Beltana, South Australia: Travel guide and things to do

Located 540 km north of Adelaide and 240 m above sea level, Beltana is one of the truly remarkable outback settlements in South Australia. Its refusal to lie down and die is a source of amazement to anyone who visits this semi­ghost town.

Although it has the feeling of a ghost town, Beltana is actually inhabited. Consequently most of the houses have signs declaring 'Keep Out'. This is undoubtedly because they are tired of people assuming that the house is empty and simply walking in.

No one knows exactly how Beltana was named. One of the owners of the Beltana property insisted it was a local Aboriginal word meaning 'running water'. One of Beltana's managers believed it was simply made up to indicate the place where the station bell was rung. There was once a small village in Tasmania named Beltana and another source claims it is a word of Irish derivation which somehow captured a sense of bravery and courage. Another source claims it finds it roots in the Adnjamathanja (they are believed to have been the original inhabitants of the region) word 'veltana' meaning a skin or cloak.

The area was inhabited by Aborigines prior to European settlement. The good supplies of water from the Warrioota and Sliding Rock Creeks and the proliferation of red gums ensured that it was a popular place for settlement.

With a couple of years of the settlement of South Australia (in 1836) explorers and settlers were in the area. The explorer Edward John Eyre passed through the district in 1840 but his reports were only of desert and disappointment. By the late 1850s John McDouall Stuart had passed through the area and it was as a result of this that Beltana Station, owned by Thomas Elder, was established so that sheep could be grazed on the surrounding countryside. It was from Beltana Station, a kind of limit of civilisation, that many of the major explorations of central and South Australia started. Giles left from Beltana in 1872; Warburton in 1873; Ross in 1874; Lewis in 1874-75 and Wells in 1883.

By the mid-1860s there was considerable European activity in the district. Small mines, searching for silver, lead and copper, had been dug in the northern Flinders Ranges. In 1870 copper was discovered at Sliding Rock near Warrioota Creek and, as a result, a Mr Martin established an eating house on the road to and from the mine.

In the same year the Overland Telegraph Line, the line which would link Australia to the rest of the world, was being built. It was to pass from Adelaide to Darwin and it was decided that Beltana would become one of the repeater stations. The construction of the Overland Telegraph was greatly helped by the camels which has been imported in 1866 and which were being bred at Thomas Elder's Beltana Station. Not surprisingly the camels were accompanied by Afghan camel drivers and a number of mud and slate structures in the area have been identified as Afghan residences.

In 1873 a town was surveyed and Martin's eating house became the Beltana Hotel. It was laid out in a simple grid system and 115 allotments were put up for sale. This was optimistic. For its early years the town was little more than the hotel and the repeater station. Growth was slow. A policeman arrived in 1878

The town's future seemed assured when the railway arrived in 1881. It became an important railhead for the copper mines as well as for the local sheep industry. At this time there were some 70 residences and the town provided services as diverse as a hospital, a saddler, blacksmith, butcher, baker. The town boasted its own cricket team and race meetings were regularly held.

The town's greatest claim to fame, the establishment of the Smith of Dunesk Mission, occurred in 1895. This was opened by Reverend R. Mitchell and one of the later clergymen was John Flynn (he was in Beltana from 1911-12) who went on to establish the Australian Inland Mission in 1914 and the Royal Flying Doctor service in 1928. It has long been maintained that Flynn got his inspiration for both the Flying Doctor and the AIM while he was in Beltana.