Deep in the Flinders Ranges, about 660 kilometres north of Adelaide, Farina sits where ambition met the hard facts of outback South Australia. For most of the year it is a place of stone walls, empty streets and windblown silence. Then, for eight weeks each winter, someone lights the old underground oven and the ghost town comes briefly, wonderfully, back to life.
The turn-off comes 26 kilometres beyond the last town, the road trailing dust behind you as the ruins appear from the plain. Roofless buildings stand open to the sky. Old street signs still mark North Terrace and Twelfth Street, though no one has lived here in any real number for decades. The scene has the bleached drama of a film set, until the smell of bread drifts across the red dirt and changes everything.
At the centre of the operation is head baker and volunteer Kerry Storer, who has been making the seasonal trip to Farina since 2011. “For eight weeks of the year, they come for all these homemade goodies that we make here,” he says. “It’s like a metropolis — people everywhere.”
He is not exaggerating by much. By mid-morning, the queue can run 50 deep. Grey nomads, young families and serious outback travellers line up inside the old Patterson building, ordering coffees, vanilla slices, fruit loaves, sausage rolls and chunky beef and bacon pies. Some have planned their Flinders Ranges trip around this stop. Others heard about it from someone who once ate a pastry here and never quite recovered.
The name Farina means flour in Italian, an irony not lost on anyone who knows the town’s history. Settlers in the 1870s thought wheat would grow here after a run of good seasons. But Farina lay beyond Goyder’s Line, the rough climatic boundary marking where reliable cropping gives way to arid country. The wheat dream failed, though the town briefly prospered with railway workers, miners, drovers and Afghan cameleers. It had pubs, a school, police station and even an airstrip.
By 1967, Farina was largely deserted.
Its modern revival began in 2008 when caravan tour operator Tom Harding passed the hat around a campfire and collected $850 to help preserve the ruins. The Farina Restoration Group followed the next year. Today, about 200 volunteers help each season, including bakers, stonemasons, cleaners and returning travellers. Bakery sales fund restoration work, one pie at a time.
The days start early. Kerry is up around 3am, firing the oven with mulga and waiting for the stone to take the heat. Above ground, ruins are repaired, counters are stocked and another day’s small miracle begins.
By afternoon, caravans pull away in clouds of dust, paper bags on the passenger seat. Soon the oven will cool, the crowds will vanish and Farina will fall quiet again. But next winter, someone will strike a match underground, and the smell of fresh bread will once more find its way across the desert.
