Gawler Underground - Union Mill

Union Mill

1 Julian Terrace, Gawler

  The Union Mill was established in 1855 by Harrison Brothers, opening on the site of their unsuccessful tannery. It was the second flour mill in Gawler. In 1863, it was purchased by Walter Duffield. In 1880, The Adelaide Milling Company bought the Union Mill. In 1933, Jeff Brothers leased the mill from the Adelaide Milling Company.

  In 1864, the middle floor of the mill gave way. The western wall fell, and many of the windows were blown out by the weight of mountains of wheat. The destruction poured into what is now Julian Terrace. In the 1870s, a train siding, coming from the tram line in Murray Street, was built into the Union Mill yard. The rail line had its own turntable to spin trucks around and take them back the way they had come after loading and unloading. The mill also had its own weigh station.
Fire destroyed much of the building in 1914. Rebuilt, but smaller. The mill ceased operations in 1968. In 1975, fire destroyed parts of the southern section of the building.

Centrelink and the CES were situated here in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was a medieval-themed restaurant that operated on the second floor in the 1990s. Where Asian Central is located today, there was an open-air dining area, which was enclosed in the early 1990s.

Today, the Salvation Army, Pole for Fitness, Asian Central and Action Psychology occupy the retail spaces of the former Union Mill.

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researched and written by Allen Tiller

Gawler Underground - Rudall and Rudall

Rudall & Rudall 

25 Murray Street - Gawler

25 Murray Street was built for the South Australian Banking Company (later known as the Bank of South Australia) by builder Henry Brown. It was designed by architect Thomas English, who would later become Mayor of Adelaide and a Member of the Legislative Council. It opened on the 4th of April 1859.[1]
The South Australian Banking Company operated from the premises between 1859 and 1892. The second owner of the building was the Union Bank of South Australia, between 1892 and 1928. It was then occupied by Rudall and Rudall circa 1928.

Rudall and Rudall was founded by John Rudall (1820 – 1897) in 1854.[2] John Rudall was Gawler’s first Town Clerk a position he held until 1881 when he was appointed the resident Gawler Magistrate. Samuel Bruce Rudall (1859 – 1945), John’s son, took over the position of Town Clerk in 1881, a position he held until 1914. He was also a State MP between 1905 and 1915. Samuel’s son, Reginald John Rudall (1885-1955), was a Rhodes Scholar in 1908. He was a state MP from 1933 until 1955, including a seven-year term as Minister for Education, and nine years as Attorney General under the Playford Government. Reginald and his wife suffered greatly during World War two when both their sons, Jon and Peter, were killed in action.

In 1955, the Rudall connection to the law practice ended when Reginald died. Lawrence McAusland Bills (1913 – 1975) then took over the law firm. He served Rudall and Rudall from 1937 until his death in 1974. His son, Anthony ‘Tony’ McAusland Bills (1941-2010), then took over Rudall and Rudall. Peter Ryan and Nick Pullman are today the partners of the firm and are supported by seven associate lawyers and seven legal assistants, making it the largest legal firm in the Gawler region.

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Researched and written by Allen Tiller

[1] 'The Bank of South Australia', Bunyip (), (15 April 1892), p. 2.
[2] Rudall and Rudall Lawyers, History, (2024), https://www.rudalls.com.au/about/history/.

Gawler Underground - The Prince Albert Hotel

Prince Albert Hotel

109 Murray Street, Gawler

  The Prince Albert Hotel on Murray Street opened as the New Bushman Hotel on 31 March 1847 – the sign above the door states it was opened in 1859 by J. McEwan, but this is most likely the date it opened under the Prince Albert name. It retained this name until 30 March 1851, when it was renamed Young’s Hotel. The name reverted to the New Bushman Hotel in July 1852, then Smiths Hotel from 1855 until March 1859, when it was renamed The Prince Albert Inn. As of April 1869, the hotel has had the name The Prince Albert Hotel.[1] In the late 1990s, it became Fibber Magee’s until 2011.[2] The hotel name was then reverted to The Prince Albert Hotel. The hotel’s current legal trading name is the P/A Hotel.[3]

  A local legend states a tunnel used to run underneath Murray Street from the Gawler Arms Hotel into the Prince Albert Hotel, with another tunnel running up to the Hutchinson Hospital (built in 1913) on East Terrace. There is no evidence in the basement to prove either of these alleged tunnels true.

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Researched and written by Allen Tiller

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[1] Ibid.

[2] The South Australian Government Gazette, No. 53, (28 July 2011), pp. 3142.

[3] The South Australian Government Gazette, No. 123, (3 August 2000), p. 414.

Gawler Underground - Good Samaritan Convent

St Joseph’s Good Samaritan Convent

6 Porter Street

St Joseph’s Good Samaritan Convent was built in 1910, opening on October 3rd. The first nuns moved in on 11 November 1910. It served as a school for Sisters of the Good Samaritan and could house twelve female boarders. The chapel, rectory, music room, dormitories, lavatories, bathrooms, community room, sacristy and staircase hall were on the upper level. The north wing contained a reception room, refectory, scullery, kitchen, laundry, cellar, and another outer office.[1] Past students speak of the honour of polishing the cedar staircase and chapel, or ringing the Angelus Bell, all of which still stand intact today.

Music was a large part of instruction in the Convent, with many important musicians being classically trained here, including internationally renowned musician Brenton Langbein OAM, who went on to study at the University of Adelaide. He would later play with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and become a star of the classical music scene in Europe, and a theatre in the Barossa is named after him.

In 1973, the convent and the smaller convent next door were sold to Hristos (Kristos) and Mavis Zisimou. The Zisimou’s, for a while, ran the property as a boarding house. According to her son, Mavis helped people turn their lives around with tough love, an iron fist, and a loving heart. The convent was sold to Dr Naomi Rutton in 2022, who has plans to turn it into a health retreat.

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researched and written by Allen Tiller




[1] 'The New Samaritan Convent, Gawler.', Southern Cross, (7 October 1910), p. 8.

Gawler Underground - Imprint Flowers

Imprint Flowers

1 Tod Street Gawler

 

The building located at 1 Tod Street, now Imprint Flowers, started as Taylor and Ponder Carpenters and Builders in 1855.[1] Ponder left the company, and a new partnership started with Alexander Forgie. Taylor and Forgie were carpenters and builders, and sometime in the 1870s, extended their business to include undertaking. In 1902, Alexander Forgie died, dissolving the partnership of Taylor and Forgie, however, Alexander’s sons, Alexander junior and James Forgie, took over the business.

  In 1908, The Bunyip newspaper reported that a fire gutted the ground-floor offices of Taylor and Forgie, but it did not penetrate through to the boarding house above.[2]

  There is a belief that this site was used as a morgue – and there may be a little truth in that - occasionally bodies were stored here, but the reality was, in the Victorian era, when people died their bodies were prepared for funerals in their own homes. This was generally due to there being no refrigeration storage, so people were buried within a few days of death. This changed once embalming became the norm, and this is more likely the period, in the early 1900s, that bodies were stored here temporarily.

Taylor and Forgie moved to Cowan Street, Gawler, in 1968. Since then, the shop has been a coffee house, a secondhand store, a baby shop, Bake and Brew, Fairy Secrets, and a flower shop.

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Researched and written by Allen Tiller

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[1] 1942 'TAYLOR & FORGIE', Bunyip, 24 July, p. 2.

[2] 1908 'A FIRE.', Bunyip, 1 May, p. 2.

Gawler Underground - Table Top Warfare

Piles Building

146-154 Murray Street, Gawler.

Built in 1877 for owner John Pile by Mr J. J. Peek of Gawler South.[1] The shop on the end that was most recently B Music was built by Taylor and Forgie Carpenters around 1880.[2] This retail shop has been F. Lines and Sons Butchers, W. Miller Butcher, and Arthur T. Hewett Butchers.
The Commercial Bank of South Australia, Stewert Music Emporium, and H.B. Crosby have all occupied the premises; as have many other businesses, including R.J. Lavis Draper and Grocer, Gawler Curtains and Blinds, The Salvation Army, Stratco, Malcolm Buckby M.P., Reminisce Photography and a family-run deli.

International movie connection: Frank Thring Sr. worked at H.B. Crosby, making boots. Thring married Gawler born Grace Wight while they were both actors in the Gawler Theatrical Club. Frank and Grace's daughter, Viola, known as Lola, dated future Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt before dumping him and marrying his father! Thring later founded EffTee Pictures - a massively successful movie house. Frank Thring's son with his second wife Olive, went on to star as Pontius Pilate in Ben-Hur, and starred in the movies The Howling 3, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and a host of TV commercials.

In the early 1980s, artist Audrey Emery opened the Brownstone Jazz Cellar, a coffee shop in this basement. The Brownstone Jazz Cellar only lasted a couple of years; it was incredibly successful, but with success came rent increases that priced it out of the cellar. It closed circa 1983.

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TABLE TOP WARFARE

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[1] 'Editor's Notes.', Bunyip, (9 February 1912), p. 2.

[2] 1878 'COLONIAL MANUFACTURES.', Bunyip (Gawler, SA : 1863 - 1954), 12 July, p. 2.

 Is Architectural history a lie? 

– The Tartarian Mudflood Conspiracy.

 

A basement window looking out to Murray Street - Gawler.

 Recently on the Haunts of Adelaide Facebook page, we have had a few conspiracy theories that certain older buildings in Adelaide were built by a highly advanced global empire that visited Australia (and other locations around the globe) pre-European settlement. The conspiracy is that the Tartarian global empire was intentionally erased, and that history was rewritten to make buildings seem younger and more modern.[1] Subscribers to the theory believe that a vast, technologically advanced empire arose in north-central Asia, and spread peacefully across the globe. They believe that approximately one hundred years ago a great cataclysm occurred that toppled the empire which led to many of its buildings being destroyed, and its history erased from records.[2]

European Cartographers often used the toponym ‘Tartary’ to describe Central Asia. The area was bound by the Caspian Sea, the Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. There were a multitude of different cultures living within this area. Tartary was not defined, nor did it represent one race of people. In modern terms, this area spans from the east of the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea and includes Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and Siberia.[3]

The Tartarian ‘theory’ was originated and perpetuated by pseudo-historians who combined a Russian fervour for their allegedly lost empire (Tartaria being the supposed real name of Russia according to some conspiracy believers) with an alternative historical chronology. Basically, the timeline we all know is actually much shorter in reality. This theory has then been picked up by influencers and shared as a fact being hidden by someone in authority – usually a shadow Government, the Rothschilds, the Illuminati or the Secret Owl Society. [4]

Buildings such as the Capitol in Washington, the Pyramids in Egypt, The Great Wall of China, and Bastian Star forts, such as seen in Portugal, Netherlands, and Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka was a Portuguese and Dutch colony, so no mystery how the design was utilized there). Here in Adelaide, buildings being assigned to the Tartarian include the Adelaide Town Hall, the General Post Office and the Edmund Wright Building. This is despite detailed records of design and photographic evidence of construction.

 One of the things that Tartarian conspiracy theory believers love to argue as a feature of Tartarian architecture is buildings with basement windows. If you look around Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Gawler, or Kapunda, you’ll see this common feature that allows light to get into basement rooms with pre-electric light (it is widely believed that Port Adelaide has lower basements because the city was ‘built up’ to stop tidal floods, however, there is no evidence of this. One would think if this were the case the original ground-level doors would be visible in what are now basements, and sub-basements, that were originally basements, would be present in all buildings).

Another feature of the conspiracy is that much of our history has been intentionally razed or destroyed by disasters and war. An example is the fire in the Norte-Dame de Paris, the 12th-century Roman Catholic cathedral in France was seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy more Tartarian architecture by conspiracy believers.[5]  Some believers in the theory cite Napoleon’s invasion of Russia as the beginning of the rewriting of Tartarian history and add that further World Wars destroyed much of what was left of the empire in the 20^th century. However, they do not cite how Napoleon’s army overcame the vastly superior weaponry of the Tartarian – as one must assume, a world power with such great architectural stills, would also have an advanced military and weaponry.[6]
  There is little reasoning offered on why such a coverup and rewriting of history has occurred. Much of the rhetoric involves believers riffing on old maps, weaving together narratives based on conjecture picking out small inconsistencies, and a flagrant disregard for documented history.
 There also seems to be little or no understanding of economic differences between now and two hundred years ago. Today, glass, steel and concrete are reasonably cheap to build with; stone, terracotta and marble are not. It was also much cheaper to hire skilled workers and labourers two hundred years ago than it is today.

© Allen Tiller 2025

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[1] Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, What Is the Lost Empire Of Tartaria?, Discover, (2023), https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-is-the-lost-empire-of-tartaria.

[2] Zach Mortice, ‘Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture’, Bloomberg, (2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-27/inside-architecture-s-wildest-conspiracy-theory.

[3] Mark C. Elliot, "The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies". The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 59, (2000), pp. 603–646.

[4] Josie Adams, Inside the wild architecture conspiracy theory gaining traction online, The Spin Off, (2022), https://thespinoff.co.nz/internet/14-01-2022/inside-the-wild-architecture-conspiracy-theory-gaining-traction-online.

[5] Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, What Is the Lost Empire Of Tartaria?, Discover, (2023), https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-is-the-lost-empire-of-tartaria.

[6] Zach Mortice, ‘Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture’, Bloomberg, (2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-27/inside-architecture-s-wildest-conspiracy-theory.