone and richly timbered tasting area with panoramic views speaks of style. It's all about Limestone Coast premium vintages, and its Wonambi label helps fossil research in the nearby Naracoorte Caves. They are just one of the attractions in the district. Vineyards are creeping across the South East from Pathaway about a half hours drive north. It has a gracious homestead winery and B&B and new designer wine centre at Stonehaven. Nature lovers head for Bool Lagoon, a beautiful birdwatching wetland, and then a half hour South there's Penola, a focus on the Mary MacKillop Trial (the nun who may become Australia's first saint founded her first school there). The Limestone Coast train takes its passengers on a different look of the prized Coonawarra wine district. And back close to Naracoorte, there's a train journey in miniature at Tiny Trains as engineers Alex Haynes takes kids of all ages on a weekend trip round his property.

The Naracoorte Museum, however, is Barry Tucker's baby. Behind a modest town cottage, it's billed as "the home of a hundred collections", but its grown beyond 130, with everything from dainty butterflies to hefty farm machinery. His boyhood hobby has run amok and taken over the garden. And in one corner, sunken galvanised rainwater tanks house the snakepit. A couple of dozen tiger snakes and smaller brown snakes writhe and tangle below. Barry notes that they are just waking up from winter and haven't eaten since last Autumn.

Naracoorte's claim to international fame is about fourteen kilometres out of town in the low ranges. The Naracoorte Caves Conservation park is home to the state's only world heritage site. There are currently four caves open for tours, and we joined guide Penny Moorhouse for a journey into the Victoria Cave, the most popular since its discovery more than a century ago. Penny described the one-crystal-at-a-time process that builds stalactites and stalagmites as our group marvelled at the scenes softly lit in the first chamber. A forest of surrealistic fingers stretched towards each other from above and below. They were created over thousands of years by seeping rainwater dripping from the limestone fissures and cracks.

The World Heritage Site listing came after an historic crawl and squeeze through in 1969. Flinders University researchers came across a new cavern that took them into the age of dinosaurs. Fortunately, it is now a stroll through for several hundred metres to the Fossil Cave, where 50,000 tonnes of bones and silt have accumulated. The above-ground Wonambi Fossil Centre recreates the prehistoric Australian era of giant wombats and kangaroos that have been "discovered" among the fossils. In one display, a skeletal battle to the death is starkly portrayed, with a Wonambi giant python coiled round a rampant marsupial lion.

Back underground, Penny quizzed us about the likely habits of more lost creatures conjured up from the dusty dig below. They had probably fallen in through a human size hole in the limestone, and so the cave has acted as a pitfall for hundreds of thousands of years. There is so much to see and absorb in the caves that you'll want to set aside time for a couple of visits.

It is no wonder that they receive star billing on the big roadside signs on the outskirts of town. With viticulture and tourism as two of its thriving growth industries, it is enjoying its role as the hub of the Limestone Coast. And you will enjoy its many charms based in the town proudly celebrating its 150th anniversary . . . . Naracoorte.