Eudunda – A Brief History
Discover our history, come and experience it for yourself
Eudunda, the Valley of Hidden Treasures, is just 45 minutes from Gawler on the Thiele Highway in the rich farming area of the Lower Mid North. Located centrally in-between the Barossa Valley (30 minutes) and Clare/Gilbert Valley (45 minutes) wine regions and the Murray River Town of Morgan (45 minutes). Eudunda is a wonderful place to base at for a week(end) of exploration!
The town evolved from a watering stop for stock brought overland from Queensland and New South Wales as early as the mid-1840’s via Nor West Bend (Morgan) enroute to the markets in Adelaide and Kapunda. The freshwater springs that attracted the drovers were called ‘Eudundacowi’ by the Ngadjuri, the First Nations people of the area and means ‘water from the ground’.
White colonisation of the area began in 1870 when a hotel was built and the town quickly grew with the addition of a flour mill, general store, police station and courthouse, bank, doctors surgery and housing. The earliest whilte settlers were Lutheran Germans coming from the Barossa area after immigrating to South Australia partly due to religious persecution in their homeland and, in later years, by severe drought that gripped Europe in the later 1840’s.
With the opening of the railway in 1878 connecting the Riverland (Morgan) to the Adelaide Markets, the town and district thrived, becoming the centre for many large commercial ventures including, The Eudunda Farmer’s Cooperate Society, which is still in existance today. Since then farmers have diversified from grain production to a wider range of animal husbandy and poultry enterprises. Today Eudunda still relies upon agriculture and its Engineering firms for its economy and remains at the heart, a friendly, welcoming rural town.
Today Eudunda and the region can be to proud of the work of the volunteers in the Eudunda Family Heritage Gallery.
Over the past 25 years they have amassed and curated a giant collection of memorabilia from times gone past.
You can enjoy the displayed items of this collection by visiting the Eudunda Family Heritage Gallery when you get to Eudunda.