Description

This large 100m2 hand-painted mural is in two sections (either side of the roller-door). The right section depicts the Lord Palmerston Hotel and J. Harden Confectionery building at the exact location where it was originally, on the corner of Lucas and Main Streets. Around 1900 the building became Kapunda's Coffee Palace and later a car service garage. The building was demolished in 1968 making way for the current structure. The left of this section depicts an 1871 photograph of store owner Robert Brewster (holding the horse) and his family. (Brewster's Store was located on the corner of Main and Tod Streets). The right side of this section depicts a Kapunda family in a car, about 1910. To the left of the roller door is a depiction of the working Kapunda Copper Mine, Australia's first commercially successful copper mine established in 1844. This scene was recreated using references from old photographs and paintings by colonial artists, George Fife Angas and S.T. Gill. On the extreme left of the mural are portraits of several founding identities. From left Dr. Blood, who in 1860 was Kapunda Copper Mine's first official medical doctor and in 1865 the first Mayor of Kapunda. The next two portraits are of Captain Charles Hervey Bagot (the large profile) and Francis Stacker Dutton. Towards the end of 1842 Bagot came across mineral specimens on his father's property near the present Kapunda site. Around the same time Dutton found similar outcrops at nearby Anlaby, which he was developing with his brother Frederick Hansborough Dutton. When the Dutton brothers took steps to secure the land around this discovery they learned of Bagot's find and together they had 80 acres surveyed. Dutton and Bagot eventually co-managed the mine, however Bagot soon bought out Dutton's share and Bagot controlled the mine until 1857. He then floated a company in London that worked the mine until 1877 when it became unprofitable.