Wasleys is a small town north-west of

Gawler Gawler is the oldest country town on the Australian mainland in the state of South Australia. It was named after the second Governor (British Vice-Regal representative) of the colony of South Australia, George Gawler. It is about north of the ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

Roseworthy College Roseworthy Agricultural College was an agricultural college in Australia. It was north of Adelaide and west of Roseworthy town. It was the first agricultural college in Australia, established in 1883. It is now part of the University of Adela ...

is located around south of the town. At the , Wasleys had a population of 348.

History

The town is named after Joseph Wasley, who arrived in the

colony of South Australia In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

in 1838. After having been a successful miner at Burra in South Australia as well as the

Victorian goldfields The Goldfields region of Victoria is a region commonly used but typically defined in both historical geography and tourism geography (in particular heritage tourism). The region is also known as the Victorian Golden Triangle. Description I ...

, he took up five sections in the Hundred of Mudla Wirra (which had been established in 1847), known as the Mudla Wirra Forest. The name ''mudla wirra'' comes from the

Kaurna language Kaurna ( or ) is a Pama-Nyungan language historically spoken by the Kaurna peoples of the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. The Kaurna peoples are made up of various tribal clan groups, each with their own ''parnkarra'' district of land and ...

, but may have been misinterpreted in multiple sources, perhaps arising from the online version of Manning's Index. It has been reported that ''mudla'' means" implement", giving rise to the translation "a forest where implements are obtained", but in a newer publication (revised in 2012), Manning writes " Professor Tindale says that an alternative derivation is based on the word ''mudla'' meaning ‘nose’" (as in the Kaurna name for the

Lefevre Peninsula The Lefevre Peninsula is a peninsula located in the Australian state of South Australia located about northwest of the Adelaide city centre. It is a narrow sand spit of about running north from its connection to the mainland. The name given ...

, ''mudlanga''. and other sources confirm this. Tindale and many others based their work on the work of German missionaries Teichelmann and Schürmann, who compiled a

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

and wordlist of the Kaurna language in 1840. In this work, ''mudla'' is recorded as meaning "nose", while ''mudli'' means implement. After

British colonisation of South Australia British colonisation of South Australia describes the planning and establishment of the colony of South Australia by the British government, covering the period from 1829, when the idea was raised by the then-imprisoned Edward Gibbon Wakefield ...

, some early settlers in the region made notable contributions to Australian agriculture: Scrub roller 1922

*In 1843, John Ridley invented a machine known as "Ridley's Stripper", which removed the heads of grain, with the

threshing Threshing, or thrashing, is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from the straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain. History ...

being done later by a separate machine. *In the 1860s, a local farmer named Charles Mullen, an Irish immigrant, created a method of ploughing which was known as " mullenising", using what became known as a scrub roller or mallee roller. Mullen invented an implement, used throughout Australia, which was the precursor of the

stump-jump plough The stump-jump plough, also known as stump-jumping plough, is a kind of plough invented in South Australia in the late 19th century by Richard Bowyer Smith and Clarence Herbert Smith to solve the particular problem of preparing mallee lands fo ...

. *In 1866–1877, farmer Richard Marshall's experiments with cross-breeding various wheat varieties and improving soil conditions using

bone meal Bone meal is a mixture of finely and coarsely ground animal bones and slaughter-house waste products. It is used as a dietary supplement to supply calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) to monogastric livestock in the form of hydroxiapathite. As a slo ...

on the land led to a reduction of the " red rust" problem in

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

. In 1869, the

Peterborough railway line The Peterborough railway line was a railway line on the South Australian Railways network. It extended from a junction at Roseworthy on the Morgan railway line through Hamley Bridge, Riverton, initially to Tarlee, then extended in stages to P ...

was built through the region, and a

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prep ...

was erected on the land purchased by Wasley. The railway line was built to transport the mallee roots that had been cleared from land in the district. In the same year, a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional ser ...

with

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

facilities was established. In 1873, two

townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

were laid out on either side of the railway line: Ridley on the hotel side and Wasleys on the other. George Thompson, a printer who lived in

North Adelaide North Adelaide is a predominantly residential precinct and suburb of the City of Adelaide in South Australia, situated north of the River Torrens and within the Adelaide Park Lands. History Surveyor-General Colonel William Light of the colo ...

was responsible for laying out the Wasleys. By September 1873, Wasleys had been fully laid out, and a local newspaper publicised the achievement in a short article about "Wasley Township" stating "There can be no question that this is an excellent locality for a township", going on to say that it " adbeen laid out for the proprietor (Mr. G. Thomson) by Mr. Warren, and is very conveniently situated on the north side of the Mallala and Templers road,

ith The Ith () is a ridge in Germany's Central Uplands which is up to 439 m high. It lies about 40 km southwest of Hanover and, at 22 kilometres, is the longest line of crags in North Germany. Geography Location The Ith is immediatel ...

the Railway Station occupying the opposite or south side. The settlement was advertised as "Ridley Township - Wasleys Station", seeking to attract people looking for good agricultural land, later splitting into two townships, called Ridleyton and Wasleys. The Wasleys plots were auctioned, while Ridley plots were sold privately. A

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan– Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charle ...

church was built in 1873 and a school established in it the following year. Wasleys thrived, with three chaff mills operating at one point, none of which survive today. By 1909 there was a

wheelwright A wheelwright is a craftsman who builds or repairs wooden wheels. The word is the combination of "wheel" and the word "wright", (which comes from the Old English word "''wryhta''", meaning a worker or shaper of wood) as in shipwright and arkwr ...

, several stores and private dwellings, and an

Institute An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations ( research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

incorporating a library. In 1928 there were 337 inhabitants, and a daily train service to Adelaide. On 12 April 1970, a bus collided with a passenger train on the road from Wasleys to

, killing 17 people and injuring more than 40. In 2015, the Pinery bushfire burned through the township of Wasleys, gutting the

lawn bowls Bowls, also known as lawn bowls or lawn bowling, is a sport in which the objective is to roll biased balls so that they stop close to a smaller ball called a "jack" or "kitty". It is played on a bowling green, which may be flat (for "flat-gre ...

club and post office.

Gallery

File:Wasleys feed mill.JPG, Wasley File:Wasleys Institute.JPG, Wasley Institute File:Wasleys oval.JPG, Oval

References

{{authority control Towns in South Australia