Elizabeth Jane Ellis

Notes for Elizabeth Jane ELLIS: While the colony was suffering from drought, another copper discovery was made on Yorke Peninsula late in 1859. The Wallaroo Mine was established and the town of Kadina grew nearby. Two years later the Moonta Mine was opened and several smaller mines followed. Miners came from Burra and more emigrants arrived, most from Cornwall. Wallaroo was connected to Kadina and Moonta by horse-drawn tramways and became the major port in Spencer Gulf until Port Pirie was established in the 1890s. Copper was exported and timber, coal, food and machinery brought in, particularly Cornish engines. Wallaroo was also the location of smelting works manned by workers from Wales using coal from Newcastle in New South Wales. In 1875 Moonta, with a population of 12,000, was the largest town in SA after Adelaide. However, insanitary conditions led to many deaths from typhoid fever, tuberculosis and other diseases. Children were particularly vulnerable. Although rainwater was stored in underground tanks, water was in short supply until 1890 when it was piped from the newly-built Beetaloo Reservoir near Crystal Brook. The mining towns of Kadina & Moonta and the port of Wallaroo became known as the Copper Triangle or "Australia's Little Cornwall". The name Moonta is derived from an aboriginal name for "impenetrable scrub" and the district's mallee trees were used for firewood and timber for the mines. Further clearances occurred when Yorke Peninsula was opened up for agriculture in the 1870s. Elizabeth Jane died aged 6 years just two days after her father Simon and is also buried in the same plot..East 3 grave 98