Escape to Leigh Creek, a revival town of Hollywood and heyday glory

If there’s one word you’ll keep hearing about Leigh Creek it’s “transition”. And if there’s a name you’ll keep hearing associated with the remote town at the top of South Australia, it’s Zac Efron.

Leigh Creek’s no ordinary outback town. It has a unique history that has vacillated between boom and bust, with a sprinkling of Hollywood thrown in for good measure. Right now it’s on the cusp of a boom and the locals are anticipating glory days ahead.

Found in South Australia’s far north on Adnyamathanha Country, two and a half hours up from Port Augusta and six hours north of Adelaide, Leigh Creek is part of the beautiful Flinders Ranges.

Coal mining began in the 1940s with hundreds of miners living in a tent city in the extreme heat. That changed in the 1980s when the mine relocated and the state government poured funds into housing, shops, a school and sporting facilities such as an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

These were the days before fly-in, fly-out working, so Leigh Creek was purpose-built for miners to bring their families and settle there.

It was the end of an era when Alinta announced the mine closure in 2015 and the state government began selling houses, businesses and facilities (hence the “town in transition” label).

The population dwindled as generations of mining workers and their families left, and despite a small population still remaining to this day, parts of Leigh Creek slowly began to appear abandoned and ghost-like.

However, its heartbeat is set to revive when a new gas company enters the town next year. Locals are hoping the town will resume its thriving heyday.

The only thing that could top the elation of this news, and set hearts going even faster, has been last year’s arrival of Hollywood star Zac Efron. He and a film crew based themselves in Leigh Creek for weeks as they shot the Stan film Gold near the salt pan at Lake Frome. Stan is owned by Nine, majority owner of Domain.

It just goes to show, you never what’s going to happen next in Leigh Creek.

Population: 245 as of the 2016 census.

Who lives there?

Tracey Kelly has lived in Leigh Creek for 40 years now, arriving in the town as a child with her family. She’s moved away twice but has always come back.

“It’s just a beautiful place,” Kelly said. “It’s just like an oasis in the desert. You’re coming along the highway and then all of a sudden all these trees pop up. It’s really nice.”

She works at Leigh Creek Caravan Park, a place popular with caravanning grey nomads. Travellers can venture another 25 kilometres north to Lyndhurst and either branch off on the Strzelecki Track to the north-east of South Australia or head to Marree, which lies at the junction of the Oodnadatta and Birdsville tracks.

As for the local community, Kelly said Leigh Creek locals were warm and welcoming and, for a while there in 2021, just a little bit starstruck.

“Everyone’s got one another’s back, it’s good,” she said. “Everyone waves or beeps when they drive past; it’s just natural. We’re a little bit blessed to have such a good community.

“Even Zac was really friendly. I’d pull up and he’d be walking past and always give a big wave.”

The film gave Leigh Creek a much-needed economic injection, which also helped salve the wounds of COVID.

“It was brilliant – we did a really good tourist season,” Kelly said. “His film brought in a lot of jobs. They hired a lot of local people and the whole time he was here, the vibe was awesome.

“If we could have one film here a year, we’d be laughing!”

What happens there?

The re-establishment of the mine is the talk of the town. It will produce energy from coal using a process called underground coal gasification. This energy will be used to make fertilisers, the most common being granular urea, which is mostly made of nitrogen.

Leigh Creek Energy aims to create 1500 jobs during the construction phase and a further 1000-plus once it begins to operate next year.

“In its heyday there were 2000 people who lived in Leigh Creek,” said Tony Lawry, from Leigh Creek Energy. “We’ll bring about 50 per cent of that back; it might even be more.”

Lawry said the project would be carbon-neutral from the very beginning of operations.

“We’ll be carbon neutral from day dot because 75 per cent of the carbon dioxide is needed in the urea manufacturing process,” he explained.

“The other 25 per cent will be sequestered or pumped underground into the existing gasifier, meaning the coal is a solid body of coal and once it gasifies it creates a void and we’ll be pumping the CO2 back into that void.”

However, not everyone is happy. In 2018, traditional owners unsuccessfully attempted to stop the mine from being reopened. The Adnyamathanha people applied for an injunction in South Australia’s Supreme Court on the grounds the site held important spiritual significance.

Leigh Creek Energy has since worked with the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association to perform cultural heritage surveys.

What’s life like?

As you’d expect in an outback town, life is pretty cruisy in Leigh Creek.

In summer the temperatures can become blisteringly hot. In January the average temperature is 36 degrees, dipping to an average low of 21 degrees.

There are a lot of creeks in the area and the area is prone to flooding.

The beautiful Aroona Dam is home to a variety of birdlife and other wildlife, including the endangered yellow-footed rock wallaby.

The disused dam was once the main water source for the town, but in 2019 the state government made it a recreational hub by opening it for non-motorised watercraft such as kayaks and canoes, and released gold perch there for fishing.

What jobs are there?

If it wasn’t for Zac Efron, Breyton Ward would be the name on everyone’s lips in Leigh Creek. Ward is a former miner who took out leases at several of the town’s businesses and is now buying – or is in the process of buying – those leases from the state government.

He now owns the service station, the caravan park and Leigh Creek Outback Resort, where his daughter, Emma Ruffles, is the account manager.

Ruffles said Ward took on the businesses “virtually because no one else wanted to take them”.

“If it wasn’t for dad, because he had to do the post office at the time, none of these services would have remained open for locals,” she said. “There were some other offers for the outback resort, but dad won it based on merit and the opportunities he was promising to promote and provide.”

The resort was named as such because the miners who once lived there had access to all the perks of a resort.  Nearby facilities include a gym, tennis and squash courts and a playground and oval – both of which are fenced off to keep the kangaroos out.

Ruffles said the 100-room resort had recently played host to visiting film crews.

“It’s such a remote location, but it’s got the infrastructure to hold such large groups because we had the Gold movie up here last year with Zac Efron, and in Port Augusta when they filmed Stateless and The Tourist, you had people having to book across three or four different towns in the areas.

“Whereas Leigh Creek has it all and dad made sure he did up extra houses and brought furniture and made sure he could accommodate everyone.”

Why should you move there?

Witnessing the revival of this town would be a spectacle to behold. An anthropological study of sorts.

If you’re looking to be part of a new town, with all the history of an old one, Leigh Creek is just the ticket.