| History | The South Australian Centre for Settlement Studies is an incorporated body set up under the aegis of the Councils of the South Australian College of Advanced Education (SACAE) and the South Australian Institute of Technology (SAIT). The research collaboration between the College and the Institute was formalised in April 1982 by the incorporation of the Centre.
The Centre was controlled by a Board of eleven members, chaired by Graeme Pretty, Senior Curator, SA Museum, and is directed by Gordon Young, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, School of Architecture and Building at the SA Institute of Technology (Jim Faull, Senior Lecturer in Geographical Studies, SACAE, was the acting Director during 1984).
It was launched upon the foundation of a successful collaboration between Ian Harmstorf, Senior Lecturer in History, SACAE and Gordon Young, Senior Lecturer in Architecture SAIT in the production of the Barossa Survey (1976-1977). That survey examined the patterns of German settlement in the Barossa Valley in the nineteenth century. It was one of the first heritage surveys funded under the National Estate Programme set up late in 1975. Apart from the architectural and historical research that was undertaken, a survey was also made of the physical geography of the district by Roger Smith, Lecturer in Geography at the SACAE.
The research group then went on to study the early German settlement of Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, a project funded by the newly formed Australian Heritage Commission (1977). The township's historical development was studied as well as that of its surrounding hamlets, including Paechtown. A major feature of the survey was the measurement and delineation of all the buildings on both sides of the main street of Hahndorf and several nearby large farmhouses and barns. In order clearly to understand the nature of the settlement and it's buildings, the settlers' historical European backgrounds were carefully researched (viz. Their village life, farmhouses and outbuildings and patterns of settlement).
The information obtained from the Barossa and Hahndorf surveys clearly highlighted the importance of German settlement in the early rural history of South Australia.
To complete the research of major German settlements, two more projects have since been undertaken. Lobethal and its environs was studied between 1980 and 1982 and Birdwood (formerly Blumberg) between 1982 and 1984. Michael Butler, then Lecturer in Geography, SACAE, studied the physical geography of the Lobethal district and Jim Faull, Senior Lecturer in Geographical Studies, SACAE was responsible for a similar study of the Birdwood area.
The Centre has recently completed a study of the Onkaparinga Council District. The Upper Onkaparinga Valley is an area of the Adelaide Hills which, as well as being settled by German immigrants, had a large Scottish enclave during its first twenty years of settlement. It was one of the first parts of the state to be settled outside of the metropolitan area (e.g. Balhannah, 1839 and Lobethal, 1842). Both it and the adjoining council districts of Gumeracha, Mount Pleasant and Mount Barker still retain many pioneer buildings and historic precincts from this early period of settlement.
Centre Activities
The area of research with which the Centre was concerned covers the broad spectrum of European settlement in Australia, and in particular:
History: both social and economic;
Geography; land forms and uses and economic developments;
Architecture; the transfer of cultural heritages into Australia in the form of building types and their related construction;
Planning; the form of early settlements, their origins and the development which took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;
Conservation; methods of conservation related to both the natural and adapted environment and individual historical architectural precincts of individual buildings. |