title: Oodla Wirra, South Australia
text: # Oodla Wirra, South Australia
  
  Oodla Wirra (formerly Penn) is a small town in the upper Mid North of South Australia. It is on the Barrier Highway approximately halfway from Adelaide to Broken Hill.
  
  When the railway was built in 1880, a siding was provided, named Oodla Wirra. Soon after, a town was surveyed near the siding, but it was named Penn. This naming conflict continued until 1940, when the town was renamed Oodla Wirra, to match the railway station.
  
  ## Railway
  
  Oodla Wirra is a former railway town, as it was on the narrow-gauge railway between Port Pirie and Cockburn (where it connected to the Silverton Tramway to Broken Hill). When the Commonwealth Government replaced the narrow gauge line with a standard gauge line, the revised route passed south and east of the town.
  
  A railway employee was killed in a shunting accident in the Oodla Wirra railyards in 1909.
  
  In 1889, ironstone flux was mined from a failed silver mine a few miles away, and carted to Oodla Wirra to be transported by rail to the smelters at Port Pirie.
  
  