North Arm Powder Magazine

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The North Arm Powder Magazine The old explosives depot at the North Arm, Port Adelaide, South Australia, PRG-280-1-12-32.jpg
The North Arm Powder Magazine
The Magazine Keeper's residence The residence of the late George Halsey near the premises of the Dry Creek explosive powder magazines, State Library of South Australia PRG-280-1-12-130.jpeg
The Magazine Keeper's residence

The North Arm Powder Magazine near Port Adelaide, South Australia was from 1858 to 1906 a secure storage facility for dynamite and gelignite to be used in the construction, mining and quarrying industries. [1]

Port Adelaide Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) northwest of the Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is the main port for the city of Adelaide. Port Adelaide played an important role in the formative decades of Adelaide and South Australia, with the port being early Adelaide's main supply and information link to the rest of the world.

South Australia State of Australia

South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres (379,725 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. It has a total of 1.7 million people, and its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second largest centre, has a population of 28,684.

Dynamite Explosive made using nitroglycerin

Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, and patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder.

Contents

Location

It was in Gillman near Port Adelaide at the North Arm of the Port River only 9 m[ clarification needed ] away from the North Arm Bridge and North Arm Road. The explosives were stored in the wooden and slated magazine building and in two dynamite hulks moored in Magazine Creek. One of them was a retired iron dredger, built around 1852, and the other was a former lighter. They were seen as a risk, if they should ever explode, because they were close to the new bridge and coastal settlements and inland towns. [1]

Gillman, South Australia Suburb of Adelaide, South Australia

Gillman is a north-western suburb of Adelaide, in the City of Port Adelaide Enfield. It is located within the federal division of Port Adelaide and the state electoral district of Port Adelaide.

Buildings

The North Arm Powder Magazine was built in 1858 by the government. The magazine was built as a lightweight structure on wooden poles due to its location at the tidal creek. Only later this became best practice to mitigate the secondary damage from an explosion by descending débris. [1]

As it was close to urbanisation, it was suggested to abandon the site already a decade after it had been commissioned. It was taken out of service only in 1906, after its contents had been moved to the new Dry Creek explosives depot. The building was demolished in 1916 and no visible evidence remains. [1]

Dry Creek explosives depot

The Dry Creek explosives depot was a secure storage facility near Port Adelaide from 1906 to 1995, serving the construction, mining and quarrying industries of South Australia, as well as the mines of Broken Hill in New South Wales.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Explosives storage in Magazine Creek, Port Adelaide district, 1857-1906. Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, Nr. 35, 2007 (english).

Coordinates: 34°50′11″S138°31′12″E / 34.836484°S 138.520011°E / -34.836484; 138.520011

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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