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Moonta is a town on the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia, 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. It is about south of Kadina, site of the famous Wallaroo Mines, and southeast of the port of Wallaroo. At the 2006 census, Moonta had a population of 3,350. There are several distinct localities or hamlets surrounding Moonta, including Moonta Mines, Cross Roads, North Yelta, Moonta Bay, Port Hughes and Simms Cove. It is thought that the name "Moonta" is derived from ''Moontera'', an (Indigenous) Narungga word meaning 'impenetrable scrub'. ==History== Prior to European settlement, the Moonta area was occupied by an indigenous community known as the Narungga. When Matthew Flinders was navigating the coastline of Southern Australia in 1802 he explored the coastline near Moonta. The first Europeans to explore the district were John Hill and Thomas Burr. Under instructions from Governor Gawler, the pair were landed 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.〔State Library of S.A. Archival Maps, C 223, Outsize 6.〕 They reported the discovery of 'a very excellent tract of country'.〔''Register'', 9 May 1840, p.5〕 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 shepherds from Walter Watson Hughes' sheep farm. This became a prosperous mine, named Wheal Hughes, with other mines soon to follow. The town was laid out in 1863 and a horse-drawn tramway to Wallaroo was established in 1863. Following advertising by the South Australian Government, Cornish miners arrived in Moonta soon afterward.〔For a discussion of the development of "Cornishness" see Philip Payton ''Making Moonta: The Invention of ‘Australia’s Little Cornwall'', Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-85989-796-9 paperback ISBN 978-0-85989-795-2〕 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 primary copper mining operations ceased in 1923, but smaller-scale operations recommenced in the area in the 1990s, and ended 2 years later. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Moonta, South Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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