Type: | town |
Oodla Wirra | |
State: | sa |
Established: | 1889 |
Elevation: | 505 |
Elevation Footnotes: | [1] |
Dist1: | 259 |
Dir1: | N |
Location1: | Adelaide |
Lga: | District Council of Peterborough |
Region: | Yorke and Mid North |
County: | Herbert |
Stategov: | Stuart |
Coordinates: | -32.883°N 139.063°W |
Coord Ref: | [2] |
Near-Ne: | Nackara |
Near-S: | Parnaroo |
Near-Sw: | Ucolta |
Near-Nw: | Dawson |
Oodla Wirra (formerly Penn) is a small town in the upper Mid North of South Australia. It is on the Barrier Highway approximately halfway from Adelaide to Broken Hill.
When the railway was built in 1880, a siding was provided, named Oodla Wirra. Soon after, a town was surveyed near the siding, but it was named Penn. This naming conflict continued until 1940, when the town was renamed Oodla Wirra, to match the railway station.[3] [4]
Oodla Wirra is a former railway town, as it was on the narrow-gauge railway between Port Pirie and Cockburn (where it connected to the Silverton Tramway to Broken Hill). When the Commonwealth Government replaced the narrow gauge line with a standard gauge line, the revised route passed south and east of the town.
A railway employee was killed in a shunting accident in the Oodla Wirra railyards in 1909.[5]
In 1889, ironstone flux was mined from a failed silver mine a few miles away, and carted to Oodla Wirra to be transported by rail to the smelters at Port Pirie.[6]