Frances is a town in the Australian state of

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 ...

located about south-east of the state capital,

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 ...

and about north-east of the municipal seat of Naracoorte in the state's

Limestone Coast The Limestone Coast is a name used since the early twenty-first century for a South Australian government region located in the south east of South Australia which immediately adjoins the continental coastline and the Victorian border. The ...

region and adjoining the border with the

State of Victoria Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Au ...

. Frances began as a government town first surveyed in July 1871 and then resurveyed in January. Its name is reported as being derived from the name of the wife of "Mr Henry Jones of Binnum Station." Boundaries of the locality were created in April 2001. For much of its history, Frances was a

railway town A railway town, or railroad town, is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site. North America During the construction of the First transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, temporar ...

on the

Mount Gambier railway line The Mount Gambier railway line was a railway line on the South Australian Railways network. Opened in stages from 1881, it was built to narrow gauge and joined Mount Gambier railway station, which was at that time the eastern terminus of a line ...

, which runs from Wolseley in the north to

Mount Gambier Mount Gambier is the second most populated city in South Australia, with an estimated urban population of 33,233 . The city is located on the slopes of Mount Gambier, a volcano in the south east of the state, about south-east of the capital Ad ...

in the south. A State Road, Frances Road, runs from Bordertown through Frances to Hynam. Despite the closure of the railway on 12 April 1995, Frances continues to be a receiving point for grain, with several

silo A silo (from the Greek σιρός – ''siros'', "pit for holding grain") is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store fermented feed known as silage, not to be confused with a grain bin, which is used t ...

s. It set a record for the most grain received at Frances in the season on 10 January 2017, by which time it had received over . It also set a new record for the most grain received in a single day at the site. Every February from 2000 to 2019, Frances hosted the Frances Folk Gathering, a weekend-long

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

festival, with the whole town given over to music and visitors. Frances is located within the federal

division of Barker The Division of Barker is an Australian Electoral Division in the south-east of South Australia. The division was established on 2 October 1903, when South Australia's original single multi-member division was split into seven single-member div ...

, the state

electoral district of MacKillop MacKillop is a single-member electoral district for the South Australian House of Assembly. It was named in 1991 after Sister Mary MacKillop who served the local area, and later became the first Australian to be canonised as a Roman Catholic s ...

and the local government area of the

Naracoorte Lucindale Council The Naracoorte Lucindale Council is a Local Government Areas of South Australia, local government area in the Australian state of South Australia located in the Limestone Coast region in the south-east of the state adjacent to the Victoria, Austr ...

References

;Notes ;Citations

External links

Frances Folk Gathering
website Limestone Coast Towns in South Australia {{SouthAustralia-geo-stub