Map the Miner

At the southern entrance to Kapunda stands a seven-metre miner with a pick over his shoulder: Map Kernow, "the Son of Cornwall", universally known as Map the Miner. Sculptor Ben van Zetten built him for Australia's Bicentenary in 1988 as a monument to the Cornish miners whose hard-rock skills powered the town's copper boom.

He has a survivor's story of his own. In 2006 the statue was destroyed in a fire lit by a teenager attempting a photograph of Map surrounded by a "ring of fire"; the blaze did $95,000 of damage and the original had to be demolished. Van Zetten, with fellow artist Lawry Love Grima, rebuilt him tougher than before, and the new Map was rededicated on the same site on 3 June 2007.

He makes the obvious first photo stop on a Kapunda visit - follow him with the open-cut lookouts at the historic mine site and the town's excellent museum, and you'll understand why this little town calls itself the cradle of Australian mining.