Sir Charles Todd
15 November 1872 Sir Charles Todd On 15 November 1872 the Post-Master General and Superintendant of Telegraphs, Charles Todd, was given a public demonstration of appreciation on the completion of the Overland Telegraph lines to Darwin. In 1870 the South Australian Government entered into an agreement by which the British and Australian Telegraph Company agreed to connect Singapore with Port Darwin by cable and the colony was to construct an overland line across the continent. Charles Todd was given the task of overseeing the erection of the line which followed, roughly, the route taken by Stuart. Through this vast treeless, largely desert country a line of 1755 miles was erected using 36,000 poles of timber, some carted hundreds of miles, at a cost of £480,000. Work was begun at each end and the wires met at the centre of the continent in August 1872. Todd, using a small pocket set, made the first two-way communication with England from a camp at Central Mount Stuart. Todd was later conferred with an honorary degree (MA) from Cambridge in 1886, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1889, and received a knighthood (KCMG) in 1893. H.M. Cooper, A Naval History of South Australia, Adelaide, 1950, p.94.
Pastor Kavel And Captain Hahn
16 November 1838 Pastor Kavel and Captain Hahn On 16 November 1838 Pastor August Kavel, a Lutheran minister, and about 250 people who had fled from religious persecution in Prussia, arrived in Port Adelaide in two ships from Hamburg. Their passage had been made possible with the help of George Fife Angas. At first they set up huts on land owned by Angas to the north of Adelaide and called their village Klemzig. The rental was to be £10 per acre per year. Early in 1839 a further group of Germans arrived in the Danish ship Zebra , captained by Dirk Hahn. It was first intended that they should join Kavel’s people at Klemzig, but Captain Hahn determined to see them properly settled. On the invitation of William Dutton he accompanied him and his two partners to inspect land they were having surveyed at Mount Barker, which greatly impressed Hahn. An agreement was reached whereby Dutton and his partners would rent 150 acres to the immigrants and help them become established by providing them with animals and seed on credit until they could harvest their first produce. In early March after an arduous trek from Port Adelaide they began to build their village of Hahndorf. The industrious Germans, both men and women, through sheer hard work overcame the difficulties and trials of starting with nothing and after many years of hard struggle were able to buy their land and repay their debts to Dutton and Angas for their passage money. Anni Luur Fox, Hahndorf , Fox Publishing, 1977, pp.9-22.
Wonga Shoal
17 November 1912 Wonga Shoal Just after daybreak on 17 November 1912 a young lad noticed that the Wonga Shoal light, nearly two miles off the Semaphore jetty had disappeared. He hurriedly told his father, a local pilot, who took some convincing until he reached the Esplanade and could see for himself. During the night the ship Dimsdale sailing towards the anchorage crashed into the lighthouse, knocking it over and the two keepers were drowned. The lighthouse, completed by July 1901, was an iron structure on screw piles with accommodation for two keepers. The revolving light, weighing 11 tons floating on a bath of mercury weighing 5 tons, was 74 feet above the highwater and was visible for 19 miles. After the destruction of the light a temporary lightship was moored on the spot and was replaced in 1923 by a new structure fitted on to the old screw piles. This served until 1962 when with the erection of a new lighthouse on O’Halloran Hill at Marino Rocks, which covered the Wonga Shoal sector (Wonga being Aboriginal for west or sunset) it was removed. Captain J. Maitland Thompson, ‘Wonga Shoal’ The First 100 Years of Semaphore 1883-1983 , pp.19-20.
Christmas Pageant
18 November 1933 Christmas Pageant The first John Martin’s Christmas pageant paraded through the streets of Adelaide, from Angas Street to the store in Rundle Street, on Saturday 18 November 1933. Aeroplanes flew low over the city with loud hailers to advertise the event. The cast ranged from the ‘Old woman who lived in a shoe’ to the one and only Father Christmas. The most ambitious float was a battle cruiser, manned by a female crew, and complete with guns, Britannia and John Bull with bulldog. Thousands of people lined the street to see the eight floats with three bands. Apart from five years during the war (1940-44) the pageant has thrilled young and old every November and over the years has grown larger and more spectacular. In 1987 there were 72 sets which included 61 floats, 16 bands from the city and country towns and over 1300 people taking part. Traditionally the Pageant was set off, right on time, when Sir Edward Hayward blew a whistle; he did this every year until his death in 1983. From 1986 the State Bank joined forces with John Martin’s and now, this well-loved annual event goes under the banner of the Credit Unions. In 2009 the pageant had 3873 volunteers in the parade and behind the scenes working hard to present the spectacle. Advertiser , 20 November 1933.
Electric Power
19 November 1901 Electric Power Electric power came to Adelaide, officially, when the Grenfell Street Power Station was opened by the Lady Mayoress on 19 November 1901, with some 800 of Adelaide’s leading citizens and their wives gathered to see the lights go on. The Electric Lighting and Traction Company (later to become Adelaide Electric Supply Company) had supplied some electricity to Port Adelaide and to a few business houses in the city from temporary power stations, but the opening of the Grenfell Street power house saw the beginnings of the supply to the city and later the suburbs, and eventually in 1909 the electrification of the tramway system. As nearly always with a new innovation there were the opponents and critics. Some parliamentarians argued against its introduction on the grounds that the formation of a company could create a monopoly, that the supply of electricity was seen as unprofitable, unreliable and dangerous, and it meant digging up the roads to lay cables. It was even suggested, after an influenza outbreak, that this was due to the removal from the atmosphere of electricity which was vital to the health of the community. Such are the trials of new inventions. The Grenfell Street station was shut down in 1925 after the Osborne power station took over all operations. The building was later used as a Trades School and later still became Tandyana – the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute. Colin and Margaret Kerr, The Vital Spark , Unpub MS, ETSA, 1979, pp.19-23.
George Goyder
2 November 1898 George Goyder George Goyder, Surveyor-General of the colony of South Australia from 1861-94 died on 2 November 1898 at his estate near Echunga. In 1865 following a severe drought the Commissioner of Crown Lands asked Goyder to make an examination of the country to the north to map a line of demarcation between higher rainfall areas suitable for agriculture and the dryer areas more suited to pastoral activities. Goyder took a zig-zag course from Adelaide to the Murray and north to Melrose and the Flinders Ranges and was guided in drawing the imaginary line by the appearance and character of salt and other edible bushes. His line is still regarded as a good guide to the type of country in those areas and on the one occasion when the government sanctioned the use of some of his designated dryer areas for agriculture the results were disastrous. Goyder was also in charge of the surveying of Port Darwin in 1869. He was a very competent and efficient man and in six months there were 665,866 acres surveyed and ready for selection. In the 1860s Goyder was involved in the drainage scheme for the south-east area of the colony. In all ways he served the colony well. Mail , 2 April 1927.
Birdwood Mill Museum
20 November 1965 Birdwood Mill Museum The Birdwood Mill Museum, which houses many old motor vehicles and is the National Motor Museum, was opened on 20 November 1965. Fritz (Friedrich) Pflaum was 21 when he arrived in South Australia and settled in Blumberg as Birdwood was then called. Within a year he bought the general store and Post Office and it remained in the Pflaum family for 100 years until, much modified, it became the Tea Rooms in the Birdwood Mill complex. Fritz’s brother, Theo, came to join him in 1869 and in the early 1870s they leased the town’s flour mill, then owned by William Randell, which was not in use and used its power to run a wattle bark mill. The success they had with this venture enabled them to buy the mill and ten years later built the four storey structure which stands today. With the latest milling equipment installed the mill had a reputation for quality flour and it continued in business until the late 1940s. For years the brothers and their families were among the stalwarts of the town. Jim Faull and Gordon Young, People, Places and Buildings , SACAE, 19186, pp.35-40.
Thomas Pickett
21 November 1851 Thomas Pickett On 21 November 1851 an inquest was held into the death of Thomas Pickett whose body was discovered, badly burnt, in his hut near Burra. Pickett was the shepherd who first discovered the copper which proved to be the monster northern lode at Burra. It is believed that he received £10 for revealing the site and possibly a further £10 from the ‘Snobs’ when they acquired the land, but subsequently all requests, from other people, for some remuneration or assistance for the ageing man were ignored. In 1851 he was working as a woodcutter and living in a small hut at Hallett’s Springs about three miles from Kooringa. The inquest found that the old man, while drunk, fell into the fire and his body was found by a young boy several days after his death. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the old Burra cemetery and a month later, after a private appeal to the directors of the mine, they agreed to pay the costs of the funeral. It was not until September 1971 that recognition of his discovery was made in the form of a plaque on a stone from the engine house of the Monster Mine which reads: Thomas Pickett whose discovery of copper led to the opening of the Burra Burra Mine – 29the September 1845 – lived opposite here in his shepherd’s hut on Deprose Creek Ian Auhl, The Story of the ‘Monster Mine’ , Investigator Press, 1986, pp.59-61.
Pitjantjatjara Land Rights
22 November 1978 Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Introducing legislation to give the Pitjantjatjara people rights to their tribal land in the north-west of South Australia on 22 November 1978, the Premier, Don Dunstan, said that the Bill recognised the ‘fundamental and inalienable role that the Pitjantjatjara play in the heritage of the State’. The Bill sought to transfer control of the reserve to the traditional owners and a select committee, after hearing arguments from other interests, mainly pastoral and mining, that this would create ‘a state within a state’ recommended only minor amendments. The Bill was still before parliament when Labor lost office in September 1979. The new Tonkin Government decided to amend the Bill specifically to facilitate mining operations in the area. Protests by Pitjantjatjara people and supporters, favourably reported in the media, may have helped carry negotiations to a satisfactory agreement in October 1980 for the transfer of 100,000 square kilometres of land with provision for arbitration of any disputes between the Aborigines and mining companies. The Act was passed on 19 March 1981 and was the first land rights legislation in Australia which was the product of negotiations between the government and an Aboriginal group. John Summers ‘Aborigines and Government in the Twentieth Century’, Eric Richards (ed), The Flinders History of South Australia Social History , 1986, pp.503-05.
Migration Museum
23 November 1986 Migration Museum The Migration and Settlement Museum on Kintore Avenue was opened by the Premier, John Bannon, on 23 November 1986. Situated in part of what was once the Destitute Asylum the museum traces the development of today’s multicultural society in South Australia. As well as the British colonists South Australia’s early immigrants also included Germans, Poles, Scandinavians, Lebanese, Afghans, Swedes and Danes who sometimes jumped ship, and even some South Americans who worked as muleteers in Burra and Port Wakefield. This social history museum, the first of its type in Australia, concentrates on showing the lives of ordinary people and how they influenced the development of South Australia by bringing with them knowledge and skills from their home countries and also their achievements in the new land. What were at one time the women’s and children’s wards, hospital and chapel of the old Asylum form the main display area of the museum approached through a pleasant courtyard. ‘Moving In, Settling Down’, The Advertiser Magazine, 22 November 1986.