St Marys, South Australia
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St Marys is a suburb of
Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...
,
South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
, located to the south of the
Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...
. It is bordered by Daws Road (north), South Road (west), Cashel Street (east) and Mill Terrace (south). The suburb is located within the
City of Mitcham The City of Mitcham is a local government area in the foothills of southern Adelaide, South Australia. Within its bounds is Flinders University, South Australia's third largest, and the notable, affluent suburb of Springfield which contains som ...
local government authority. ''St Marys Park'' is one of the largest reserves within the suburb and was originally the training ground of the
South Adelaide Football Club The South Adelaide Football Club, nicknamed the Panthers, is an Australian rules football club based in the Adelaide suburb of Noarlunga Downs, South Australia, Noarlunga Downs. The club competes in the South Australian National Football Leagu ...
.


History

St Marys was first farmed in the 1830s by the Daw and Ayliffe families. They were later joined by Herschel Babbage, Robert Torrens and Captain William O’Halloran. Prior to the 1850s, the suburb was named '' St Marys-on-the-Sturt'' as, apart from farmhouses and the St Mary's Church of
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, there were no buildings in the area from Daws Rd to the Sturt River until various shops were established on the northern side of the church. The suburb was an important wheat growing area for Adelaide until the northern areas of the colony came under cultivation when some of the St Marys properties were replanted with almonds, grape vines and olives. John Wickham Daw subdivided the frontage of his property as St Marys Village and built a house on the corner of what is now South Road and Daws Road. In 1852, he sold the house and several hundred acres to Babbage. After Babbage's own home burnt down in 1875, he built a mansion that was known as "Babbage’s castle." Babbage built the mansion using a new building material,
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...
, however he used salty water and the mansion immediately began to crumble. The family left the estate in 1896. A two-story hotel on the corner of South and Ayliffes Road, the ''Lady MacDonald Hotel'' was licensed in 1857. As a result of a spelling error by the sign writer, the hotel displayed the name ''Lady MacDonnell,'' an error that persisted for over 70 years. In 1909 the hotel became a temperance hotel and went into decline. In the 1930s it was sold as a home to Ted Grindell, the local council " garbo" until the ruins were demolished in 1966 and replaced with a
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. During the Great Depression, the Babbage ruins provided shelter for a number of homeless families. In 1936 the Babbage estate was subdivided by William Brookman Watson as ''Castle Estate'' with the blocks being sold to visiting
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sailors as souvenirs of the
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. Watson himself moved into John Daw's corner house and on his death the property was purchased by Dr Hugh LLoyd who had a nearby surgery on South Road in Clovelly Park which later became the Clovelly Park Community Health Centre. The increasing use of motor vehicles in the 1920s led to the subdivision of several farms in the area into the estates of St Marys Park, Castle Estate, Clovelly Gardens and South Road Estate. The
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
of the 1930s followed by
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stifled land sales and by 1949 only 25 people were living in the estates. The land set aside for Kiley Reserve in the subdivision of ''Clovelly Gardens'' had already been used by the Darlington Motorcycle Club since 1920 for races and in 1930 the remainder of the subdivision was converted to a trotting track. In the 1940s the South Australian Housing Trust then bought the unsold blocks in St Marys to provide low cost housing for workers. Kiley Reserve was later acquired by the State Government for the South Road Primary School which was built in 1951. By 1960, the South Australian Housing Trust had built nearly 400 homes in St Marys. Construction of the
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vehicle manufacturing plant in Tonsley Park in 1963 led to many support industries being developed in St Marys. An unofficial Post Office was opened on South Road on 16 May 1927 but was discontinued in 1952 when postal services were taken over by a shop at 18 Quinlan Avenue. A purpose-built Post Office center was built on South Road St Marys in 1964 with postal services continuing at the shop until 1975 when they were transferred to the South Road office. The South Road office was renamed ''St Marys South'' in 1967 and closed in 1976. A Clovelly Park office opened in 1950, was renamed ''St Marys'' in 1967 and closed in 1991. In 1964 the Watiparinga Creek was covered as part of the South West Drainage Scheme. A stone bridge built in the 1850s at the northern end of Ragless reserve, which allowed South Road traffic to pass over the creek, was buried when South Road was widened in 1965 and still exists beneath the road today. Springfield Creek also ran through the suburb and was the cause of substantial flooding during heavy rains. In the 1970s the creek was replaced by drainage pipes and covered.


St Mary's Anglican Church

In 1841, John Wickham Daw donated one acre of his farm for the establishment of the St Mary's Church of England. Erected on the present site of the St Marys Fire Station, by 1847 the
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-built building had deteriorated at which time a stone church was built on a new site 250 m to the south. The original church building continued in use as a school until 1928. The first person interred at the new cemetery was James Penn, the father-in-law of
James Boucaut Sir James Penn Boucaut (;) (29 October 1831 – 1 February 1916) was a South Australian politician and Australian judge. He was a member of the South Australian House of Assembly on four occasions: from 1861 to 1862 for City of Adelaide, fro ...
, a later premier of SA. The church and cemetery were consecrated by Bishop
Augustus Short Augustus Short (11 June 1802 – 5 October 1883) was the first Anglicanism, Anglican bishop of Adelaide, South Australia. Early life and career Born at Bickham House, near Exeter, Devon, England, the third son of Charles Short, a London bar ...
in 1849. The name of the St Mary's
Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
was changed to St Mary's
Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
Church in 1981.


St Marys Baptist Church

The Baptist Union granted a fellowship to the St Marys
Baptist Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...
Congregation in 1953 with their first church being an iron and timber building relocated from Underdale to a site in St Marys. The current church was constructed adjacent to the original structure in 1965. The church operated a community kindergarten from 1953 to 1981.


South Road Primary School

South Road Primary School was opened in 1951 on land set aside for Kiley reserve in the subdivision of ''Clovelly Gardens'' which was never developed. A Junior Primary School was established adjacent to the Primary School in 1954. Due to declining enrollments as the suburb aged, the Junior Primary School site and buildings were sold to the Edwardstown Baptist Church in 1980 with the children accommodated in the Primary School buildings. The Primary School was closed in 1997 and the school grounds and oval were sold to the Edwardstown Baptist Church who financed the purchase through the sale of blocks of land in Kiley Court the following year.


St Bernadette’s Primary School

St Bernadette's
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Primary School was opened in 1952 and staffed by Dominican nuns. The school has been a target of arsonists with major
arson Arson is the act of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercr ...
attacks in 1990, 1997 and 2000. The four gum trees along the boundary of the St Bernadette's oval are the remnant of a double row of gum trees planted along South Road in the 1880s to counter over-clearing of the suburb.


St Marys Park

St Marys Park was opened in 1929 as the ''South Road Recreation Ground''. Although they would use
Adelaide Oval The Adelaide Oval is a stadium in Adelaide in the state of South Australia. It is located in the Adelaide Parklands, parklands. The venue is predominantly used for cricket and Australian rules football, but has also played host to rugby league, ...
as their home ground, the
South Adelaide Football Club The South Adelaide Football Club, nicknamed the Panthers, is an Australian rules football club based in the Adelaide suburb of Noarlunga Downs, South Australia, Noarlunga Downs. The club competes in the South Australian National Football Leagu ...
established their clubrooms and conducted training here. In 1969 upgrading began to bring the oval to
SANFL The South Australian National Football League, or SANFL ( or ''S-A-N-F-L''), is an Australian rules football league based in the Australian state of South Australia. It is also the state's sports governing body, governing body for the sport. ...
standards and the oval was officially made the club's home ground although home games would continue to be held at Adelaide Oval. In 1971 the ground was officially re-opened as ''Panther Park'' with an exhibition match between South Adelaide and the 1970 VFL premiers, Carlton. In 1973, South Adelaide built new clubrooms on nearby South Road. The club moved to a new home in Noarlunga in 1995 on completion of the Noarlunga Oval and in 1997 ''Panther Park'' was renamed St Marys Park.


Points of interest

*Ayliffes Road was originally the driveway from South Road to the Ayliffe property in
Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial d ...
. *Benjamin Street was named by Benjamin Babbage himself in 1869 and the street's gum trees are all that remain of the native trees planted by Babbage on his estate. *The olive tree in the front yard of No. 6 Donald Street, which was once part of an orchard planted by Babbage in the 1860s, was removed to allow subdivision of the property around 2020 *The large gum tree on the corner of The Crescent and Auricchio Avenue is a remnant of the original vegetation in St Marys. *Auricchio Avenue was named after Mario Auricchio, a local developer who established the ''
Vittorio Veneto Vittorio Veneto is a city and ''comune'' situated in the Province of Treviso, in the region of Veneto, Italy, in the Cardinal direction, northeast of Italy, between the Piave and the Livenza rivers, borders with the following municipalities: Alpa ...
Club'' in the 1930s as an apolitical alternative venue to the ''Fascio Italian Club'' which served the local
fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...
community. *The junction of St Marys Street and Mingbool Avenue is wider than normal due to the drainage works of Springfield Creek beneath it. *As of 2022, there are some 1960s built homes still being occupied by the original owners


Sources

St Marys Walk
City of Mitcham The City of Mitcham is a local government area in the foothills of southern Adelaide, South Australia. Within its bounds is Flinders University, South Australia's third largest, and the notable, affluent suburb of Springfield which contains som ...
2009


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Marys, South Australia Suburbs of Adelaide