Over 100 years ago, just before the First World War, South Australia (SA) began a concerted effort to open up the Mallee region to agriculture, mainly wheat and sheep.
The central hub of the district was Karoonda, established in 1913, growing quickly to become a major rural and commercial centre and rail yard with loading facilities for the vast quantities of grain harvested from the surrounding district, now largely cleared of the slow-growing, stubby eucalypt trees that once dominated the semiarid landscape to the Victorian border and beyond.
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| The rural silo art project like this example in Karoonda has helped bring tourists back to remote towns in SA (R Eime 2020) |