Historical Australian Towns: Kanyaka, SA: Isolated and Remote Ruins

Kanyaka is located in the Far North region of South Australia, about 320km north of Adelaide.

The Hundred of Kanyaka was gazetted on 6 July 1876. Today, Kanyaka lies in ruins.

The Barngarla and Adnyamathanha People

Occupation of the Warratyi rock shelter dates back approximately 49,000 years.

Today, Aboriginal Australian people of the northern Flinders Ranges consist of clans of several distinct peoples: Adnyamathanha. Also known as the Wailpi, and including the Guyani, Jadliaura, Pilatapa and sometimes the Barngarla peoples.

Barngarla is a member of South Australia’s Thura-Yura group of languages, spoken traditionally on the Eyre Peninsula and north into the Gawler Rangers, as far as the southern end of Lake Torrens.

People of the northern Flinders Ranges share a common identity, which relates to ancestral spirits and origin stories; language and culture, which is known as Yura Muda.

Aboriginal men: warriors and hunters

The important creator being, the rainbow serpent, is known as akurra. The Dreaming was the time when Ancestral Beings travelled across the landscape creating life and geographic features of the land.
During the Dreaming, the rules for life, social organisation and the spiritual world view also came into being.

Bila, the sun, is a female celestial being, believed to be a cannibal, roasting her victims over a fire. The fire of the sun also provides light for the world. The story passed orally, goes that one day, the lizard man Kudnu, and Muda, the Gecko Man, decided to stop Bila from eating people. So, Kudnu threw a boomerang at Bila and injured her. Bila then turned into a ball of fire and left the world, leaving it in darkness. After this, Adnyamathanha people no longer ate lizards or geckos.

The anthropologist, Charles Percy Mountford, collected a lot of information about the sky beliefs and ancestral beings of the Adnyamathanha people. Mountford recorded in 1939 that the Adnyamathanha people believed that spirit children (muri ) originated from the breasts of two mythic women or Mothers, the Maudlangami.

The Pleiades star cluster is also seen as a group of women (Artunyi), to the Adnyamathanha people.

The name Adnyamathanha means "rock people" or "hill people".

Adnyamathanha clans were divided into two parts: moieties called Mathari and Ararru. For Adnyamathanha people, the moiety was passed down from mother to child. The Matheri Moiety (the south wind) and Arraru Moiety (the north wind), would determine your relationships, rights and responsibilities, and who you could marry.

Death Rock is a large seven-metre high quartzite rock beside a permanent spring-fed waterhole. It is said that local Aboriginal people were brought here when near death and laid down under the rock.

1802

Matthew Flinders sighted the Flinders Rangers aboard HMS Investigator during his mapping of the Australian coastline in 1802.

Investigator (ship), A painting by John Allcot. SLQLD

1830s

Edward John Eyre made two expeditions into the interior of South Australia in 1839.

1850s

In 1851, Wilpena, Arkaba and Aroona were established as sheep stations.

In 1853, driving 7,000 sheep, William Pinkerton is believed to be the first European to find a route through the Flinders Ranges, via Pichi Richi Pass.

In 1852 Kanyaka Station was established as a cattle station by Hugh Proby, who possessed both money and connections, approximately 40 km (25 mi) north-north-east of Quorn.

Hugh Proby was the son of Admiral Granville Leveson Proby (the third Earl of Carysfort of Ireland) and Isabella Howard. He arrived in South Australia on the Wellington in May 1851.

From 1st July 1851, Hugh Proby took up three pastoral leases in the northern Flinders Ranges, for a term of 14 years, with the rent set at 10 shillings per square mile. Lease number 74 became the Mookra Run. Leases 117 and 118, totalling 101 square miles, were the start of Kanyaka Station. By 1852 he had 1000 head of cattle, and some huts had been built.

Typical bark hut, Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954)

Hugh Proby, whose ancestral home was Elton Hall in Derbyshire in England, wrote letters to his family during 1851-52 and described his experiences establishing Kanyaka. (An Earl's Son: the letters of Hugh Proby / Louise Neal, 1987).

The Kanyaka area receives low rainfall, so it is tragic that in August 1852, a thunderstorm caused a herd of cattle to break into a stampede. It was the middle of the night when Hugh and an Aboriginal stockman set out to rescue the cattle. Whilst attempting to cross the swollen Willochra Creek, Hugh was swept off his horse and drowned.

The grave of Hugh Proby is located near where he drowned. His family shipped out a tablet of Scottish granite from Britain, six years later, and it was hauled out to Kanyaka by a bullock team, from Port Augusta. The grave is located near the side of the Arden Vale road between Quorn and the ruins of Simmonstown. Some years later, his sister, Lady Hamilton, came to Australia to visit his grave.

After Hugh Proby's death, Kanyaka Run was taken up by Alexander Grant and then, John Randall Phillips.

James Grant set out for Kanyaka Station. However, while on his way, he and a friend who rode with him, became lost. Their remains were found a year later.

John Randall Phillips changed Kanyaka Station from cattle to sheep. Then Phillips set about building a homestead and establishing a small village, with an overseer and workmens' cottages, blacksmith workshop, cart and harness sheds, stockyards and animal enclosures.

It was said that Phillips spent about £10,000 on the property, including the enormous woolshed and a 16 roomed homestead. The buildings were mostly of local stone, due to limited supplies of suitable local timber.

John Randall Phillips, Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), Thursday 26 April 1934

In 1856, Phillips built an eating house on the main road, about 5km away, to divert visitors away from the Kanyaka Station.

Kanyaka, which was isolated and remote, became a fairly self-sufficient small village. However, there was little in the way of medical care.

In 1857 George Goyder wrote that Kanyaka was "assuming the appearance of a village".

1860s

The region was so badly affected by the droughts of the mid-1860s that Kanyaka was abandoned for a year.

The station office at Kanyaka was also the post office. In 1862, more than 23,300 letters were received at Kanyaka and nearly 21,600 were sent.

Kanyaka Station, SA. .John Randall Phillips, 1832-1917, arrived in South Australia in March 1846 on board the ship the "Alpha" (from Western Australia). Pastoralist, Kanyaka station. About 1862, SLSA

The eating house, Blackjack, was run by David Bowman during 1864 and early 1865. By 1864 the eating house had become a two storey hotel, the Great Northern, with twenty four rooms, stables and a coaching house.

1864 about 41,000 sheep were shorn at- Kanyaka and 11,000, sold.

South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900), Tuesday 29 March 1864

Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 - 1904), Saturday 8 April 1865

Adelaide Express (SA : 1863 - 1866), Friday 16 June 1865

Kanyaka was a distribution centre for food, blankets and rations for Aboriginal people in the area.

In 1866, after several years of severe drought, the surviving stock was removed, and Kanyaka abandoned.

John Phillips, when giving evidence of losses to the Northern Runs Commission in 1867, estimated that between 1864 and 1866, 20,000 sheep on the run had died of starvation.

1870s

Richard Gloyne died in 1871 and was buried 5km from Kanyaka. Gloyne came to South Australia from England, leaving a wife and two children to work as a labourer in the district. Local stories say that he fell from the balcony of the hotel. An inquest later revealed that he took his own life. His lonely grave is difficult to access without a four-wheel drive.

"The sad and tragical
death of Mr. Holyoake, which took place at
Kanyaka. It appears Mr. Holyoake, a hawker,
in the employ of Mr. Marshall of this place.
was engaged at his business with a man named
Hope, and through some disagreement a fight
ensued which terminated fatally."

South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1858 - 1889), Monday 6 January 1873

"The Kanyaka Creek had risen to
such a height that the coach had to be left
there all night, and the guard, putting the mails
on a horse, swam the creek. The driver and
passengers also got over on horseback and -pro-
cured a vehicle on the other side. The Bul
cunda Creek was also forded with difficulty.
The roads were very heavy all along the route,
and it was with great difficulty that the mail reached

the Burra at 7 o'clock on Thursday morning."

South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1868 - 1881), Saturday 1 February 1873

Express and Telegraph (Adelaide, SA : 1867 - 1922), Wednesday 3 November 1875

In July 1876, the Hundred of Kanyaka was proclaimed, with the pastoral station and lands subject to resumption.

The land was sub-divided and cleared for agriculture with heartbreaking and disastrous consequences for the land and the families, who faced drought and ruin despite their toil and sacrifice. Wheat farms were not viable this far beyond Goyder’s line.

Port Augusta Dispatch (SA : 1877 - 1880), Saturday 22 December 1877,

1880s

The hotel closed in 1881, as a new railway station 10km away at Wilson caused carriers to stop there, not at Kanyaka.

John Phillips left the leasehold in 1881, and the buildings were left to crumble.

In 1883, James Bole, was lost in the hills and died. "His cricket bat lay by his side; he had carried it faithfully through those awful hours of wandering and privation. He was buried in the cemetery on the old Kanyaka station...." (1.)

There was a substantial earthquake in January 1888.

1920s

ENGLISH EARL'S LONELY GRAVE. — Surrounded by. a stockyard fence this is the last resting place of Hugh Proby, third son of the. Earl of Carysfort, who was drowned in the Willochra Creekin 1852. Mail, Kanyaka, SA (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954), Saturday 17 July 1926

A disastrous drought of 1928-29.

Aboriginal children from the Flinders Rangers, SA, News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), Friday 5 July 1929

1930s

Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), Thursday 16 June 1938

1940s

All the "legends of the Flinders Ranges" were told to me by black men and women of the northern part of Flinders Ranges, near Lake Frome. News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), Friday 26 September 1941

Aboriginal child of the Flinders Ranges, News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), Friday 26 September 1941

1950s

The first Technicolor film filmed on location in Australia. Cattle stampede scenes in the film "Kangaroo". Here Aboriginal stockman Clyde Combo, who also appeared in "Bitter Springs,". and Frank Ransom, try to check a cattle rush on the dusty plains below the Flinders Ranges. News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), Wednesday 25 June 1952

2000s

War of the Worlds movie screening took place among the Kanyaka ruins in 2017.

War of the Worlds movie screening took place among the Kanyaka ruins in 2017, SA

2021

A young woman, believed to have been kidnapped, was tragically found in a shallow grave some days later. The woman's ID, and the shoes she was seen wearing before her disappearance, were found in a bin at the Kanyaka Ruins.

The ruins of Kanyaka are a reminder of the optimism, hardships and isolation, that people endured in many remote areas

Around Kanyaka

The Kanyaka Station ruins consist of two main historical sites: The homestead and the woodshed.