Andamooka, South Australia

Andamooka is a town approximately 600 km north of Adelaide in the Far North of South Australia. Andamooka is the largest town administered by the Outback Communities Authority instead of a local government area. It is in the state electoral district of Giles and the federal Division of Grey.

History

The name is derived from a salt lake, named from the Aboriginal 'Andemorka', by which the locality was known to Europeans as early as 1866, well before opal was discovered. The meaning is uncertain. At that time (1866) it was also known as 'Swinden's Country', after Charles Swinden of Riverton, the leader of the small horseback party which discovered it in 1857. They described it as a tract of 'generally sterile country, but having some patches of good pastoral land'. It was those meagre prospects which attracted pastoralists, resulting in the foundation of Andamooka Station, which for the next half century was the only industry.

Opal was discovered in the region in the late 1920s, and the town developed out of the scattered miners' camps which established in the area. An Andamooka Opal Fields Post Office was not opened until 13 January 1947, and was renamed Andamooka in 1990. The road into Andamooka was sealed in the 1990s, but the remaining roads in the town are still unsealed.