Uraidla (, ) is a small town in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. At the , Uraidla had a population of 575. However it also sits at the centre of a larger population catchment of rural townships which include Summertown, Piccadilly, Ashton, Basket Range, Carey Gully, Norton Summit and Cherryville. The name is derived from the Kaurna name Yuridla, which means "two ears" and originally referred to the two nearby peaks of

Mt Lofty Mount Lofty (, elevation AHD) is the highest point in the southern Mount Lofty Ranges. It is located about east of the Adelaide city centre, within the Cleland National Park in the Adelaide Hills area of South Australia. The mountain's su ...

and Mt Bonython, and also relates to the Dreaming story of Ngarnu, a giant from the east.

History

Once the home of the

Peramangk The Peramangk are an Aboriginal Australian people whose lands traditionally comprise the Adelaide Hills, as well as lands to the west of the Murray River in mid Murraylands and through to the northern part of the Fleurieu Peninsula in the Au ...

Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...

people, European settlement commenced in the mid nineteenth century, a primary school opened in 1871 and the town was formally established in the 1880s. A tiny red brick building in the main street bears a plaque declaring that it was the local branch of the Scottish and Welsh Bank. The original courthouse (now a cottage) still stands on the corner of Swamp Road and Greenhill Road. The original general store still exists as a two-storey house near the junction of Days Road and Greenhill Road. The mainstreet of Uraidla was originally planted with a double avenue of European Elms. Only four of these remain.

Etymology

The name Uraidla is derived from local Aboriginal origins. The neighbouring Kaurna people (from the Adelaide plains) and a local subgroup known as Peramangk, had a tale about an ancestral giant who fell in battle and whose body formed part of the Mount Lofty Ranges, with his ears forming Mount Lofty and Mount Bonython. The name ''Yurrēidla'' thus derives from the Kaurna words ''yurre'' (ear) and the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

denoting location, ''-illa'' (Teichelmann & Schurmann 1840Teichelmann, C. G.; C. W. Schürmann 840(1982). Outlines of a grammar, vocabulary and phraseology of the Aboriginal language of South Australia spoken by the natives in and for some distance around Adelaide. Tjintu Books. .). This was later corrupted to Uraidla and adopted as the name of the town.

Industries

Uraidla and the surrounding area is an agricultural district with vegetable market gardens on large scale producing

leek The leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek ( syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a stem or stalk. The genus ''Alli ...

cabbage Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&nb ...

and lettuce, with apple and

cherry A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The nam ...

orchards, along with vineyards producing many local wine vintages. Local wineries that are part of the Adelaide Hills wine district include Parish Hills Wines and Barratt Wines. The Uraidla Hotel had been closed for several years from 2013, but was refurbished in 2016 and now enjoys pride of place in the town with an eclectic mix of decor, and sourcing local produce, wines, beers and ciders. A bottleshop and bakery, also run by the Uraidla Hotel now occupy the adjacent building that once housed the Squash Courts. A converted church across from the hotel dubbed 'Lost in a Forest' provides local wines and wood oven pizzas, whilst the name of a former local restaurant 'The Aristologist' has been resurrected n the form of a Tapas Bar in nearby Summertown. The central oval and showgrounds are used annually for the historic Uraidla and Summertown Show, drawing many hundreds of people, traditionally in mid-February; shifted in 2017 to early November. Uraidla is also traditionally a centre for sport with

Australian Rules Football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

, Netball, Tennis and Lawn Bowls the main sports. The Football Club Rooms and Bowling Club both have licensed premises. Uraidla and nearby Summertown and

Carey Gully Carey Gully is a small town in the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. The name of the town is taken from one of the early settlers of the area, Paddy Carey, and was originally called Carey's Gully, (This can be seen at the town's War M ...

are serviced by a mixed business General Store and Post Office and a Village Pharmacy and Health Spa, Hairdresser, Civil Engineering and the Uraidla Family Practice. Private massage therapists, chiropractors, artists and craftspeople, a metal foundry, a salvage warehouse and a freestone quarry also operate in the town or immediate area. The former Returned Servicemen's League Hall in the main street is now being used by the Country Fire Service as the hub for the several local fire crews of Ashton, Summertown, Carey Gully and Piccadilly. During Emergency Fire Events, this site is used for strategic coordination, media interaction, broadcast by television crews and the adjacent Oval is used by helicopters as a landing site.

References

External links

Adelaide Hills Council
{{authority control Towns in South Australia