The Talisker Mine Trail: Cape Jervis. A Gully-full of History with Keith Conlon

It is a pleasant day-trip from Adelaide to Cape Jervis to find the Talisker Historical Mine Trail, but for its nineteenth century Cornish miners, it was 10,000 miles from home.

This tiny Cornwall in a bush gully off the rugged coast of Backstairs passage saw 300 people at its peak in the 1860's. What brought them here?

In 1862, a couple of Scottish brothers were looking for gold in the southern most section of the Mt Lofty Ranges, when they spotted an outcrop of lead and silver instead. The find led quickly to the Talisker Mine company, which, like the Scotch whisky, is named after a place on the Isle of Skye.

Over the decade Talisker was worked, the main shaft followed the lode down 132m.... a 40 storey building down. The timbers of the poppet head and round the top of the shaft have gone, but there's a gaping hole that tells visitors coming down the marked track they've made it to the mine.

The informative trail signs show early photographs of the engine house and wooden poppet-head. Heritage seekers sit on the remains of the stonemasons' craft these days and, in the quick of the regrowth scrub, contemplate the buzz of last century.

Walking further down the steep gully along the Talisker Mine Trail, you come across three more shafts. They intersected with the substantial lode that sloped southward to the nearby coast (there are spectacular views to glimpse between the stringy barks).

The lode narrowed to the size of a basketball hoop, only to balloon out again into family room proportions. The Cornish miners, having reached the ore along horizontally cut 'drives', hollowed these out into huge caves. They called them 'ballrooms' down below.

Furthest down the gully, next to the southernmost mineshaft, a perfectly circular space is still clearly visible. Carved a few metres into the sidewall stone of the gully on one side, and extended out with mullock from the mine on the other, it was the circular track for the horse whim. 'Whim', in the Cornish dialect, means winding device. Another explanation sign shows the axle and drum-and-cable device that translated the horse's efforts into lifting the 'kibble', or ore-bucket, up to the surface.

Coming back up the gully, you are soon back to the hissing and clunking department, the best preserved section of the Talisker mine. A long steam boiler with egg-shaped ends still his at one end of the two-storey crushing plant.

Wandering into the thick stone walls and among the giant beams that once held the upper floor, it's possible to recreate the crusher. The old drive-shaft from the steam engine is still in place, where it drove the cast iron rollers.

Old photos show there was a tin-roofed shed extending out form the crusher building. Dressing shed workers picked over the crushed ore before it was lumbered a few paces to the roar and splutter section. After three years of sending bags of dressed ore out to British smelters, the Talisker Mine Company built its own in this remote gully on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

The floor of the calcining furnace is still intact, and the arches below where refined ore was dropped to cool. The twelve hour process of roasting the silver lead ore evaporated off the arsenic and sulphur elements.

There's a substantial gum tree growing where the smelter sat next door, but the slate paving of the area is still resilient. Out of each 1 _ tonne load into the smelter, the miners saw about 1/3 of it emerge as ingots for England. They were mostly lead, with about 1/10 silver.

A smelting operation a long way from anywhere needed very tough firebricks to withstand extreme heat, and so the company built its own brick kiln. It's a favourite photo spot for families on the trail, all round and tucked into the side of the hill, with a small entrance door.

There are also photo opportunities for the amateur industrial archaeologists as the smelter furnace stone, flue reveals itself occasionally on the way to the top of the hill. Ageing stone masonry in the bush....I can't resist a shot or two.

A rubble heap of stones just above the mine marks the chimney of a miner's cottage. There are also ruins of the store and the manager's house on a spur of the trail.

Within a decade, the Talisker Mine was battling a weakening ore-lode, major water pumping problems and shrinking finances. By 1871, some 50 direct employees were owed two month's wages. They were rescued by Walter Watson Hughes, the University of Adelaide's founding benefactor, whose huge Moonta mine was under way. He offered them travel costs and a job, and so the Talisker Mine and gully fell quiet again.

That was not quite the end of it. It was re-opened during World War One for three years to take out arsenic.

Keep an eye out for kangaroos as you come back to the old road and carpark along the saddle above Talisker. The Postcards crew watched several grazing on our way to the lookout view above the mine gully.

It is worth the trip on its own. Spectacular, panoramic views of the hills dropping sharply to the deep blue ocean, with Kangaroo Island stretched along the horizon. Cape Willoughby lighthouse on its eastern end gleams white in the sunlights and the long white sands of Antechamber Bay are clearly in view across Backstairs Passage.

The track for the mine's bullock teams winds away to Fishery Bay below. A whaling station in the 1840's became the Talisker port in the 1860's. Coastal ketchers came in as far as they could to load the mine's takings.

And it wasn't easy. 32,000 bags of dressed ore were lugged out on shoulder into waist-deep water in the first years of the mine. And then a further 900 tonne of ingots were man-handled onto the boats before the mine closed.

That little beach was also the only effective way in and out of the minuscule Cornwall in the South Australian bush. A little further up the range, the town of Silverton boasted 300 people at its peak. The post office, hotel and chapel all have disappeared as the scrub has regained its territory. A few modern houses on the road to the mine indicate the surveyed section from the town.

The Talisker Mine Trail was developed by mine historian Greg Drew for the state's Jubilee 150 celebrations in 1986. It is very well explained through signs along the trail, which is compact enough to walk through in a couple of hours comfortably.

An excellent brochure on the Talisker Mine Trail is available from Primary Industries and Resources SA (PIRSA) or you can email info@postcards-sa.com.au