Dry Creek explosives depot

The Broad Creek site, located on the landward side of intertidal mangroves and supratidal saltmarshes, was chosen as a more isolated location from Port Adelaide, replacing an earlier explosives depot called North Arm Powder Magazine at Magazine Creek at Gillman, south of the North Arm of the Port River.

[5] Running along the magazines, it connected the depot to the landing jetty, a distance of 2 kilometres (1.2 miles), and on the other side 800 metres (870 yards) to the Dry Creek railway station.

[7] The president of the Marine Board, Arthur Searcy, and four wardens inspected the depot in 1906 and found that handling and storage of explosives was superior to previous procedures.

The magazine reserve, of about 307 acres (124 hectares), was being improved by planting tamarisk and other trees to provide shadow and explosion breaks.

In July 1917, the jetty was inundated by the highest tide on record, 11 feet 10 inches (3.6 metres) above low water, and was washed away.

The following August an unusually high tide washed away the gear of the levee workmen, including planks, barrels, barricades and bags of silt, which disappeared without a trace.

Eleven of the historic buildings at Dry Creek, built from 1903 to 1907, were listed on the South Australian Heritage Register in 1994.

The predecessor of the Dry Creek explosives depot, the North Arm Powder Magazine at Magazine Creek, south of the North Arm of the Port River, Port Adelaide
Horse-drawn wagons for carrying explosives in the Dry Creek explosives depot
The powder magazine office at Dry Creek
Jetty at Broad Creek
Dry Creek salt crystallisation pans in 2008, view to the southwest, towards Port Adelaide. The buildings of the Dry Creek explosives depot are just visible on the left of the photo, at the point where the lines of alignment of the salt pans appear to converge. The narrow gauge railway line to Broad Creek ( visible in the middle distance ) was covered by later development of the salt pans and the construction of the North–South Motorway .