Gawler before, and its First Building.

 

Documentary evidence reveals that Gawler came under the foot of the white man in 1837 when a survey party to the Barossa hills found a wanderer in the scrub. Being ill, they put him on the bullock dray. Reaching the ford over the South Para River, they found him dead, and so they buried him in a hollow tree, decently covering the body with bark and sticks.  They called the ford Dead Man's Pass, and the place to this day retains the name.

Gawler’s first building was the Old Spot Inn, built by Mr. Schiebner. By the end of 1839 the traffic from the River Murray and the North was so great that Mr. King had to give up entertaining, so he induced Mr. Schiebner to build and provided the money for the building. Soon after that time, there was a small dairy station up the South Para River, belonging to Captain Walker, and Messrs Grant and Butler (grandfather of the State's ex-Premier) had a sheep station at Yattalunga.

 

'Gawler before, and its First Building.', Bunyip, (3 February 1939), p. 9., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article96704537