Research Leads organised by Type of Place

• Overview
• Research Leads organised by Type of Place
  • Cemeteries
  • Cinemas
  • Dwellings
  • Gaols
  • Hotels
  • Institute Buildings
  • Jetties and Landing Places
  • Lighthouses
  • Memorials
  • Mines
  • Museums
  • Parks and Reserves (under the National Parks & Wildlife Act)
  • Place names
  • Ports and Harbours
  • Railway Structures
  • Shipwrecks
  • Tramway Structures
  • Whaling and Sealing

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Overview

Guide to Heritage Agencies in South Australia

The Heritage Branch as a Resource for Researchers (50Kb PDF)

Research Leads organised by Type of Place

Cemeteries

The monuments in cemeteries can be of interest in their own right. There are usually some particularly fine examples of stone masonry, and sometimes headstones made of less common materials such as timber, slate and cast iron. The symbolism featured on some monuments is a study of its own, while the inscriptions contain a great deal of history. Most of the State's cemeteries (over 600) have had their inscriptions transcribed by volunteers from the South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society, which maintains a single alphabetical index to them, arranged by surname. The index and a great many other resources for family history research are available in the Society's library.

Cinemas

Motion pictures in the form we now know them arrived in South Australia on the afternoon of 19 October 1896, when some short films were exhibited in the now demolished Theatre Royal, Hindley Street, Adelaide.

The use of existing halls and theatres was typical of the early years of the cinema, and it was another 14 years before Adelaide's first permanent picture theatre opened on 5 December 1908. This was TJ West's Olympia in Hindley Street, which opened in a building that had previously housed a skating rink (D Walker Adelaide's Silent Nights Canberra 1996).

Two cinema chains came to dominate the early decades of cinema in South Australia. Ozone Amusements Ltd, formed in 1911, began screening films in the Semaphore Town Hall (now the Semaphore Public Library) and opened their first purpose-built picture theatre, the Port Ozone, in St Vincent Street, Port Adelaide in 1913. (Demolished 1979). The Ozone chain grew to include cinemas at Semaphore, Alberton, Enfield, Prospect, Marryatville, Renmark, Broken Hill, Murray Bridge, Port Pirie and Victor Harbor. (News 5.11.1937)

Dan Clifford's 'Star' Theatre chain began in 1916 or 1917 when he leased the Torrensville Star Theatre on Henley Beach Road and the Hindmarsh Town Hall. Clifford's subsequent acquisitions included the suburban circuit of the Greater Wondergraph Company in September 1920. He formed Star Pictures Ltd in 1922, but in April 1923 the company name changed to D Clifford Theatres Ltd. Star Pictures' first purpose-built theatre was the Norwood Star (1923), corner of Queen Street and The Parade. Other theatres built for the Company were at Parkside (1923), Murray Bridge (1924), St Peters (1925), Unley (1928), Mt Gambier (1928), Kingswood (1939), North Adelaide (1940) and Goodwood (1941).

Star Pictures' also entered into joint arrangements with local councils, which led to the construction of the Woodville (1927), Thebarton (1928) and Hindmarsh (1936) Town Halls. The Company was sold to Greater Union Theatres Pty Ltd in 1947, and the name Star was gradually replaced with Odeon. (J Thiele & R Lange Thanks for the Memory Goodwood 1991)

Talking pictures came to South Australia in 1929. The next major innovation was drive-in theatres, starting with the Blueline at West Beach on 28 December 1954. A good deal of information on Australian and South Australian drive-ins is on the Drive-ins Downunder web site. The advent of cinemascope and even wider screen films led to remodelling of screens in conventional cinemas, but the coming of television (1959) had more drastic results. Declining audiences led many cinemas to close, with conversion to supermarkets being a common fate outside of the City of Adelaide. As competition for the leisure dollar increased, twinning and tripling of the larger surviving theatres became a popular strategy.

A small number of cinemas are entered as State Heritage Places in the SA Heritage Register. The former Semaphore Ozone Theatre, originally constructed as the Semaphore Institute (1884), now houses the Semaphore Public Library, which means its fine interior can be readily viewed. The Piccadilly (1940) in O'Connell St, North Adelaide, is a good example of an art deco cinema. So too is the Capri (1941) on Goodwood Rd, originally named the New Goodwood Star, which also features South Australia's only theatre organ operating in a working cinema. The Capri is owned by the Theatre Organ Society of Australia (SA Division), and the Society's web site includes photographs of the Capri's interior and links to other theatre and organ history societies.

Other cinemas which are State Heritage Places include the former Capitol Theatre (1926) at Peterborough, the former Lobethal Cinema (1936) at Lobethal and the Chelsea Cinema (1925) at Kensington Park.

Dwellings

The following is a selection of former homes of South Australians which are open for public inspection. Information about the more notable owners can be found in the multi-volume Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966- ) and information about the buildings in booklets and pamphlets available on site. In some cases opening hours and contact details are available on the Collections Australia Network web site.

Gaols

Gaols open for public inspection include the State's first, the Adelaide Gaol (1841); the Redruth Gaol at Burra (1856), which was the first outside of Adelaide; the Mount Gambier Gaol (1865), which now serves as a backpackers hostel; and the Gladstone Gaol (1881).

Hotels

The history of a hotel building can provide insights into many aspects of a locality's history. Commonly one of the first buildings in a settlement, providing food, drink and lodging, hotels often also served as meeting places for local councils, sporting clubs and friendly societies, were the venues for theatrical performances, dances, darts and skittles, and sometimes served as post offices, morgues and venues for inquests.

Over time physical evidence of some former roles has become rare. Commercial travellers once used hotels as venues to display their wares, and a Sample Room survives at the rear of the Jubilee (former Royal Exchange) Hotel in Port Pirie. Some hotel yards retain stables from the coaching days.

Design aspects of interest include the transition from single to double-storey structures, the widespread use of decorative cast iron on balconies and verandahs, and the changes which resulted from the introduction of six o'clock closing in 1916 and its abolition in 1967. Corner locations were popular, presumably because of the benefits to trade of exposure to two streets.

Hotel names may also hold some history. They may relate to location (Railway, Newmarket, Gasworks), be reminders of countries of origin (German Arms, Robin Hood, Prince of Wales), relate to trades (Joiners' Arms), commemorate significant events (Federal, Pretoria), or simply adopt place names (Woodville, Finsbury). In addition, their locations may serve as evidence of transport routes now forgotten, with early country hotels being a day's journey by bullock dray apart.

RL Hoad Hotels and Publicans in South Australia 1836-1984 (Australian Hotels Association [SA Branch] & Gould Books 1986) is the standard reference work for hotels and their licensees. A second edition updated to March 1993 was published posthumously in a limited print run in 1999.

According to Hoad (2nd edition, p8) the oldest hotel licence in South Australia (31 March 1837) is held by the Edinburgh Castle Hotel (originally known as 'Guthrie's') in Currie Street, Adelaide, and the oldest hotel building with its original façade is the Rob Roy in Halifax Street, Adelaide, a portion of which dates from 1842.

The introductory chapters of P Sumerling's book on the hotels of Kensington, Norwood and Kent Town, Down at the Local (City of Norwood, Payneham and St Peters, 1998), provide an overview of the social history of hotels and their evolution in South Australia.

Institute Buildings

In the days before free local public libraries became common - Elizabeth was South Australia's first in 1957 - Institutes and their associated subscription libraries and provision of community halls and meeting rooms were important centres of activity. The first ones, sometimes called Mechanics Institutes, were established in the 1840s. Numbers peaked at 309 in 1933 and as late as 1980 there were still 136 of them, but today only a handful still function, having been superseded by over 130 public libraries.

Some of the more notable ones had very substantial buildings, a few of which were taken over by the local councils and became town halls. However, even the humblest of Institutes will generally have witnessed many 'entertainments', lectures, meetings, dances and film shows while also providing both light and serious reading to educate and sustain the residents of their district. The following information on three of the more notable institute buildings that are State Heritage Places gives a taste of what can be discovered.

The Institute Building on the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue, Adelaide, is the oldest Institute building entered in the SA Heritage Register and the oldest cultural building on North Terrace. The Institute of the title refers to the South Australian Institute, established by Act of Parliament in 1856. In 1884 it became the Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery, a combined body, which 56 years later split into its component parts.

The southernmost half of the building is the original portion, and was occupied in 1860 and formally opened on 29 January 1861. Its south-western room was the public reading room and also doubled as a lecture hall. Upstairs, the long narrow space across the northern end of the original building was the first permanent home of the South Australian Institute Museum (now the SA Museum), Adelaide's first, which was established in 1856 and opened to the public in January 1862. The building itself was quite sophisticated, with a ventilation system within the walls and roof lights over the museum which could be covered by 'slides' worked from inside.

The Gawler Institute was founded in October 1857 and moved into its own building in Murray Street in 1871. It remained there until 1985 when it was superseded by the Gawler Public Library, which still occupies the building.

Gawler's Institute was a particularly innovative body, sponsoring a national song competition which led to the composition of the Song of Australia (1859) and in 1860 a prize for the best history of South Australia which led Henry Hussey to compile a history of the then young Colony that was later adapted and used by Edwin Hodder in his two volume The History of South Australia from its foundation to the year of its jubilee: … (1893).

The Institute also established a museum (c1859) which appears to have been the Colony's first outside Adelaide. Its inaugural curator, Dr Richard Schomburgk, was later to be one of the more notable Directors of Adelaide's Botanic Gardens.

The Port Adelaide Institute was founded in 1859 at the third attempt. Its longtime home (1876-1959) survives on the north corner of Commercial Rd and Nile St. It incorporated reading rooms, a residence for the librarian, a book bindery, what is thought to be the second public art gallery in the Colony (1880), and one of the earliest museums (1872). As well as sustaining a substantial library, the Institute also organised lectures, classes and other educational activities. In 1900 it had the most subscribers of any Institute library outside of Adelaide. Its general museum became a nautical museum in 1933, and was believed to be the oldest such museum in Australia when it was absorbed into the SA Maritime Museum in the 1980s.

There are many other Institute buildings entered in State and local heritage registers. Local histories will generally provide a starting point for information about them, while Michael Talbot's A Chance to Read: a History of the Institutes Movement in South Australia (Adelaide, 1992) provides a good overview of their achievements and the workings of the voluntary committees which ran them for so many years. Further information on those mentioned above can be found in EH Coombe History of Gawler, 1837 to 1908 (Gawler, 1910); GL Fischer 'Henry Hussey's "History of South Australia"', South Australiana vol. VIII no. 1 March 1969, pp17-24; FE Meleng Fifty Years of the Port Adelaide Institute... (Adelaide, 1902); M Page Port Adelaide and its Institute 1851-1979 (Adelaide, 1981) and C Bridge A Trunk Full of Books: History of the State Library of South Australia and its Forerunners (Adelaide, 1986).

Jetties and Landing Places

South Australia has a much larger number of jetties than most of the other Australian States, as the two gulfs put much farming land within easy reach of the sea. A large fleet of small coastal sailing vessels (mainly ketches) developed to service these landing places and carry cargo to the major ports. The surviving jetties of the Fleurieu Peninsula are reminders of the agricultural development of the area in the 1840s and 1850s. The jetties of Yorke Peninsula followed in the wake of its subdivision for agriculture from the mid-1860s. Several metropolitan jetties were built with shipping rather than recreation in mind, most notably the original jetties at Glenelg (1859), Semaphore (1860) and Largs (1882).

Lighthouses

Lighthouses perform a vital role in the guiding of vessels. The State's oldest, Cape Willoughby Lighthouse on Kangaroo Island, was completed in 1852 to mark Backstairs Passage, between the Island and the mainland, and was named 'Sturt's Light' in honour of the noted explorer Captain Charles Sturt.

Many of the earlier lighthouses were built in direct response to shipwrecks in waters around Kangaroo Island, Yorke Peninsula and the South East coast. The technology of the lights themselves was generally based on lamps and mechanisms imported from England, but the lighthouse buildings illustrate various designs adapted to the particular environments in which they were built. Covering some of the most rugged and remote coasts of South Australia, lighthouses and their associated quarters and landings are a reminder of the difficulties faced by both the builders and the lighthouse keepers and their families.

After the Commonwealth took over the care and control of all Australian lighthouses in the first decades of the 20th century, lighthouse design became more standardised. More recently, with the advent of automatic lights and satellite navigation systems, many South Australian lighthouses have been de-manned.

Lighthouses open for public inspection include the Cape Jaffa Lighthouse, now located on shore at Kingston in the South East and managed by the Kingston Branch of the National Trust, and the former South Neptune Island Lighthouse, now located at Port Adelaide and forming part of the South Australian Maritime Museum. R.H. Parsons Lighthouses of South Australia (The author, 1997), G Reid From Dusk To Dawn: a history of Australian Lighthouses (MacMillan 19880, John Ibbotson's Lighthouses of Australia: images from the end of an era (Australian Lighthouse Traders, 2001) and Lighthouses of Australia: a visitor's guide (Australian Lighthouse Traders, 2003) are useful resources, as is the web site Lighthouses of Australia.

Memorials

Memorials are interesting for both who and what they commemorate and for the history of how they came to be erected. A useful list of memorials of State significance, which also includes a guide to sources, is South Australian Memorials 1802-1935. The web site War Memorials in Australia has detailed information on several hundred South Australian memorials, including photos and records of the inscriptions. The RSL's South Australian War Memorials site is also very useful. As well as these 'public' memorials, there are of course thousands of others in the over 600 cemeteries scattered across the State.

Especially useful recent publications are Simon Cameron’s Silent Witnesses: Adelaide’s Statues and Monuments (Adelaide 1997) and F Paul Bulbeck’s Some Plaques and Memorials of South Australia Volume 1 Adelaide (Adelaide 1998), Some Plaques and Memorials of South Australia Volume 2 Part 1 of Greater Adelaide (Adelaide 2000) and subsequent volumes. Biographies of the people commemorated by the plaques along the northern footpath of North Terrace, Adelaide, which were installed as a Jubilee 150 project, are detailed in John Healey (ed) SA’s Greats (Kent Town 2001).

Mines

Copper mining was one of the Colony's major nineteenth century industries and literally put many towns on the map, including Kapunda, Burra and Moonta. Mr Greg Drew has produced pamphlets and booklets on several mining towns and sites which are retailed by PIRSA Minerals, 101 Grenfell Street, Adelaide. A bibliography of Australian mining history is maintained by the Australian Mining History Association.

Museums

Parks and Reserves (under the National Parks & Wildlife Act)

Parks and Reserves are generally established to protect the natural environment. Nevertheless, there are a considerable number of built heritage places within parks which are State Heritage Places entered in the South Australian Heritage Register. They are listed on ParksWeb.

In addition, Belair National Park and Cleland Conservation Park are entered in the Register in their entirety. Belair is notable as South Australia's first national park (1891) and was the second in Australia after Royal National Park (1879) near Sydney. Cleland now contains two reserves dating from the nineteenth century, Mount Lofty Summit and Waterfall Gully, which are significant as long established tourist attractions.

Place names

Place names are an often overlooked aspect of our heritage. Potential studies include the adoption of Aboriginal names, the borrowing of names from settlers' homelands and the abolition of German place names during the First World War. The most authoritative guide is GH Manning Manning's Place Names of South Australia from Aaron Creek to Zion Hill (Gould Books 2006) which is also available as a CD.

Place names can serve as reminders of now vanished features. Fulham was originally known as the Reedbeds, after the reedbeds through which the waters of the River Torrens found their way into the Port River before Breakout Creek was created (that occurred in the 1930s to divert the waters of the Torrens out to sea and thereby mitigate flooding). Similarly, the suburb of Black Forest once featured eucalypts with dark-coloured bark.

The names of streets and other features can also serve as clues to structures that no longer exist. Water Streets may indicate the presence of wells, there are many Church and Chapel Streets and Railway Terraces, while the Windmill Hotel on Main North Road, Prospect, was first licensed in 1843 when a nearby windmill served the farmers of the northern plains.

Occasionally there are deliberate associations of street names with their suburb's name. Flinders Park commemorates the explorer Matthew Flinders and many of its streets are named after other famous seamen. Hendon incorporates the site of a former aerodrome and some of its streets are named after famous makes of aircraft.

Ports and Harbours

Following the arrival of the first colonising vessels in South Australia in 1836, development of the new colony was largely dependent on the establishment of a safe harbour and port facilities which allowed the movement of vessels, cargoes and passengers from other Australian colonies and overseas. Port Adelaide was the result. As settlement spread, outports developed to service the transport and communication needs of local farmers and other settlers. Significant ports for the export trade included Port Augusta, Port Pirie and Port Germein. The River Murray developed as a major inland waterway from the 1850s, and river ports such as Goolwa, Mannum and Morgan were established.

As technological changes introduced more effective transportation systems, many of these ports have fallen into decline, but reminders of their maritime heritage are still evident in buildings, local museum collections, memorials and shipwrecks. Local histories are generally the most accessible sources for the history of the outports, supplemented by RH Parsons Southern Passages: a maritime history of South Australia (Wakefield Press 1986).

Railway Structures

Railways have been of immense significance to the development of the State. Early lines often linked ports with their hinterlands, and it was not until the 1880s that most country lines were connected to Adelaide. The Colony's first railway was the horse-powered Goolwa - Port Elliot line, built to connect the River Murray trade to an ocean port, which opened in 1854. The 1852 Railway Superintendent's House and the 1862 stables still stand at Goolwa. The first steam railway was the Adelaide - Port Adelaide line of 1856 and two of the original stations survive at Bowden and Alberton. The oldest country station building is at Kapunda (1860) and dates from the opening of the line from Adelaide via Gawler. The National (formerly Port Dock Station) Railway Museum at Port Adelaide is South Australia's major railway museum. There are also several other historic railway groups which maintain working railways, most notably SteamRanger and the Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society. The SteamRanger Links page provides a good guide to other groups.

Shipwrecks

For the early European settlers, sea transport was the life-line for South Australia's development, providing the only link back home and the principal means of transporting people and cargo around South Australia and the other Australian colonies.

With so many vessels either visiting or working in coastal and inland waters, it was inevitable that some would be unlucky. Around 750 vessels are known to have been wrecked in South Australian waters, with approximately 200 of these sites known and identified. The Australian National Shipwrecks Database and NatureMaps contain data on these.

The shipwrecks which lie in South Australian waters represent the types of vessels and many of the activities associated with the development of the colony. They range from international immigrant and cargo vessels to local service and fishing craft. The earliest recorded wreck was the South Australian at Encounter Bay in December 1837, while the earliest located wreck is the Solway, an immigrant vessel, also lost at Encounter Bay in December 1837.

Shipwrecks and shipwreck artefacts offer a fascinating glimpse into the past - each has a story to tell. The remains of vessels provide significant details about ship type and construction, while cargo and the possessions of crew and passengers provide insights into the social and technological history of the era.

Tramway Structures

South Australia's first horse trams ran from Adelaide to Kensington in 1878 and Adelaide was the first Australian capital to develop a tramway system as opposed to isolated lines. Horse tram barns survive on Main North Road, Prospect and at 179 Magill Road, Maylands. The latter has been adapted as home units. Electric trams began to supersede horsepower in 1909 and remained a significant mode of transport until 1958, by when all but the Adelaide - Glenelg line had closed. The major memorials to the electric trams are the former Municipal Tramways Trust Tram Barns and Administration ('Goodman') Building on Hackney Road, Adelaide. The Tramway Museum at St Kilda, north of Adelaide, has good displays and a representative collection of tramcars operating on a few kilometres of track.

Whaling and Sealing

Whaling and Sealing were South Australia's first industries, predating formal colonisation in 1836. The sites and activities of whalers and sealers also represent the first European contact with Indigenous people in many instances.

Whaling and sealing are known to have been carried out at numerous bays, points, and offshore islands along the coast from the Head of the Bight to the Victorian border. These activities involved crews from America, England and France as well as Van Diemen's Land and local South Australian companies. The legacy of whaling and sealing includes stone structures, shipwrecks and artefacts such as bone, trypots, harpoons and household items. For further information refer to P Kostoglou & J McCarthy Whaling and Sealing Sites in South Australia, South Australian Maritime Archaeology Series No. 2. (Department of Environment and Planning, 1991) AIMA Special Publication No. 6.