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.

The ten magazines of the Dry Creek explosives depot were built in 1906 at the expenditure of £6,000 or £7,000 at Broad Creek, a tidal distributary channel on the eastern side of the Barker Inlet of the Port River Estuary, which runs in the direction of the suburb of Dry Creek. The Broad Creek site, located on the landward side of intertidal mangroves and supratidal saltmarshes, was chosen as a more isolated location from Port Adelaide, replacing an earlier explosives depot called North Arm Powder Magazine at Magazine Creek at Gillman, south of the North Arm of the Port River.

A narrow gauge tramway with a track gauge of 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) was constructed in 1906. It ran along the magazines and connected the depot via a length of 2 km (1¼ miles) to the landing jetty and on the other side via 800 m (½ mile) to the Dry Creek railway station. Six bespoke wagons were used for the transport of explosives such as dynamite to the magazines - each held 1¼ tons. The wagons were drawn by horses. Previously, explosives had to be transported by road from the North Arm to the magazines, and this both dangerous and expensive. The wagons were donated in 1978 to the Illawarra Light Railway Museum, where they are now exhibited.

The president of the Marine Board, Arthur Searcy, and four wardens officially inspected the Dry Creek explosives depot on Tuesday, 19 June 1906. They were conveyed to the Broad Creek jetty in the motor launch Warden. The party travelled on one of the horse-drawn wagons to the magazines, which were found in perfect order. Each magazine was capable of storing 40 tons of explosives, but 20 tons were at that time fixed as the maximum quantity to be stored in them. Every precaution was taken to guard against explosion, and printed regulations were exhibited on each of the magazine doors. Mounds had been built between each magazine, so that should one of the magazines explode no injury would result to the others. The party was quite satisfied that the system for the handling and storage of explosives was superior in every respect to the one formerly in use. The magazine reserve, which consisted of about 307 acres, was being improved, by the planting of tamarisk and other trees to provide shadow and explosion breaks.

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