Local Road Names

Text: John McGregor

Images:SLSA, MLDHS

 

Some local roads were named after people with some connection with the area :

i e  Hardy Road named after the businessman of fluctuating fortunes who built Mount Lofty House, Arthur  Hardy, and Wright Road named after  the Wright family who had property along it. Tom Wright was the last person to drive a horse and trap around the area, and on a Saturday afternoon the clip-clop of the horse could be heard approaching the Stirling East tennis courts as Tom came home from his drink or two with his friends.

Some Crafers roads are also interesting. For example, Station Lane, between the hotel and Jimmies is nowhere near a station, but before the freeway bisected Crafers it wound round behind the hotel to join the top of Ayers Hill and so was an easy route for Crafers residents to get to the Mount Lofty Station.

Cox Creek Road is nowhere near Cox (or Cox’s creek) Creek, which flows from the Carey Gulley area through to Bridgewater and was used to turn the wheel on the Bridgewater Mill. The creek which originated in the area of Atkinson’s paddock in Crafers and ran down to Stirling to become the Aldgate Creek was called Bosun’s Creek.

 It is true that Backhouse Avenue  is at the back of a row of houses on the hill behind the Crafers School, but that is not how it got its name. Many years ago the large parcel of land that now contains the school and the Botanic Gardens was owned by  Tom Backhouse who built Woodbury and made his money by clearing the area of timber and selling it for construction projects.

There is also an anomaly in a section of road-naming. If “Old” in the name of “Old Mount Barker Road” means “Original” then instead of the current road terminating as it does at the monument roundabout where it joins Piccadilly Road, the section of Piccadilly Road from that intersection into Crafers should also be named Old Mount Barker Road, and  the name “Piccadilly Road “ should not begin until that road branches off at the monument.

Glenside Lane, running down towards Stirling from Old Mt. Barker Road between Thorngrove and Derrymor, for many years was considered a private road, and in the days when council rates took into account if a sealed road passed your property, it suited the owners of the properties on each side of the lane to claim it as private and so have it left unsealed. The only proviso was that it had to be closed once a year, and so every Boxing Day string was strung across it, and even though the first car that came along broke the string, the law had been adhered to.

Do you have stories or memories of any of these locations or do you know of other Roads with a story? Contact us at mldhsgateways@mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au or drop into the History Centre at the Coventry Library, 63 Mount Barker Road, Stirling.