Farina, South Australia
town in South Australia
Farina, formerly Farina Town and originally Government Gums, is an abandoned town in the Australian state of South Australia. The name also applies to an area of about 8500 square kilometres (3300 square miles) in which the town is located. At the 2006 census, 55 people lived in the larger area; by the 2021 census, the population had fallen to 15.
Farina sits within the arid Lake Eyre basin, 26 kilometres (16 mi) north of Lyndhurst and 55 kilometres (34 mi) south of Marree where the Oodnadatta Track and the Birdsville Track commence. It is 540 kilometres (340 miles) due north of the state capital, Adelaide in the days when the rail connection was narrow gauge to Port Augusta, the distance by rail was 657 kilometres (408 miles).
History
In 1876, after a police trooper had been posted to the Government Gums, a "long neglected district", a deputation asked for a portion of the district to be allotted as a township so that a post office might be erected; that a telegraph station be opened; and that a weekly mail service from Beltana to the north-west be set up. The townsite, on a reserve surrounding Gums Waterhole, was surveyed and on 21 March 1878, Farina Town was proclaimed.
Originally called The Gums or Government Gums, Farina was settled in 1878 by optimistic farmers hoping that rain follows the plough. The town became a railhead in 1882, but the railway was extended to Marree in 1884. During the wet years of the 1880s, plans were laid out for a town with 432 quarter-acre (0.10 hectares) blocks.
“Farina, South Australia” enters the record as town in South Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Farina, South and Australia can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Farina, South Australia” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Farina, South and Australia provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5435313. Authority coordinates are -30.067, 138.267. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2021, 1876 and 1878.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Farina, South Australia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.