1,800 people once lived beneath the banks of a South Australian creek

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Just 160 kilometres north of Adelaide lies one of South Australia’s most extraordinary pieces of history, where an entire neighbourhood once existed beneath the ground.

And while most of the homes have long since disappeared, visitors can still step inside the underground dwellings that sheltered thousands of people during South Australia’s copper mining boom.

Welcome to Burra’s Miners’ Dugouts, a fascinating reminder of a time when housing shortages and high rents forced families to find a very different way to put a roof over their heads.

In the mid-1840s, Burra was experiencing an extraordinary population boom following the discovery of copper in 1845. The mine quickly became one of Australia’s most important, attracting workers and their families, many from Cornwall in England.

But with so many people arriving, there simply weren’t enough houses to accommodate them.

Rather than pay high rents for company-owned cottages, hundreds of miners began digging their own homes directly into the soft clay banks of Burra Creek.

By 1851, approximately 1,800 people were living in around 600 underground dwellings, representing more than 40 per cent of the settlement’s population.

The neighbourhood even had its own name. Creek Street.

And these weren’t all the basic holes in the ground you might imagine.

While some were simple single-room shelters with openings for doors and windows, others had timber doors, glazed windows, carpets and wallpaper. Most were whitewashed, and some even featured verandahs.

Chimneys extended above the creek banks, while families went about their everyday lives in homes carved straight into the earth.

For the miners, the arrangement offered several advantages. Their homes were rent-free, close to water and gave families a degree of independence from the mining company.

But life underground also came with considerable risks.

Living beside a creek meant residents were vulnerable to flooding, and in 1851, devastating floods swept through the settlement, forcing many families to abandon their homes.

By 1860, the once-bustling underground neighbourhood had been virtually deserted.

Today, restored examples of the dugouts remain near Blyth Street in Burra, preserved as an extraordinary window into life in colonial South Australia.

Visitors can explore the historic dwellings through the Burra Heritage Passport, which provides access to a collection of heritage sites around the town.

It’s an opportunity to see the rooms excavated into the creek bank and imagine the lives of the families who once called them home.

The dugouts are just one part of Burra’s remarkable story.

The town’s copper mine helped transform South Australia’s early economy, and by 1850 Burra had become Australia’s largest inland settlement.

Today, the entire town is recognised as a State Heritage Area, with historic mining buildings, stone cottages and streetscapes offering a glimpse into its extraordinary past.

Burra’s mining heritage also forms part of the Australian Cornish Mining Sites National Heritage listing, alongside Moonta.

For anyone planning a country day trip or weekend away, the Miners’ Dugouts offer something genuinely different, the chance to walk through the remains of a neighbourhood that once housed nearly half a town, hidden beneath the earth.

And almost 180 years after the first miners began digging, those doorways are still there.

What: Burra Miners’ Dugouts