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History
Tarcoola was originally surveyed and laid out into 330 allotments in the 1880s to support the goldmining that was taken place in that part of the Colony’s western pastoral region. The goldmining petered out but Tarcoola was given a new lease of life when the Transcontinental railway to Western Australia was pushed through Tarcoola South during the First World War.
The historic Wilgena Hotel, which still stands today, was moved down from the main town block of Tarcoola North at that time to service the collective thirst of the railway construction and maintenance gangs.
In 1980, when the old narrow gauge Ghan line through Marree and Oodnadatta was closed, a new standard gauge line to Alice Springs was erected and it spurred north from the Transcontinental line immediately west of Tarcoola. The town then became a significant railway maintenance, crew-change and service centre with its own school, hospital, church, hotel, police station and community hall.
However after 1998, when Australian National transferred the responsibility for the Indian-Pacific and Ghan lines to the Australian Railtrack Corporation Ltd., rail services and crew changes were increasingly facilitated from Port Augusta and Tarcoola began to be progressively closed down.
Today there are only two people living permanently in Tarcoola while relief and maintenance crews use the railway quarters during the working week.
Most of the infrastructure is still intact and in reasonable order. The hospital is used periodically as a clinic and people from the surrounding sheep stations use the building intermittently for meetings and social purposes. The hall is an impressive structure; there is still a town power generating system and water is available from the extensive railways dams nearby.
One of the casualties of the Town’s decline has been the closure of the Wilgena Hotel which was one of only two iron hotels left operating in South Australia. It used to be patronised by shearing teams from the extensive pastoral runs of the area including Commonwealth Hill which is easily the biggest contiguous sheep run in SA and arguably the whole of Australia.
Tourist services
There are no services now in Tarcoola.
