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Kingoonya, historically spelt Kingoonyah,[9] was a small settlement, or township, now almost totally abandoned, in the central outback of the Australian state of South Australia. It was established in 1916 as a railway settlement on the Trans-Australian Railway, mainly to provide refuelling for steam trains and track maintenance services; it also served about 200 families living on sheep grazing properties in the region.

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Kingoonya South Australia
Kingoonya
Coordinates	30°55′01″S 135°18′53″E[1]
Population	13 (2016 census)[2]
Established	7 June 1928 (town) 23 October 2003 (locality)[3][4]
Postcode(s)	5710
Location	635 km (395 mi) northwest of Adelaide 80 km (50 mi) east of Tarcoola
LGA(s)	Pastoral Unincorporated Area[1]
Region	Far North[5]
State electorate(s)	Giles[6]
Federal division(s)	Grey[7]
Mean max temp[8] Mean min temp[8] Annual rainfall[8] 27.7 °C 82 °F 12.1 °C 54 °F 185.2 mm 7.3 in
Localities around Kingoonya: Wilgena Wilgena Wilgena Wilgena Kingoonya Coondambo Wilgena Wilgena Coondambo
Footnotes	Adjoining localities[1]

History

The Kingoonya Post Office first opened around 1884, closed in 1892, reopened in 1915 after the arrival of the railway and finally closed in 1982.[10] When railway services were rationalised in the early 1990s, Kingoonya was almost abandoned. The few remaining houses in the township are only intermittently occupied by people involved in mining exploration and kangaroo shooting. Despite the low local population, the Kingoonya Hotel, popular with travellers, was remained in operation as of 2021^[update], offering accommodation and food. The township is often used by off-roaders taking the permissible dirt tracks west towards Tarcoola or south past Lakes Everard and Gairdiner and the track to the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor Plain. There are reputed to be small deposits of black opal in the area, following a child's discovery in 1968 of a rare Black Rainbow Opal in a roadside pit off the main street.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the town had a population of 20 railway workers' families and several sheep and cattle farming ventures in the surrounding plains. The town has succumbed to rising salt-water and the former sweet-water springs that supplied the town and farms have long since disappeared.^{[citation needed]}

Native indigenous Australian occupation of the area was evident for all of its recorded history with the Taylor Family Clan prominent in the area throughout the 1940s to 1990s, when they were "relocated" to government-provided accommodation near Tarcoola and elsewhere.^{[citation needed]}

Kingoonya was one of the settlements that was, to some small extent, affected by the British Government's nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s at Maralinga, when local indigenous people were forced off their traditional hunting lands. Some settled for a decade or so a few kilometres north of Kingoonya in a makeshift hut settlement, where they had a meagre subsistence, their government payments supplemented by making and selling craft such as spears, boomerangs and woomera throwing sticks to passengers on passing trains.^{[citation needed]} For many years the township relied on two supply trains for the weekly provision of supplies and mail. Since the 1990s, however, technological advances have done away with the need for maintenance staff and passenger trains – the Indian Pacific running between Sydney and Perth and The Ghan running between Adelaide, Alice Springs and Darwin – no longer stop.[11]

The township is reputed to have had the widest main street in Australia and cricket matches have been played on it. As of 2007, the town's hotel was still running.[12] The town was featured on Australia Live, a four-hour broadcast on 1 January 1988 to celebrate Australia's bicentennial year.

Governance

Kingoonya is located within the federal Division of Grey, the state electoral district of Giles, the Pastoral Unincorporated Area of South Australia and the state's Far North region.[1][5][6][7] In the absence of a local government authority, the community in Kingoonya receives municipal services from a state government agency, the Outback Communities Authority.[13]

References

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