HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT South Australia has a long history of mining since the discovery of silver-lead ores at Glen Osmond in 1841 and copper at Montacute, within ten kilometres of the City of Adelaide. The State's early economic development would have been seriously retarded had it not been for the discovery of copper ore at Kapunda in 1842, Burra in 1845, and at Wallaroo and Moonta in 1860, during periods of economic recession. The Colony was saved from bankruptcy by wealth won from copper mining, a wealth which far exceeded the return from the more slowly expanding agricultural and pastoral activities. Throughout the early history of the Colony, mining had a profound influence on population growth and movement, on road, rail, and sea transport, and on general industrial development. The Wallaroo-Moonta field proved to be by far the richest of all, producing approximately 340 000 tonnes of copper from 1860 until closure in 1923. For many years South Australia has been one of the foremost copper production centres of the world and copper mining predominated for an unbroken period of 80 years. Gold was discovered at Echunga in 1852, followed by Barossa 1868, Waukaringa 1871, Woodside 1881, Mannahill 1885, Teetulpa 1886, Tarcoola 1900 and Mongolata 1930. While these fields attracted interest for a short time, all were small by Australian standards and quickly faded into obscurity. Small scale mining is in progress at Tarcoola, Glenloth, Mount Grainger, Baratta, Nillinghoo and Wadnaminga. This collated series of Mineral Information Series brochures are for the years 1958, 1960, 1969 and 19761962, 1963, 1969, 1976, 1980 and 1986 editions.