Adelaide: City of churches; a very potted history.

Adelaide is described as the city of churches and I suspect that most people think that there must be a lot of church buildings there so this is a little history lesson for any overseas readers I have.

When Australia was first settled by non-indigenous people its prime use was for penal settlements.  The east coast was one big state called New South Wales which encompassed Queensland in the north,  down to what is now Victoria.  Tasmania is the little island south of Victoria and had a couple of penal settlements: Port Arthur of massacre fame and another around Strachan.  Tasmania was probably the worst place to be sent as a boat was needed to get away.  Any convicts who managed to escape headed for South Australia.

The west coast had its own penal settlement centred around the Swan River.  And between New South Wales and Western Australia was a strip of land stretching from the south to the very untamed north.  This was in the late 1799 and early 1800s.

The south half of this strip had no penal colony and there were only free settlers and a few escaped convicts.

The official religion in England was The Church of England, founded by King Henry V111 and all official baptism, marriage and death records were gathered unto the Church of England.  There were, of course various other organisations (for better or worse) such as the Methodists and the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Roman Catholics.  The members of these congregations were somewhat pushed aside. As a genealogist I know that only recently have the church records from these congregations become readily available.  All births, marriages and deaths had to be submitted to the official Church on a quarterly basis.

People looked to South Australia as a place where they could worship s they pleased and there was a lot of migration from various religious organisations outside the orthodox Church of England.  There was a massive influx if German immigrants who settled in the Adelaide Hills and proceeded to grow grapes and produce beautiful wines.  There are still a lot of Lutherans in South Australia.  My great great grandfather was a Congregational minister who emigrated with his whole congregation and settled near the mouth of the Murray river.

The Afghan camel drivers, who did the trek north carrying supplies and mail,  settled in South Australia and Australia is now home to some of the best racing camels much valued in Saudi Arabia.  The train from Adelaide to Darwin is named The Ghan after the camel drivers  who traded north across the desert.

So South Australia has a lot of churches  -  Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalists who have now united as the Uniting Church, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Quaker, Muslim, Chinese, etc.  Not, to my mind actual buildings but churches as living entities  -  congregations.

I guess that it depends how one interprets the word "churches".

And the limerick:-

There once was a curate of Kew
Who kept a large cat in a pew.
He taught it each week
A letter of Greek,
But it never got further than Mu.