Uraidla (, ) is a small town in the

Adelaide Hills The Adelaide Hills region is located in the southern Mount Lofty Ranges east of the city of Adelaide in the state of South Australia. The largest town in the area, Mount Barker, South Australia, Mount Barker, is one of Australia's fastest-growi ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. At the , Uraidla had a population of 575. However it also sits at the centre of a larger population catchment of rural townships which include Summertown, Piccadilly, Ashton, Basket Range, Carey Gully, Norton Summit and Cherryville. The name is derived from the

Kaurna The Kaurna people (, ; also Coorna, Kaura, Gaurna and other variations) are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kau ...

name Yuridla, which means "two ears" and originally referred to the two nearby peaks of

Mt Lofty Mount Lofty (, elevation AHD) is the highest point in the southern Mount Lofty Ranges. It is located about east of the Adelaide city centre, within the Cleland National Park in the Adelaide Hills area of South Australia. The mountain's sum ...

and Mt Bonython, and also relates to the Dreaming story of Ngarnu, a giant from the east.

History

Once the home of the

Peramangk The Peramangk are an Aboriginal Australian people whose lands traditionally comprise the Adelaide Hills, as well as lands to the west of the Murray River in mid Murraylands and through to the northern part of the Fleurieu Peninsula in the Au ...

Aboriginal people, European settlement commenced in the mid nineteenth century, a primary school opened in 1871 and the town was formally established in the 1880s. A tiny red brick building in the main street bears a plaque declaring that it was the local branch of the Scottish and Welsh Bank. The original courthouse (now a cottage) still stands on the corner of Swamp Road and Greenhill Road. The original general store still exists as a two-storey house near the junction of Days Road and Greenhill Road. The mainstreet of Uraidla was originally planted with a double avenue of European Elms. Only four of these remain.

Etymology

The name Uraidla is derived from local Aboriginal origins. The neighbouring

Kaurna people The Kaurna people (, ; also Coorna, Kaura, Gaurna and other variations) are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kau ...

(from the

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

plains) and a local subgroup known as Peramangk, had a tale about an ancestral giant who fell in battle and whose body formed part of the

Mount Lofty Ranges The Mount Lofty Ranges are a range of mountains in the Australian state of South Australia which for a small part of its length borders the east of Adelaide. The part of the range in the vicinity of Adelaide is called the Adelaide Hills and d ...

, with his ears forming

Mount Lofty Mount Lofty (, elevation AHD) is the highest point in the southern Mount Lofty Ranges. It is located about east of the Adelaide city centre, within the Cleland National Park in the Adelaide Hills area of South Australia. The mountain's su ...

and

Mount Bonython Mount Bonython (, above sea level) is one of two major peaks in the Adelaide Hills visible from Adelaide. The other, about a kilometre to the south and some 50 m higher, is Mount Lofty. Mount Bonython is named after Sir John Langdon Bonython a ...

. The name ''Yurrēidla'' thus derives from the

words ''yurre'' (ear) and the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

denoting location, ''-illa'' (Teichelmann & Schurmann 1840Teichelmann, C. G.; C. W. Schürmann

840 __NOTOC__ Year 840 (Roman numerals, DCCCXL) was a leap year starting on Thursday in the Julian calendar, the 840th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 840th year of the 1st millennium, the 40th year of the 9th cen ...

(1982). Outlines of a grammar, vocabulary and phraseology of the Aboriginal language of South Australia spoken by the natives in and for some distance around Adelaide. Tjintu Books. .). This was later corrupted to Uraidla and adopted as the name of the town.

Industries

Uraidla and the surrounding area is an agricultural district with vegetable market gardens on large scale producing

leek A leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek (synonym (taxonomy), syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of Leaf sheath, leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a "s ...

cabbage Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of '' Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.& ...

and

lettuce Lettuce (''Lactuca sativa'') is an annual plant of the family Asteraceae mostly grown as a leaf vegetable. The leaves are most often used raw in Green salad, green salads, although lettuce is also seen in other kinds of food, such as sandwiche ...

, with

apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

and

cherry A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet '' Prunus avium'' and the sour '' Prunus cerasus''. The na ...

orchards An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees that are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of lar ...

, along with

vineyard A vineyard ( , ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines. Many vineyards exist for winemaking; others for the production of raisins, table grapes, and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is kno ...

s producing many local

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

vintages. Local wineries that are part of the Adelaide Hills wine district include Parish Hills Wines and Barratt Wines. The Uraidla Hotel had been closed for several years from 2013, but was refurbished in 2016 as a store. A converted church across from the hotel dubbed 'Lost in a Forest' provides local wines and wood oven pizzas, whilst the name of a former local restaurant 'The Aristologist' has been resurrected n the form of a Tapas Bar in nearby Summertown. The central oval and showgrounds are used annually for the historic Uraidla and Summertown Show, drawing many hundreds of people, traditionally in mid-February; shifted in 2017 to early November. Uraidla is also traditionally a centre for sport with

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

Netball Netball is a ball sport played on a rectangular court by two teams of seven players. The primary objective is to shoot a ball through the defender's goal ring while preventing the opposing team from shooting through their own. It is one of a ...

Tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

and

Lawn Bowls Bowls, also known as lawn bowls or lawn bowling, is a sport in which players try to roll their ball (called a bowl) closest to a smaller ball (known as a "jack" or sometimes a "kitty"). The bowls are shaped (biased), so that they follow a curve ...

the main sports. The Football Club Rooms and Bowling Club both have licensed premises. Uraidla and nearby Summertown and

Carey Gully Carey Gully is a small town in the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. The name of the town is taken from one of the early settlers of the area, Paddy Carey, and was originally called Carey's Gully, (This can be seen at the town's War Me ...

are serviced by a mixed business General Store and Post Office and a Village Pharmacy and Health Spa, Hairdresser, Civil Engineering and the Uraidla Family Practice. Private massage therapists, chiropractors, artists and craftspeople, a metal foundry, a salvage warehouse and a freestone quarry also operate in the town or immediate area. The former Returned Servicemen's League Hall in the main street is now being used by the Country Fire Service as the hub for the several local fire crews of Ashton, Summertown, Carey Gully and Piccadilly. During Emergency Fire Events, this site is used for strategic coordination, media interaction, broadcast by television crews and the adjacent Oval is used by helicopters as a landing site.

References

External links

Adelaide Hills Council
{{authority control Towns in South Australia