Salisbury - The Agricultural Village within a Modern City
with Keith Conlon

Occasionally the urban area to the north of Adelaide shows signs of its past, and if you know where to look in Salisbury there is evidence of a close-knit community that became a sprawling city. In modern Salisbury there is a linear park all the way along the Little Para as it meanders out of the Para hills. It was home to big clans of Kaurna people before the first signs of British settlement on the northern plains.

Half way between Adelaide and Gawler the Old Spot Hotel was an early arrival on its banks. A young Scotsman first stayed here on his spring-cart mail run, took the licence eventually, and then decided to raise his family further down the river. The future town of Salisbury was to be his creation.

The symbolic centre of Salisbury today is the John Street Mall. It has always been the shopping street for the region, even when it was an agricultural village amid the hay farms that supplied the hungry horses of Adelaide. John Street was named by Salisbury's founder John Harvey - not after himself, but his son. He may have started out as a labourer from northern Scotland, but he bought a slab of land here and shortly after subdivided it for sale in his new town..and it made him a big quid!! The village began in 1848, and John Harvey lived on John Street, about in the middle of where the big Parabanks Shopping Centre is now. There are several remnant giants from the gum tree drive that led in from his front gate, and they now flank the entrance to the centre.

John Harvey was canny. He built a pub on what he hoped would become a major transport route over the Little Para for north-south bullock wagon traffic. The Salisbury Hotel is till there on Commercial Road, although old photos show it once had two storeys. Until the 1950's it looked towards the eastern hills with only farms in the way.

If you need evidence that there is a country town hidden away in contemporary Salisbury, come through to the front door of the City Council building next to the Parabanks car park. It sits in what was John Harvey's horse paddock, and in front of it is a strangely disconnected little pioneer churchyard cemetery. What local sagas and sorrows it must hold. Somewhat incongruously, the local brewer lies in a Methodist plot. Down on the river there is just a metre-high stretch of stone wall left of his brewery.

The grave yard is still here, but where is its Church? On the John Street and Church Street corner, the Hepzibah Methodist Church stood until 1961 when the big shops and suburbs began to transform the northern plains.

In the new community Library on John Street, local historian Jim Potter and Librarian Theresa O'Grady work on cataloguing a big collection of old Salisbury town photographs. The railway station was demolished to make way for the Salisbury interchange, the three-storey landmark flour mill nearby is gone to let the new highway alignment through. The recently-lost Governor McDonnell Hotel went for the same reason and is sadly missed. It was built to greet the new train service in the 1850's.

Gone, too, is the John Street home of a bootmaker's daughter in whom the town took enormous pride. A special display case (now in the library) celebrates the achievement of Dr. Ruby Davy, the first woman to achieve a doctorate at the University of Adelaide. She left her little town on the plains to make a brilliant piano-playing and composing career in Melbourne.

Right up until the 1950's, Salisbury remained a farming town amid a sea of paddocks. Its small 140-year-old arches-fronted police station was sufficient for the district's needs, having been granted after an official request to South Australia's first elected Parliament.

There is more of the old town still standing, all within a block or two of the shopping centres that dominate central Salisbury. The Institute dates from the 1880's and still serves as a community centre. The old primary school across the road was one of the first batch to offer free education in the state. It is now part of the TAFE campus. And then there are the churches.

St. Augustine's Catholic Church would grace any proud country town, with its high gothic gable and squared stone tower. It took seven years to build in the 1850's, when the Victorian gold rush lured almost every labourer and tradesman. Its cemetery is a long way north, with old tombstones of Irish settlers and post war full canopy headstones signifying the Italian and Greek influx to grow vegetables and oranges along the Little Para.

On the seaward side of Salisbury, the Anglicans first built a tiny church-school-overnight stop for the visiting priest. That's why it has a chimney. It's dwarfed by the fine gothic St. Johns Church, built of Para Hills stone in the 1860's. It suffered a calamitions fire, however, in 1989, and now the parish is slowly renovating it within.

John Harvey was only 19 when he gained free passage to the young colony. When he was buried in St. John's churchyard among other early townsfolk, it was as a widely known pioneer and father of Salisbury. He was sent a wreath from the Royal Show Society - he had served as a judge and committeeman, particularly involved in breeding his beloved horses. He was also the first elected MP for the district.

His agricultural village is still evident in the middle of the now sprawling modern city of Salisbury.

Salisbury Details:

Local History Room
Len Beadell Library (central branch)
55 John Street,
Salisbury. SA 5108
- Teresa O'Grady
phone: 8406-8207
email - to'grady@salisbury.sa.gov.au

Salisbury Historical Society
Jim Potter
C/- Local History Room (see above)

Salisbury Water Wheel Museum
Commercial Road, Salisbury
(on the Little Para River)
Open 1st and 3rd Sundays - 2.00pm to 4.00pm

Salisbury Old Police Station Folk Museum
Open Wednesday and Sundays 2.00pm to 4.00pm

Salisbury City Council website
www.salisbury.sa.gov.au