Adelaide Hills - Culture and History

Once an area of small scale farming, milling and cool summer retreats, the Adelaide Hills are now one of South Australia's most popular tourist destinations.

Correctly known as the Mount Lofty Ranges the area, at various times has supported mixed farming, sheep and cattle, vineyards, flour mills, commercial vegetable gardens and a rich diversity of arts and crafts. But ultimately the small villages which nestle into the hills - Birdwood, Cudlee Creek, Blackwood, Clarendon, Glen Osmond, Gumeracha, Hahndorf, Lobethal, Mount Barker and dozens more - are now commuter zones where people escape from Adelaide's city life.

This escape from city life has a long tradition. At the Belair Recreation Park, for example, there is the beautifully preserved Old Government House where the early governors would eagerly retreat from the hot, dry summer weather of Adelaide.

The streams which flow through the hills were ideal sources of power for the establishment of flour mills. At Birdwood the famous Murray river-boat pioneer and adventurer, Captain William Randell built a mill in 1852, at Bridgewater the old flour mill is now used in the production of sparkling wines, and between Hahndorf and Mount Barker stands another disused mill.

Randell's mill, like so much of the history of the area is now home to a typical "tourist trap" which includes the National Motor Museum.

There is a toy factory at Gumeracha which, with the Australian penchant for "things big", is home to the "biggest rocking horse in the world" - an 18.3 metre high monstrosity which towers over the village.

At Kersbrook there is a trout farm, Springfield has "Carrick Hill", the former home of Sir Edward and Lady Hayward, on display, and Norton Summit boasts another vice-regal summer retreat.

The centrepiece of the whole area is, however, Hahndorf - the oldest surviving German settlement in Australia. The European flavour of the area is given special significance when the large numbers of deciduous trees turn on spectacular autumnal displays.

The novelist Barbara Hanrahan captured this European feel when she wrote of the hills that they "were more like England than any other place in the state. As well as tea-tree and wattle there were ivy bushes and oak-trees, hedges of sweet-brier and monthly roses ...Each mansion was surrounded by plants that would have died on the plains in summer. There were rhododendrons, camelias, even strawberries. In winter it was known for snow to fall."