Coward Springs

Coward Springs is a former settlement and railway station in the desert in outback South Australia.

Where is it?: Outback South Australia. On the Oodnadatta Track adjacent to the Wabma Kadarbu Mound Springs Conservation Park, 236 km from Coober Pedy.




Steam locomotive ash deposit pit at Coward Springs siding

Coward Springs was named in 1858 by Peter Warburton after Corporal Thomas Coward, one of the members of the exploration party. Coward Springs had a school from 1888 to 1890. The government bore was completed on 16 July 1886. Coward Springs currently provides pleasant camping facilities, an open-air spa, and historical features.

Today, when you cross the vast deserts of Central Australia aboard The Ghan train, you do so seated in a soft armchair in air-conditioned comfort. But in the early days of The Ghan, it was quite a different story. This narrow-gauge line it first travelled on lay well over 100km east of the current one, and was no pleasure trip. Rattling through flood-prone country, sometimes at walking pace, travel could be delayed for up to a week and - so the story goes - the crew sometimes had to shoot game to feed the passengers. Coward Springs was one of the stops on that primitive outback railway line.

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