Koppio Smithy Museum

The hills behind the coast

Most visitors never discover that the lower Eyre Peninsula has a hinterland — a band of surprisingly green, rolling hill country between Tumby Bay and Port Lincoln. At its heart, in the hamlet of Koppio, National Trust volunteers have spent more than forty years assembling one of regional South Australia's best folk museums on a 2.5-acre site that now amounts to an entire heritage village.

The smithy and friends

The museum grew around the original blacksmith's shop and cottage, built by Thomas Brennand in 1905 at what was then the crossroads of the district. Around it now stand 'Glenleigh', a thatched cottage from 1890; the one-teacher Koppio schoolhouse that served from 1934 to 1970; a 1910 Port Lincoln tailor's shop; a Bank of Adelaide building; and the White Flat post office, reputedly the smallest in the state. Display sheds hold tractors, stationary engines, shearing gear, horse-drawn buggies, printing machinery and a celebrated barbed wire collection.

Make a loop of it

Koppio is an easy half-day from Tumby Bay or Port Lincoln, and the drive itself — through hills that turn emerald green in winter — is part of the appeal. Combine it with the farming township of Cummins for a proper inland loop, then drop back to the coast at Tumby Bay for fish and chips by the jetty.