Tanunda - Culture and History

Prior to European settlement a small number of Aborigines were well established in the district. They lived on a diet of grass seeds (made into a kind of damper), kangaroos, wallabies, possums, lizards and fish and protected themselves against the winter cold with possum skin rugs. Their life was simple but perfectly in tune with the climate, flora and fauna of the region.

Soon after the arrival of colonists in South Australia in July, 1836 expeditions were sent out to explore the hinterland. By December 1837 explorers had reached Lyndoch and by 1838 other explorers had reached the Murray River passing through the Barossa Valley. The valley was named by Colonel Light after Barrosa (Hill of Roses) in Spain where he had fought against the French in 1811 in the Peninsula War. The spelling mistake was never corrected.

By 1839 Colonel Light, the Surveyor General of South Australia, was selling off large tracts of land in the valley. German settlers arrived in Langmeil (it changed its name to Tanunda) in 1842 as a result of the work of Pastor Augustus Kavel who had contracted for the land on 30 June, 1839. For years people believed that Tanunda was a German name. In 1859 a local paper, The Register, published the note: 'Tanunda is not, as many suppose, German, but a native appellation of the ancient lords of the soil, and has reference to the waters that skirt the place the year round.'

In its early years the town was the very essence of German Lutheranism. There was a German newspaper (1855), a number of Lutheran churches, a brass band, a German 9 pin bowling alley and even a liedertafel (choir).

Today the town continues to have a distinctly German feel with sausage shops, German bread shops, German-style restaurants and lots of wine.