Oodla Wirra (formerly Penn) is a small town in the upper

Mid North The Mid North is a region of South Australia, north of the Adelaide Plains and south of the Far North and the outback. It is generally accepted to extend from Spencer Gulf east to the Barrier Highway, including the coastal plain, the southern ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) 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 , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. It is on the

Barrier Highway Barrier Highway is a highway in South Australia and New South Wales, and is designated part of route A32. The name of the highway is derived from the Barrier Ranges, an area of moderately high ground in the far west of New South Wales, through w ...

approximately halfway from

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

Broken Hill Broken Hill is an inland mining city in the far west of outback New South Wales, Australia. It is near the border with South Australia on the crossing of the Barrier Highway (A32) and the Silver City Highway (B79), in the Barrier Range. It is ...

. When the

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

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.

Railway

Oodla Wirra is a former railway town, as it was on the narrow-gauge railway between

Port Pirie Port Pirie is a small city on the east coast of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia, north of the state capital, Adelaide. The city has an expansive history which dates back to 1845. Port Pirie was the first proclaimed regional city in South ...

and Cockburn (where it connected to the

Silverton Tramway The Silverton Tramway was a 58-kilometre-long railway line running from Cockburn on the South Australian state border to Broken Hill in New South Wales. Operating between 1888 and 1970, it served the mines in Broken Hill, and formed the lin ...

). When the

Commonwealth Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government i ...

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. In 1889,

ironstone Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron ore compound from which iron (Fe) can be smelted commercially. Not to be con ...

flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications to physics. For transport ph ...

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

References

{{authority control Towns in South Australia Mid North (South Australia)