Colonial Settlers, Paradise and One Degree of Separation
The running joke in Adelaide is that everybody knows everybody. It isn’t six degrees of separation in this town – it's one.
If you meet someone new it won’t be long before you discover that you both used to have so and so living next door to you or that you are actually second cousins once removed or that you both dated Jamie Darcy when you were in your twenties.
I experienced the book form of this phenomenon when I read In My Mothers Hands by Biff Ward on the weekend.
In it there was an interesting anecdote about how her grandfather was the reason that the suburb of Paradise was so named. I had always wondered at the name, and assumed that it was a hopeful moniker slapped on it by a developer. In fact, it was named after the Paradise Bridge Hotel, owned by Joseph Ind. He was quite the character, as were many of Biff's relatives, including her father, the man who was the first person to collect Australian Settler songs like Click go the Shears.
At one of Wakefield’s book launches, Big Rough Stones by Margaret Merilees. I bumped into a friend of mine who was there with her mother: Biff Ward.
The one degree of separation thing happened again this morning when I picked up our book Colonial Settlers On The River Torrens. This book is about the first generation of European settlers to take up properties on the upper reaches of the River Torrens. They were the first to intensively cultivate the land in the present-day suburbs of Campbelltown, Paradise and Athelstone.
Flicking through the gorgeous pictures I spotted one of the Paradise Bridge Hotel. There I found the story of Joseph Ind, melon grower, hotel owner, and Biff’s grandfather and local character, in what was later to become Paradise.
Joseph Ind and many other local characters are remembered for their many achievements settling the areas which we now know as Paradise, Campbelltown and Athelstone. Importantly, their harsh treatment of the Kaurna people is also remembered, acknowledging that the titular settlers were not the first to live on the land.
As my experiences go, a flick through the beautifully-curated pages of images and research by Dr Roger Irvine might reveal some names familiar to you too – we are in Adelaide, after all.
By Emma Sachsse, Wakefielder by day, writer by night. Find more of her work on Medium.