Bumbunga Province Bumbunga, South Australia, Australia
By Laighside Legends on 15-Sep-12. Waypoint GA4590

Cache Details

Difficulty:
Terrain:
Type: Unknown or Mystery
Container: Small
Coordinates: S33° 54.721' E138° 13.749' (WGS 84)
  54H 243816E 6244141N (UTM)
Elevation: 91 m
Local Government Area: Wakefield

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Description

Something you may not have known about...

The Province of Bumbunga. Did you know that SA once had a micronation within it? It is long gone now but there are still other operating micronations within Australia.

From Wikipedia:
The Province of Bumbunga was an Australian secessionist micronation located on a farm at Bumbunga near Snowtown and Lochiel, South Australia during the 1970s and 1980s for approximately a decade.

The Province was founded by a British immigrant to Australia named Alex Brackstone, a former circus monkey-trainer, uranium prospector and postmaster.

In November, 1975, the Australian Labor Party government of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed under controversial circumstances, by Governor-General John Kerr. Under the Australian system of constitutional monarchy, Kerr was the representative of Queen Elizabeth II in Australia. Brackstone was an ardent British monarchist, and becoming alarmed by what he saw to be a drift towards republicanism as a result of this set of circumstances, resolved to do what he could to ensure that at least part of the Australian landmass would always remain loyal to the British Crown.

To that end he declared his H hectare property to be independent of Australia as the Province of Bumbunga on AB/C/DEFG and assumed the position of and style of "Governor". Brackstone then set about attracting tourism by building a huge scale model of the Great Britain in his backyard, using thousands of strawberry plants. He intended to conduct weddings on this facility, during which soil from the appropriate county would be sprinkled on the ground. The Australian Customs Service prevented the implementation of this plan by seizing the soil Brackstone attempted to import from the UK, and the whole enterprise failed when the strawberry plants died during a drought.

In 1980 Bumbunga began issuing postage stamps (actually Cinderella stamps as they cannot be used for postage) with British monarchist themes, and these proved very popular with collectors. Later issues also embraced anti-nuclear themes, but changes to Australian investment laws reducing the attraction of philatelic investments led Brackstone to abandon his commercial operations in 1987, and Bumbunga thereafter slid into relative oblivion until 1999, when he faced court on illegal firearms charges, and apparently unsuccessfully claimed immunity from prosecution due to his status as its Governor. Brackstone subsequently returned permanently to the UK.

So I figured this little oddity in SA history needed a cache and since this area is lacking in puzzle caches...
Don't worry it's not that hard!

AB/C/DEFG = Date of foundation
H = Area in hectares
I = Area in acres
J = Number of colours on the flag
K = Number of animals on the coat of arms
The cache is at S33° 55.(J-H)(G)(I-K)' E138° 13.(H+A)(B)(F-H-C)'
Nearby is one of the few remaining signs of what was once there...

Logs

08-Dec-23
Stopped by here on my way to Pt Augusta and did not find any Plaques, signs in fact nothing. It must be in a different location or hidden away froome view. I searched for 10minutes at least 80metres in all directions including otherside of the railway. Maybe worth a check. Lots of work has been done all around gz when the track had new sleepers installed
 
13-Feb-20
A quick stop here for a check here while passing by.
 
13-Feb-20
A quick stop with the CO today.
TFTC
 
08-Oct-17
After an event in the city earlier today I was off to Clare for the night so decided to take a small detour on the way and do a little international travel to the province of Bumbunga Mr. Green Cache was a nice easy find but unfortunately when found it had no lid and all that remained of the contents and logbook was a blackened mouldy piece of card! Fortunately I had a replacement container in the car (it is now a white 600ml plastic round container) but no logbooks so have just used a scrap of paper for the logbook. Was interested to see if any of the strawberry plants remained here but evidently the cows have made short work of anything that remained.
Cheers and thanks for a fun hunt Laighside Legends
 
10-Aug-15
Some time ago we found this puzzle and were intrigued by a piece of Australian history new to us. An online search soon revealed the information we needed to solve the puzzle.
Today we were heading to Whyalla and this one was not far off the track so a short detour was made. We were not confident that we would be able to find the cache as it was last logged by J_&_J in October 2013.
We walked along the fence and were surprised to see a sistema upside down just inside the fence line. On retrieval the centre part of the lid was missing but contents were fine and dry. We signed the log just as the beef cattle occupying the paddock noticed our presence and started heading in our direction lowing hopefully.
We didn't have a replacement lid that would fit the sistema so put it in a large clip lock bag before replacing it at GZ. We retreated to the car before the lowing herd reached the fence.We took a few photos of the only remaining sign of the Bumbunga Province.
Thanks Laighside Legends for the interesting little piece of local history, for the puzzle and an enjoyable caching experience. We hope other cachers will take the time to do this puzzle and visit this hide.
 
27-Oct-13
I solved the puzzle as soon as I saw this cache, but it's taken us a while to get out here. Today we were heading back home after a trip to Port Pirie, and decided to take the short detour to this cache.

It's nice to have a second GCA puzzle cache in our finds list, and enjoyed learning about the history of this area.

Thanks Laighside Legends.

 
24-Jun-13
Worked this one out sometime ago and after a break was returning north for work and this was my stretch the legs break, once at GZ I recognised the spot has had seen this before when driving in the area. At least any questions I once had have now been answered TFTC Laighside Legends
 
24-Feb-13
Have had this worked out for a long time but today was the first chance I had to get this one.. Was right where it was supposed to be.
Thanks Laighside Legends for the cache..
 
13-Oct-12
Found on my way home from Kadina - thanks for the interesting history
 
15-Sep-12
Published
 
Wakefield (DC) - dragonZone
0.00 29.50
0.00 31.50
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