Port Adelaide, looking towards the Copper Company's Wharf from Jervois Bridge which is seen under construction on the extreme right.

The English and Australian Copper Company built a smelter at Port Adelaide in 1861; built right on the river bank the smelter produced copper ingots from the ore mined at Burra. This was a more efficient operation than shipping the ore to Wales for smelting. Coal needed to be imported from Newcastle in New South Wales, so with the anticipated arrival of hundreds of ships bringing ore and coal, and loading with the copper ingots, wharves were erected at the bend in the river and adjacent to the Jervois Bridge.

The chimney dominated the skyline of the Port; the slag from the smelters was broken into chunks which were used as part of the landfill process in Port Adelaide. Photograph B 13 provides another view of the smelting works from the corner of St Vincent and Mundy Streets.

The smelter operated until 1912. Subsequently all traces of it disappeared when the roll on/roll off loading facility for the Kangaroo Island ferry was built on the site.

English & Australian Copper Company

Couper-Smartt, John Port Adelaide: tales from a "commodious harbour" Port Adelaide: Friends of the South Australian Maritime Museum, 2003

Parsons, Ronald, Southern passages: a maritime history of South Australia Netley, S. Aust.: Wakefield Press, 1986

Mudflats to metropolis: Port Adelaide 1836-1986 [Port Adelaide, S. Aust.: B. & T. Publishers, 1986]

State Library of South Australia: Mortlock Wing exhibitions. Wooden Walls and Iron Sides August 2004-