Mount Lofty Ranges - Southern Ranges

Southern Ranges

The part of the ranges south of and including the Barossa Valley are commonly known as the South Mount Lofty Ranges, and the highest part of this section is the summit of Mount Lofty (727 m/2,385 ft). The part of the ranges nearest Adelaide is also called the Adelaide Hills.

The ranges encompass a wide variety of land usage, including significant residential development, particularly concentrated in the foothills, suburbs of Stirling and Bridgewater, and the towns Mount Barker and Victor Harbor in particular. Several pine plantation forests exist, most significantly around Mount Crawford and Cudlee Creek in the north and Kuitpo Forest and Second Valley in the south. Several conservation parks exist near Adelaide where the hills face the city in order to preserve highly sought-after residential land: Black Hill, Cleland, and Belair National Park are the largest. The most significant other parks in the southern ranges are Deep Creek, on the rugged southern shores of the Fleurieu Peninsula, and Para Wirra at the southern edge of the Barossa Valley.

There are many wineries in the ranges. Two regions in particular are world-renowned: the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale. Grapes are also grown in the Adelaide Hills and the Onkaparinga Valley.

Although no major mines operate in the southern ranges today, there are several large disused ones, and a myriad of small ones. An iron sulfide mine at Brukunga, northeast of Mount Barker, operated from 1955 to 1972, proving a valuable source for the production of superphosphate fertilisers vital for the postwar development of the State's outlying agricultural areas. The runoff from the mine unfortunately proved quite toxic for the local environment, and efforts have been underway since to alleviate the damage.

A small short-lived silver and lead mine in the foothills of the ranges at Glen Osmond was first opened just two years after the founding of the State in 1836: it is significant for being not only the first metal mine in the history of the State, but the first in all Australia. South Australia never experienced a nineteenth-century gold rush like those interstate, but gold was mined near both Echunga and Williamstown (in the Barossa). Other mines in the southern ranges include a nineteenth-century silver-lead mine at Talisker near Cape Jervis, which features many remaining old buildings, and the limestone mine at Rapid Bay, which ceased operations much more recently. Copper was mined at Kapunda, Truro and Kanmantoo and may be again and a zinc (and lead, silver and gold) mine is proposed near Strathalbyn. Quarries dot the ranges, the most spectacular and massive of which are in the Adelaide foothills; they supplied much of the quartzite which is to be seen in the enduring "sandstone architecture" of early Adelaide.

Only one railway now crosses the ranges: the major Adelaide-Melbourne line, which was first constructed in the 1870s and has had only minor realignments since (the most significant of which was the boring of a new tunnel at Sleeps Hill). Passenger services used to run from the city to Bridgewater in the heart of the hills and ranges, but now stop at Belair in the foothills. A railway approaches the ranges at Willunga (although it was discontinued in the 1960s and has since been replaced by a cycling trail). The Mount Barker to Victor Harbor line (now used only for recreational purposes) largely skirts the eastern edge of the ranges. North of Adelaide, there is a railway to Angaston in the east of the Barossa Valley, and former railways to Truro and across the ranges near Eudunda to Morgan on the Murray River.

The ranges form part of the water supply for Adelaide, and there is an extensive infrastructure of reservoirs, weirs, and pipelines, on the Torrens, Onkaparinga, Little Para and Gawler River catchments. Mount Bold, South Para, Kangaroo Creek, and Millbrook reservoirs are the largest.