Sitting still doesn’t have a place in the lexicon of Burra residents Ross and Sandra Sims. After a lifetime of hard work and long hours as farmers, earth-moving, fencing and super-spreading contractors interspersed with stints carting grain, running cafes, and antiques and collectable stores, they could be forgiven for sitting back and taking it easy for a bit.
Instead, in 2021, they bought an old house in the historic former copper mining town in South Australia’s Mid-North and embarked on what was their biggest project yet and their 14th renovation.
“This is actually our second time in Burra,” Sandra explains. “We first lived here from 2000 to 2007 because my sister was here and our elder son, Adam, had moved here. Then we moved to the Yorke Peninsula for a while and returned to Burra in 2015. We’ve been here ever since.”
Ross grew up in western Victoria and Sandra in Broken Hill and their early days together were running cattle on farms near Casterton in Victoria’s south-west and Willalooka on South Australia’s Limestone Coast. They welcomed sons Adam and James and daughter Kate to the family and worked tenaciously in various ag-related businesses until they moved to Burra. Adam suffered from chronic lung disease and had his first bilateral lung transplant in 1996 and a second in 2000. “Adam was here for a good time, not a long time,” Sandra says. “Sadly, he passed away in 2009 at the age of 26. By that time, the hills around Burra had wrapped their arms around our family and now we’re here for good.”
Daughter Kate and her husband, Bill, and their two daughters lived in Burra for a time and have now moved to Port Lincoln, while son James has also recently returned to live in Burra. “It’s a lovely town with great copper-mining history,” Ross says. “It’s the gateway to the Flinders Ranges, but it’s also a tourist destination in its own right on the crossroads for travellers from Perth to Melbourne, Adelaide to Darwin and Sydney to Adelaide via Broken Hill. In a sense, Burra is still a copper town, because alongside lots of historic buildings from the mining days of the mid-19th century, there’s a factory that reconstitutes copper product into powder, or copper oxide, that’s shipped all over the world.”
The Sims cut their renovating teeth when they worked on a bluestone cottage with an adjacent butcher’s shop and printing premises during their first stint at Burra. They turned them into an antiques and collectables business called The Miner’s Couch. As if that didn’t keep them busy enough, they divided their time with some new projects on the Yorke Peninsula, opening another branch of The Miner’s Couch at Kadina and a cafe and B&B in Moonta. Along the way, they bought a holiday house on the Murray River at Scotts Creek near Morgan and did that up, and renovated properties in far-western NSW. After Adam passed away, Ross and Sandra pushed pause for a bit.
“We sold Kadina and Moonta in 2010 and that gave us the opportunity to disappear for a while,” Ross says. “We had three months in the Kimberley. We still had our property on the Murray, so we spent a bit of time there, until we got bored and went fencing and earth moving for a few years.”
Sandra, however, never really took her eye off the property market in Burra and, in 2015, she spotted three shops in the main street, which needed “a lot of TLC”. After substantial work, including re-roofing, they became the St Just cafe and antiques, gifts and homewares store, which of course meant a return to seven-days-a-week trading until they sold recently. In 2021, the Sims bought their current house, built in 1884 by German settler August Fuss, who raised 10 children there. Coincidentally, the house Kate and her family owned once belonged to Fuss’s wife, Madeleine’s parents.
“I doubt anyone else would have taken our place on. But we’re good at seeing potential and what a building could be,” Ross says. “We’re only the fourth owners and I think the last time any money had been spent on it was in the 1950s,” Sandra adds. “Nonetheless, it still begged attention when you drove past, as it had this striking balustrading.”
Fortunately, the house had an iron cottage at the rear, which the Sims renovated first and lived in while they worked on the rest of the home. “It’s now connected to the main house by a garden room,” Sandra says. “It conveniently gives family and friends self-contained accommodation when they visit.”
Aided by a local builder, they began working on the roof to make the property waterproof, then set about replacing most of the eyelash verandah and balustrading. The couple lifted the verandah posts and took the fascia boards up to let more light in, then turned their attention to the interiors, replacing the ceilings, adding new cornicing and lighting. The floors were sanded and black japanned, while another local tradie helped paint throughout.
While officially the project is complete, Sandra says there’s always room for improvement. There are two containers at the back of their property that they’re planning to convert into a gym and coffee hub for entertaining visitors, as well as a couple more sheds that could do with a facelift. Sandra and Ross have also just finished work on the house James is moving into. Meanwhile, they say retirement is “brilliant” and they’ve enjoyed travels through America and spending time with friends on their yacht in the Bahamas and Tahiti.
“We not the kind of people who do nothing,” Sandra says. “We’re up for a challenge, but definitely no more businesses and nothing involving diesel or wheels. But we keep thinking about another project, so perhaps we have another renovation in us.” AC
