Old Port Adelaide (2)

Old Port Adelaide (2)

By A. T. Saunders.

2 February 1917

I observe that Mr. Johns is now postmaster in Port Adelaide, and that seems quite natural, for his father was the contractor for the present Port post office building. Mr. Edward Johns was one of a Cornish family who arrived here in 1849 in the ship "Samuel Boddington," Mr. Johns being then in his teens. 

His father—the grandfather of the present Port postmaster —was a sturdy Cornishman, who had gone out to Brazil for a few years and there earned good wages, which helped him to emigrate to this State. My old friend Bennett Johns of Firle has a family photo, and a very sturdy lot they were. Mr. Bennett Johns, who is in his 78th year goes in to his business almost daily and earns his living as he has done for the past 60 years. He and the late William Gibb, father of John and Fred Gibb each married a daughter of the late Mr. Langman, who was one of the pioneers of 1839. Mrs. Johns is still living. Old Mrs. Langman carried from the old Port to Hindmarsh part of a heavy vyce, her husband being a blacksmith. 

Before me lies a deed dated 1st June, 1843, by which William Langman, of Bowden, sells to Edward Churchman, of Hindmarsh, lot No. 371 in Bowden, with house, yards, and every fixture therein and thereon for £25, of which £16 13/4 was to be paid in instalments of five shilling's weekly and £8 6/8 to be paid when required by William Langman, but the whole must be paid in 18 months. Thus our primitive pioneers. What sort of a house would £25 produce now, with the land thrown in? 

The father of Mr. Postmaster Johns was a good wrestler, and the "Register" records his feats when he was about 16 years of age. He was one of those who were drowned in the wreck of the steamer Gothenburg, February, 1875, when coming home from the Northern Territory. 

Mr. Bennett Johns had a contract for laying the first water mains in Port Adelaide in the 'sixties, and he and his brother also helped to build the new foundations for the Troubridge Lighthouse. Operative masons think now that they are not as well off and as well paid as they should be, but how would they have liked to have tramped from North Adelaide to the Dry Creek Labor Prison in time to start work at 6 a.m. and walk back to North Adelaide after knocking off at 6 p.m.? I should be sorry to see those times again, and am pleased that conditions are so much better, but one gets a bit tired at the self pity and grumbling of our tradesmen now. 

When I first knew the Port post office the private boxes were in a little building about where the telegraph station is now, but I cannot remember it very clearly. In 1867, when I began work in Port Adelaide, Mr. Alger was postmaster, a lean and childless man, who was, I fancy, not very even tempered. He was one of the first to have a dwelling at the Semaphore beach on the north side of the jetty. Garrett McEllister was the deputy postmaster, and the perennial John Ottoway, who is still, I am glad to say, in Port Adelaide, was on the staff. The present generation have not seen Mr. Ottoway in his scarlet cut-away coat smartly delivering his letters as we of the older generation have. 

Mr. E. W. Gray was the next postmaster I remember. He was one of the officials of the bullion office and made or assisted to make the Adelaide sovereigns in 1852 or 1853. Mr. B. Edwards came from Gawler, I think, about 1870, and he is still around. 

The mails were taken to and from the railway station for many years by my old friend John Murphy, whose house and stables were where Walter and Morris offices now are, or close thereto. 

It is almost incredible that in 1839 not only the whole of Port Adelaide was covered with sea water at ordinary high tide, but the water also went well up in Queenstown, Alberton and Yatala. Of course, these places were not named in the early days. 

The old Port, at the end of the Port Road, which runs straight from Hindmarsh to the Port River, was the first dry land the pioneers came to. In the public library is a chart of the survey of the creek made by Colonel Light in 1836, which mentions that Mr. Field had laid down two cask buoys at the entrance of the Port River. This was the beginning of Port Adelaide and ships came up the creek as close to the old Port as possible and boated their cargo ashore, or as near as the mud allowed. A canal was dug , which can still be traced, for the boats to go up and land their goods, and then over a fairly high and broad sandhill the goods had to be carried, hauled or carted to get fairly on the road or track to Adelaide. 

From the sand hills at the old Port to part of Queenstown was dry, then between Queenstown and Alberton from about the old cemetery the sea water flowed during high tides quite up to the upper end of Queenstown facing the Port Road and ran towards the railway, where the oval now is. Here and there were isolated sand hills, and small areas of land a few feet higher than rest. In Yatala, for instance, there were large sandhills on the Torrens Road, then at Rosewater were lower sand hills, and where the gas works are and at Kingston were patches of flat country a few feet higher than the adjacent land. 

The first embankment to keep the water back was St. Vincent Street, and after that the North Parade, on the north, the Port Road embankment running north and south, the bank along the north side of Tam o' Shanter Creek, or rather, part of the creek, and the extension of Mundy Street. After this the Adelaide railway and the Grand Junction Road banked the water back to some extent from lower Woodville, Port Adelaide and Alberton. Then the loop line to Dry Creek banked it further, and finally the embankment to North Arm, roughly speaking, completed the job about 1886. 

In 1867, when there was a high tide, looking from Levi's Wharf, now the Adelaide Steamship Co.'s, from the top of the two-story store, there was a sea of water from Port Adelaide towards the "Levels" and Dry Creek. The present generation cannot conceive what it was like.