Historians are pushing for South Australian mining towns to be recognised alongside iconic sites such as the Sydney Opera House and the Great Ocean Road.

Philip Payton, Professor of Cornish and Australian Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, said Burra in the mid-north and Moonta in northern Yorke Peninsula had international and national significance for their Cornish heritage.

Both towns are already on the SA Heritage Register but Professor Payton said they deserved a place on the National Heritage List so they could be taken to a global audience.

He said Cornish migrants flocked to South Australia in the late 1800s full of hope that the colony's copper deposits would be the key to a more prosperous future.

He said the bottom fell out of Cornwall's copper market in 1866 when scores of mines "literally closed overnight".

"Luckily for people in Cornwall and for Cornish miners, this collapse coincided with the rise of Moonta in Australia and its immediate neighbour, Wallaroo," he said.

"Suddenly, there was a reservoir of people anxious to leave because of the collapse of mining there, and they were only too keen to come to South Australia, to northern Yorke Peninsula where their skills would be recognised and well remunerated."

Cornish people flocked to Burra and beyond

Professor Payton said large numbers of Cornish immigrants had first come to SA following the discovery of copper at Burra.

When copper was later found at Moonta and nearby Wallaroo and Kadina - a three-town cluster commonly referred to as the Copper Triangle - during 1859 and 1861, Cornish people flocked to the region from Burra and also the goldfields of Victoria.

"Northern Yorke Peninsula became a mecca for people, for Cornish people from across the Australian continent but also from Cornwall itself, and very soon became established as perhaps the greatest venue for the emigrant Cornish in the 19th century," Professor Payton said.

Sorry, this video has expired Conserving the copper triangle ( Matthew Doran )

He said more than 12,000 people lived at Moonta during its peak in the 1870s, making it SA's second largest town.

Combined with Wallaroo and Kadina more than 20,000 people called the industrial hub home.

"The whole atmosphere of the place was overridingly Cornish, and that was recognised not only here and in Australia but was also recognised in Cornwall itself," Professor Payton said.

"This is one of the enduring things about Moonta, Wallaroo and Kadina, they all have a particular place in the heart of Cornish immigration."

Professor Payton said the combined output from Moonta and Wallaroo "outdid the production of mines" in Cornwall which had been in production for much longer periods.

He was inspired to push for greater recognition when the United Nation's heritage body, UNESCO, listed Cornwall's mining landscapes as world heritage sites in 2006.

"There was this sense, almost, of unfinished business, that to really recognise the Cornish mining landscape, one had to really take in the overseas places - not the least here in South Australia," Professor Payton said.

South Australia a player in the global mining scene

Australian National University archaeological surveyor Doctor Ash Lenton said the hive of industry in the Copper Triangle saved SA from bankruptcy.

The Cornish brought "massive" beam engines with them to power the mines, which stretched for hundreds of metres underground.

"Before about the 1840's, Australia was really almost entirely an agricultural economy," Dr Lenton said.

"Bringing this big, heavy industry here, really was the start of the industrial age in Australia.

Hughes Enginehouse at Moonta played a focal role in the operations of the mine. ( ABC News: Matthew Doran )

"Industry like this enabled Australia to take its place in the world.

"The metals that were produced in South Australia, and other parts of Australia as well, fed the British Empire."

Dr Lenton said that once preserved as a historical site, the region could be a classroom for his students with unique research values.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of houses and miners cottages around this place," he said.

"The miners built them themselves. They threw them up overnight after a long shift down the mine. Most of those have been lost now, but they're still an archaeological resource.

"If we can survey those and we can excavate those houses, and we can have a really close look at how working class people lived in the 19th century in South Australia.”\"

A proposal for national heritage listing will be made to the Federal Department for the Environment.