View of part of the Moonta copper mines, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, c.1882.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 64 x 105 mm (mount); recto with fully contemporary inscription in ink to lower margin: ‘Part of Moonta Mines, S. Australia’; verso with the lithographed back mark of ‘The South Australian Photographic Association. Taylor Street, Kadina. Stephen Nixon (Artist), Manager’; the print is in good condition; the mount is toned and has a few tiny spots of silverfishing.

S. E. Nixon’s South Australian Photographic Association was based in Kadina, a short distance from the Moonta copper mines at the top end of the Yorke Peninsula, in 1882-85.

This fabulous view is notable not only for its documentation of part of the mines’ engineering infrastructure, but also for the fact that it shows close to 50 miners, as well as a group of five Aboriginal people in the foreground at lower right.