A Bank Vault's Deadly Math Pandora's Vault Rural Snowtown, about 150 kilometres north of Adelaide, is home to between 500 and 600 people. Not far from the little wheat-belt community, one low range of hills breaks up kilometres of flat farmland stretching to each horizon. Like most South Australian bush towns, Snowtown has weathered the backwash of the State s economic misfortunes.
Housing is cheap, but jobs and services are on the decline in the country.
While ambitious youngsters head into the city in search of tertiary education and work, many of the urban poor and unemployed are attracted to rural centres, the only places they could ever afford a home. It is an economically-driven pattern now reflected in every Australian State. In the early 80s, I recall passing through Snowtown. Snowtown s aura held no trace of the tension and menace usually associated with cities. In the final stages of a complex, year-long missing persons investigation, police entered the former Snowtown branch of the State Bank of South Australia.