Gumeracha. William Beavis Randell's flour mill built in 1847.Converted to a butter factory 1883. Now a fine residence.

Few families had such an important impact on the history of the South Australian colony as did the Randell family. The father was a successful flour miller and his son William Richard Randell was the paddle steamer builder, river boat captain and river trader. The father settled in Gumeracha and became its leading citizen and the son established his career in Mannum but then retired back to the family estate of Kenton Park in Gumeracha just before his father’s death. They contributed to the Baptist Church in SA and the state parliament apart from their business interests. The Randell family developed a family logo which encapsulates the varied interests of the family. It has English Oaks which were planted at Kenton Park and in Gumeracha, a paddle wheel representing the river navigation company (and the river race of 1853), and a stone flour mill and chimney which represented the family milling businesses. Their heritage lives on in both Gumeracha and Mannum 186 years after William Beavis Randell arrived in Gumeracha. Below as a small family history chart as their names become confusing

 

William Beavis Randell 1799-1876. Married Mary Ann Elliott ( Bear) 1823. 10 children.

Married Phoebe Robbins 1876. 1 child.

Established Gumeracha, Kenton Park, flour mill. Buried Salem cemetery.

 

Their eldest son William Richard Randell. 1823 – 1911.

Married Elizabeth Nichols 1853. 15 children.

Established Mannum, Mary Jane paddle steamer, flour miller. Buried Salem.

 

Their eldest living son William Beavis Randell 1856 – 1917.

Married Hannah Finlayson 1880. 12 children.

Established dairy factory in mill, potato farmer, at Kenton Park. Buried Salem.

 

Their eldest living son William Beavis Randell 1886 – 1946.

Married Mary Lander 1916. 3 children.

 

William Richard Randell.

William Richard Randell was born in 1824 and lived until 1911. With his parents he arrived at Glenelg in 1837. He was born in Devon. On the banks of the Murray on his father’s land he dreamt of having the first paddle steamer on the River Murray. In 1852 with the gold rushes sweeping Victoria he determined to do it and set about construction a paddle steamer. After it was built the big race between “Captain” Randell of Mannum and Captain Francis Cadell of Goolwa transpired in August 1853 to see who could steam up the River Murray to the junction with the Darling River. Before then William Randell with his brothers Elliott and Thomas Randell and some carpenters (Wiese, Teakle and Bond) set about cutting timber for the hull in Gumeracha and then they carted it in bullock drays to the River Murray where Mannum now stands. A local blacksmith John Coulls of Blyth Street Adelaide made the boiler and the engine was built in Adelaide by a German engineer Claus Gehlken. The hull was 17 metres (56 feet) long and the boat was completed in February 1853 and named the Mary Ann after his mother. Captain Cadell of Goolwa named his first paddle steamer the Lady Augusta after Lady August Fox Young the wife of the South Australian Governor. The Lady Augusta was made in Sydney and sailed to Goolwa. Unlike American paddle boats Randell’s Mary Ann was a side wheeler. It cost William Randell about £1,800 - a large sum for those days. Both paddle steamers arrived in Swan Hill on 14th September with the Lady Augusta arriving first by three hours. Cadell got the prize money from the government for winning the race. But William Randell went much further up the River Murray to Echuca. In 1854 after the voyage to Echuca William Randell built a second hull and attached it to make a strange two hulled vessel which he renamed the Gemini. This was the start of William Randell’s successful river boat company carrying supplies to the gold towns and the sheep stations along NSW and Victorian rivers. All that remains of the historic Mary Ann these days is the old boiler which is located in the Randell Reserve Mannum. It was left on the shores of the River Murray for decades from the mid 1850s and just after William Richard Randell’s death it was given back to the town of Mannum for display purposes in 1912. Randell had given the boiler to the SA Chambers of Manufactures in 1909.

 

William married Elizabeth Nichols in 1853 in Gumeracha. He eventually moved into Bleak House at Mannum now known as Randell House. At the bottom of the garden of this grand residence is one remaining wall of the two room cottage which he built in Mannum in the mid-1850s. The grand two storey limestone residence with red brick quoins faces McLaren Street but is hidden by trees and an impressive stone wall sand extensive gardens. It is above Randell’s old wool store which the first was building erected in Mannum in 1854. Randell house, however was built in 1868. As Randell’s trade along the Murray, the Murrumbidgee and the Darling increased Randell gave up four milling for shipping and warehousing. He moved to Wentworth in NSW and became a JP there in 1861. He returned to permanently live in Mannum in 1869 once Randell House was completed and in that same year he sailed a dry dock up from Goolwa and installed it where the Mannum Museum is now located. Around the time that his mother died at Kenton Park and in 1874 William Richard Randell and his family returned to live at Kenton Park in Gumeracha. His father died there in 1876. In 1893 he became the chairman of the Gumeracha Butter factory which operated in the former flour mill. In that same year 1893 he replaced John Barton Hack as the member the seat of Gumeracha in the Legislative Assembly which Randell held until 1899. The Butter Factory manager bought the business, but probably not the building in 1906. Unfortunately a fire destroyed part of the mill in 1912 and only part of it was rebuilt. Part was still used by the butter factory and part became a slaughter house for a butcher. In the 1920s the building became an AMSCOL milk depot. William Richard Randell died in 1911 just four years before work began on Lock One at Blanchetown which was named after him. He maintained his river businesses after the move back to Kenton Park and during his life he owned and ran 16 paddle steamers along the Darling and Murray Rivers. His progeny numbered fifteen and his eldest born living son William Beavis Randell moved into Kenton Park. Sadly he died there just a few years later in 1916. He ran the Kenton Park property as a dairy, potato and grain farm. Kenton Park stayed in the Randell family for some time after this as the child born of Phoebe Robbins( John Beavis Randell) , the second wife, purchased it in the late 1920s.

 

William Beavis Randell.

David McLaren took out three Special Surveys of the Torrens Valley area for the SA Company in 1839/40. One centred on the River Torrens which flows through what became Gumeracha. The SA Company had a manager’s residence built at Gumeracha named Ludlow House for the sheep and cattle herd manager of their lands there. William Beavis Randell, arrived in South Australia in October 1837 as a SA Company manager and he was sent to work at Ludlow House. William Beavis Randell was born in Devon in England in 1799 and married Mary Ann Bear in 1823 in the village of Kenton near Exeter Devon. He came from a family of flour millers and that was his father’s occupation in Devon. William Beavis Randell’s first born child William Richard Randell arrived in 1824. At the age of 38 William Beavis Randell brought his wife and family of seven children to South Australia including William Richard Randell who was then 13 years old. When William Beavis’ contract with the SA Company expired in 1845 he bought land for himself in Kenton Valley adjacent to Gumeracha. Here he built a grand house, which he called Kenton Park, and a flour mill which opened for business in 1847.

 

Flour milling was such an important industry in early South Australia and William Beavis Randell Senior built his first flour mill at Gumeracha in 1847 which he called Kenton Mills. He had leased and run a flour mill in Kenton Devon before he moved to South Australia. On his land he first built a two storey stone barn in 1841 followed by Kenton Park House in 1844. When he built his first flourmill in 1847 he also built a row of workers cottages for his employees. These 1847 cottages are locally heritage listed and they received an Adelaide Hills Council grant of $20,000 in 2023 for their restoration. Like Kenton Park house they back onto the River Torrens. Directly opposite the flour mill he built Mill Cottage as a residence for his William Richard Randell and another son John Beavis Randell. Today Mill cottage is a well maintained private stone residence.

 

 

The Randall family with seven children moved into the Gothic style Kenton Park house in 1844. Randall had 966 acres of prime land along the River Torrens with some bought from the SA Company Special Survey and some from the government. From 1848 he bought wheat from the early settlers at Blumberg (Birdwood) for processing in his flourmill. One of his sons, Samuel Randell managed that flour mill. William Beavis Randell and the Randell family also bought the flour mill at Mt Pleasant built in 1863 and another at Eden Valley which was managed by William Richard Randell a son of William Randell senior. Then William Beavis Randell also acquired the land for a flour mill in Blumberg from George Fife Angas. He built the Blumberg (Birdwood) mill in 1854 and in 1857 it was destroyed by a fire. It was rebuilt and partially fire damaged again in 1867 when it was rebuilt again. It was owned by William Beavis Randell’s until his death in late December 1876. Thereafter it was sold to the Pflaum brothers in 1877. They built the grand three storey structure in 1888 and that building is now the National Motor Museum in Birdwood. Much of the flour produced in the Gumeracha flour mill from 1853 onwards was carted by bullocks to Mannum to be loaded onto a Randell ship for transport up the Murray and Darling rivers and to the gold mining centre of Bendigo and the Murray-Darling River sheep stations! The Randell flour mill was converted to a butter factory in 1883 by William Richard Randell and later it became a butcher’s shop, and an AMSCOL milk depot. More recently a bed and breakfast establishment before reverted to a private residence.

 

William Beavis Randell was a good Baptist and friend of David McLaren the former SA Company manager who was also a Baptist. McLaren had lived in Ludlow House himself for some time. Early Baptist services for the Gumeracha area were held in William Beavis Randell’s barn (built 1841) until the Salem Baptist Church, the oldest Baptist congregation in SA, was built. This congregation was keen to build a church and one opened in 1846 with the first service taken by Reverend Thomas Playford of Mitcham. Randell donated some of his land for this Baptist church which he attended. William Beavis Randell and his wife and numerous family members are buried in the attached cemetery. Until 1899 baptisms were conducted in a spring in the circle of oaks opposite the church but an earthquake at the time dried up the permanent spring which was located there and used for the baptisms.

 

Randell died at Kenton Park in 1876 and the milling business was then taken over by his son William Richard Randell. William Beavis Randell was an interesting character. But there is a surprise in William Beavis Randell’s story because in the last year of his 77 years of life on 17th August 1876 he married his housekeeper who was only 38 years old. He died on 28th December 1876. His first wife Mary Ann had died in December 1874 and was buried in the Salem cemetery with a simple marble headstone. After William Beavis Randell died a grand marble memorial was built for his nearby grave with Mary Ann Elliot Randell’s name also listed on that headstone. His second wife was Phoebe Robbins and by the time Randell died, just four months after the marriage, Phoebe was pregnant with a child who was named John Beavis Randell. William Beavis Randell was buried with his first wife Mary Ann in the Salem Baptist cemetery in January 1877. After his death Phoebe inherited 100 acres of land but she did not inherit Kenton Park. Phoebe Randell died in 1922. Her son John Beavis Randell bought Kenton Park in 1928 and moved back into the house and he represented Gumeracha in state parliament in the 1920s. He died in 1953. William Beavis Randell had nine children with Mary Ann and John Randell with Phoebe. Kenton Park remained in the Randell family until the year 2000 when it was sold to others.

 

Gumeracha.

In 1853 William Beavis Randell had the private town of Gumeracha laid out on part of his property. He named streets after his friend David McLaren and the reigning English monarch and her prince consort – Victoria and Albert. The town progressed well and a Methodist Church opened in Gumeracha in 1860 followed by the Institute in 1864 which was demolished for the new Town Hall which was built in 1909. The District Hotel was erected in 1861 and up the hill from it a Court House was built which was the first Court House in the Torrens districts. A second Court House and police station was built in 1865 and it is now the oldest police station still in use in SA. The Police Station was built in Georgian style. Although post services began in 1848 the current Post Office was built around 1890 to 1900. It is a fine stone building.

 

The SA Company residence Ludlow House in Gumeracha was retained by the SA Company until 1908 when it was sold to Mr W Hannaford. But for many years before 1908 it was leased out to others as the SA Company had moved its headquarters for stock management from the Gumeracha district. In the early years the SA Company had over 9,000 acres of land in the Gumeracha district. The Company moved stock production out of the Gumeracha-Birdwood districts in the 1850s when they decided to make money by leasing land to farmers. Rents and land sales became the Company’s major source of income after this early development stage of South Australia. Much of its land in the Gumeracha area was sold in the 1910s and 1920s to long term lessees. The Company ceased operations in 1949.

 

Mannum.

William Beavis Randell took out leasehold runs both side of the River Murray at Noa No just north of the later site of Mannum. He ran cattle on the riverfront leaseholds from 1851. It was on this land that William Richard Randell assembled his paddle steamer the Mary Ann which was carted down by bullock drays from Gumeracha. He built a launch slip and tested his steam powered paddle steamer. After his first short trip the steamer was moored further south at the site which later became Mannum. In 1864 the government surveyed the town of Mannum near Randell’s slip and wool store. William Richard Randell purchased sites in the town in addition to some of the family leaseholds. On the leasehold land he had built his wool store in 1854 and Randell House (originally called Bleak House) in the 1868 as well as maintaining his floating dock yard. Before Randell House was built William Richard Randell built a two room stone cottage in 1856. Only a couple of the walls of that cottage remain at the bottom of the garden of Randell House. One of his brothers Thomas George Randell built a new general store and house in Mannum in 1863 at the top of McLaren Street basically across the road from Bleak House. The rear part of that store, the original house was built around 1856. Look for it behind the current façade. It was later known as the B & F Randell store referring to Thomas’s wife Bella and their son Frederick Randell.

 

The Main Street of Mannum was renamed Randell Street in 1932. There are a number of structures in Randell Street which relate to William Richard Randell’s time in Mannum and they indicate his importance to the town. To acknowledge the importance of the Randell family to Mannum a walking trail of sites relating to him has been developed by the town. The sites relating to the Randell family include the boiler from the PS Mary Ann under a rotunda in the Randall Reserve and a stone memorial cairn nearby with a small metal replica of the Mary Ann paddle steamer is also in Randell Reserve on the river. The dry dock is by the town Museum and the Paddle Steamer Marion is often moored beside Randell’s dry dock. Randall House and garden was built in 1868. Thomas George Randell’s store and house (1856 and 1863) is at the top of McLaren Street- he was another son of William Beavis Randell and brother of William Richard Randell. Thomas George Randell was born in 1826 and died in 1880. Francis Henry Randell’s fine two storey house in McLaren Street is behind the Wool store. Francis Randell lived from 1835 to 1899 and is buried in the Salem Baptist cemetery in Gumeracha. He was another son of William Beavis Randell and brother of William Richard Randell. He bought the land for his house in McLaren Street from his brother in 1872. The house was erected shortly after that. The old launching site of the Mary Ann PS was at Noa No landing north of the town.

 

Done