Loxton. The recreated Loxton Village Museum. Mallee stump walls and thatch for a small barn. Life in the Mallee. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Loxton. The recreated Loxton Village Museum. Mallee stump walls and thatch for a small barn. Life in the Mallee. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Today Loxton might look like the other Riverland towns but its origins are startlingly different. It did not begin life as a river irrigation area of the Chaffeys brothers like Renmark in 1888. It did not begin life as an almost communistic communal village irrigation scheme in 1893 like Waikerie, Kingston and Lyrup. Instead it began life in 1907 as a service centre for the Murray Mallee wheat farmers to the south of the town towards Paruna and Alawoona. Consequently most of the early settlers were of German background. They were not afraid to farm in the tough marginal lands of the upper Murray Mallee where the rainfall was lower and the soils especially sandy. The first irrigation area was not established near Loxton until 1918 and it was a small area. It was not until 1948 when North Loxton irrigation area was declared with federal government assistance that Loxton became a town based on irrigation. At that time soldier settlers (257 of them) were offered fruit blocks on land just to the north of Loxton and at that point the town population began to grow quickly. But back in the early years of Loxton it grew exceedingly slowly. Its links with the wheat lands were reinforced in 1914 when the train line reached Loxton up from Alawoona and Karoonda. The country around Loxton had originally been a pastoral lease station called Bookpurnong. From 1878 that station had been held by Alexander Borthwick Murray of Murray Park House Magill and Harrogate in the Adelaide Hills. One of the boundary riders for A. B. Murray on Bookpurnong station was William Loxton. Between 1878 and 1881 he lived in a small hut on the banks of the Murray. Loxton’s Hut gave name to the 1907 town and a marker down on the riverbank which we will see marks this spot today and the old Pepper tree that he planted there. A.B. Murray held the lease on Bookpurnong until the government cancelled the lease to develop the land for wheat farming. It did this in 1891 when several hundreds of land were declared in the area near what is now Loxton. As noted above it was 1907 when the government surveyed a town and offered town blocks for sale. The first farming families south of the river were the Thiele, Drabsch, Habel, Kaesler, Quast and Stasinowski families in the mid 1890s. A provisional school was opened in 1902 and an unofficial Post Office. In 1901 Concordia Lutheran Church opened followed by St. Petri’s Lutheran Church in 1904. Both stood on land that would be incorporated into the new township of Loxton after 1907. We can still see this early church behind the current St. Petri Church which was completed in 1926. This impressive building is still the religious centre of Loxton. The early Anglican services in Loxton were conducted in the “floating church” the Etona which plied the Murray and Lakes from Meningie to Overland Corner beyond Morgan. It was 1920 before an Anglican church was built in Loxton. See details about this in Loxton by Marjory R Casson and W Hirst, Hawthorn Press 1972. A state school opened in Loxton in 1914 but the Lutherans had their own church school. It became an Area School in 1944 and finally a High School in 1958 after the influx of soldier settlers and their families in the early 1950s. The period 1910-20 saw many fine structures erected in Loxton. The general stores and banks all date from this era. In 1911 Eudunda Farmers opened their cooperative store in town. The wonderful Institute was started in 1908. At a later date in had a classical Greek style façade added. The Savings Bank (1926?) was also designed in classical Greek style. The Loxton Hotel opened in 1908, but the present structure appears to date from the 1920s. It has operated as a community hotel since 1948. A flour mill opened in Loxton in 1912; a second flour mill was opened in 1924 and traded well into the 1970s. Wheat grown in the Murray Mallee has high gluten content and is especially good for baking. Wheat not milled into flour was railed down to Port Adelaide for export from 1913 onwards once the railway had reached the town. The river trade in wheat collapsed overnight as rail was so much cheaper. Today Loxton has a population of 4,100 people but at the start of World War Two it had just 1,000 residents. |
| 撮影日 | 2016-01-08 14:04:31 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSC-HX30V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.001 sec (1/1250) |
| 開放F値 | f/3.5 |