About the Bid

The Australian Cornish Mining Sites: Burra and Moonta comprise two historic ‘Cornish’ copper mining landscapes in the Burra and Moonta Mines National Heritage Areas. The Australian Cornish Mining Sites: Burra and Moonta represents the first transfer, in the 1840s, of Cornish mining technology to South Australia. This was accompanied by the migration of miners and their families, especially from 1846 to 1886, which had a profound effect on mining progress and settlement in Australia, New Zealand, and in the wider expansion of the international mining frontier, including North America and South Africa.

The Burra and Moonta sites comprise the fullest, largest and distant transfer of this mining culture, its resilience in Australia, and places where Cornish mining technology, skills and culture are demonstrated to the highest degree in a surviving cultural landscape.

On 9 May 2017 the Australian Cornish Mining Sites: Burra and Moonta were included in the National Heritage List. As a result the next natural progression is for World Heritage listing.

To achieve this, lead agencies Regional Council of Goyder, National Trust SA and the Copper Coast Council formed a Consortium in 2023 and are working with private landowners, community and heritage experts to progress the bid to tentative stage.

Barry Gamble, a world-heritage consultant from Cornwall, has been contracted to assist with the world heritage bid including the development of the Statement of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) and World Heritage Nomination Dossier.

Why is World Heritage next natural progression?

A world heritage list for the Australian Cornish Mining Sites: Burra and Moonta will be transformational and will position the towns and South Australia on the global map.

There are many benefits to a property being inscribed on the World Heritage List, including increased tourist visitation, increases in employment opportunities and income for local communities, and better management and protection of the Australian Cornish Mining Sites. It also presents opportunity to access funding and expert advice that will support activities for the preservation of the sites for future generations.

Here Barry Gamble (UK World heritage consultant) talks more about what it will mean for the Australian Cornish Mining Sites: Burra and Moonta to be inscribed on the World Heritage List.

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