History of the town

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History of Nairne

Matthew Smillie (1782 - 1847)

MATTHEW SMILLIE,  the rich Scottish lawyer, became the first sheep farmer east of the Mt Lofty Ranges.
He arrived in South Australia from Leith, Scotland in 1839 and immediately purchased 4000 acres of green undulating land north of Mt Barker, part of what is known today as Hay Valley. It included “The Valleys”,  where he built his homestead, and the part where the town of Nairne stands today. He did not farm the land himself but invited settlers to take up tenant farming.

MATTHEW SMILLIE  showed much foresight when he surveyed part of the land to establish a village settlement. The first peg of the survey which was undertaken in 1839 was placed in the footpath near the Nairne Institute. He named the village Nairne in honour of his wife’s maiden name Elizabeth Corse Nairne.

He generously gifted to the fledgeling community a portion of land known today as the Nairne Tennis Courts and Matthew Smillie Park (later split by the railway line) for the community to use as a market place. He also donated another portion of land next to Nixon Street and abutting Nairne Creek to be used as the community’s cemetery. There he was interred at his death on March 12th 1847 only 8 years after his arrival in Nairne. His grave stands as an imposing monument to his memory.

The early days

There are so many stories that can be told about those pioneers:

• One reads of the adventures of John Dunn walking to Adelaide once a month to get supplies and carry them on his back over the hills to Nairne. He also built a rigid wind driven millstone in Hay Valley, off Woodside Road,  to mill his locally grown wheat into flour. Eventually he became rich and prominent in the community of Nairne

• People like the Wesleyans who built their chapel in Jeffrey Street on land donated by Mr. T. May.  At this chapel Mrs Elizabeth Smillie occasionally attended services arriving on a bullock dray sitting on a huge sofa and driven by her African servant.

• The Methodists too built a small stone building for their church In October 1884 Mr John Clezy laid the stone for the present church which was built onto the old one.

• The Allon Brothers, carriers of Nairne mail, were contracted to transport the whole of the material for the bridge over the Murray with their bullock teams.

• The school teachers Misses Shakes and Lawton and Mr. Rider in Nairne, Mrs at Hay Valley. Mr A Sandercock and others.

• An unnamed pioneer traveled  all the way to Adelaide to register the birth of his son but was so excited about being a father that he forgot the name he and his wife had agreed so he returned to Nairne without filing the papers.

• A story is told about two aboriginal tribes that gathered on top of the hill behind the Methodist Chapel to fight out a difference of opinion. This has been refuted as being not a real fight but a mock fight part of an inter-tribal wedding ceremony.

Amos William Howard (1848 - 1930)

HOWARD, AMOS WILLIAM (1848-1930), nurseryman and pasture improvement pioneer, was born on 31 May 1848 at Silk Mills, Watford, Hertfordshire, England, son of William Howard, gardener, and his wife Ann, née Hester. On 23 July 1871 at the Wesleyan Chapel, Tendring, Essex, he married Eliza Rowe. Arriving in South Australia in 1876, Howard established a nursery in the Adelaide hills between Nairne and Littlehampton. He became clerk of the local district council, but resigned to contest a council seat which he won and held for ten years. About 1880 he joined the Glen Osmond chapter of the Oddfellows' Lodge.

In 1889, intending to purchase a cow, Howard visited Michael Daley's property adjoining the Mount Barker Springs and Nairne roads. As Daley was away, Howard 'strolled along one of the valleys … to fill in time until the owner returned' and was attracted by the growth of a kind of clover. It was later identified as subterranean clover, Trifolium subterraneum Linn., a widely variable species probably inadvertently introduced to Australia from Britain or Europe fifty or sixty years earlier, and known in the Adelaide hills since about 1880. Sir Ferdinand Mueller recorded the plant as naturalized in Victoria by 1887, and it was reported from the Riverina as 'a vigorous grower' in 1896 when J. H. Maiden made his guarded comment: 'I know nothing against its character, except a certain aggressiveness … It is not an introduction which need render us uncomfortable'.

On 3 February 1906 Howard began his correspondence with the Adelaide Advertiser, enthusiastically extolling the virtues of the plant for improving pastures. Overcoming technical problems, he harvested the seed and offered samples to the South Australian Agriculture Bureau. By January 1907 he was able to sell 30 lb. (13.6 kg) to E. & W. Hackett, Adelaide nurserymen. Further experience with the clover prompted Howard to write to the press in 1907-09 vigorously promoting its use. By this time he and his sons were selling up to a ton (tonne) of seed annually.

State agriculture authorities made experimental sowings of the clover before 1920 and tentative recommendations concerning its use, but when superphosphate was advocated for pastures as well as for crops clover sowings responded remarkably, and the formula of 'sub and super' was widely followed. In 1923 the importation of a clover huller from the United States of America by Howard's son Cecil lifted annual seed production to over eight tons and in 1930 it was claimed that annual production of clover seed was responsible for about £50,000 coming into the Mount Barker district. By 1961 some 20 million acres (8.1 million ha) of southern Australia had been sown with subterranean clover, notwithstanding the discovery that some strains had oestrogenic properties injurious to sheep. The clover not only improved pastures but upgraded soil fertility through its nitrogen-fixing qualities.

Howard died at Beau Vale, Blakiston, on 2 March 1930, predeceased by his wife, a son and a daughter; he was buried in Blakiston cemetery, survived by three daughters and seven sons. A memorial to Howard's work on 'the most important pasture plant in Australia' was unveiled on 3 October 1963 on the Mount Barker road near the sites of his original observations and of his home. An appeal launched at the ceremony by the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science led to the establishment of the Howard memorial research fellowship in 1967. Two of the several cultivars of subterranean clover are named 'Howard' and 'Mt Barker'. A portrait is in the South Australian Archives.

Back to Founder's Day

Ellen Smith (1833 - 1916)

The story of the quilt made by Ellen Smith in Nairne and now located at the Carbethan Folk Lore Museum in Queensland is another story that has come to light.

Ellen Smith nee Haines was born in Alderbury near Salisbury, England, on 8th May 1833. She arrived from England on the “Lysander “on her 17th birthday, 8th May 1850. From Port Adelaide she was transported to her brother Perc’s place at Nairne by the bullock driver Mr. Hillman. Mr Hillman later married Ellen and produced a son who died and was buried near the forked gum tree in the Nairne cemetery.

On the 16th of August 1857 Ellen Hillman/Haines married Edis Smith who was employed by Mr Bee of Nairne. They had 12 children. The story goes that Ellen made a quilt for each daughter. The particular quilt which is an exhibit today was made by Ellen around the turn of the 20th century. The family then moved to Crows Nest Queensland.
In the 1930’s Fred Smith, Ellen’s son visited family and took the quilt back with him to Queensland and gave it to his daughter Beryl Deeth who donated it to the Carbethan Folk Lore Museum at Crows Nest.
Edis Smith died on February 3rd 1905 and Ellen on June 15th 1916 and are buried in the Nairne cemetery.