Lancelot ghost town in South Australia. The long ruined corridor in the hotel. Nine rooms lead off this corridor.
Places like Lancelot should not be forgotten as in their heyday, they were important little towns. Lancelot was named after Sir Lancelot Stirling, and the first blocks were sold in 1877. At that time, government maps showed that a rail line was projected to continue on from Terowie through the new town to the north east pastoral runs of South Australia. The hundred of Yongala had been surveyed and settled in the early 1870s, and demand for agricultural land led to the surveying of the hundred of Gumbowie where Lancelot is located. Early maps of the town indicate the optimism of the government and the settlers for the town included a university reserve for a future university! Alas, a change of fortune meant the early demise of Lancelot.
Within a year of its founding the town was prospering. Excellent rainfall meant the harvests were good; a school was opened in 1878; a Wesleyan Church was opened in the same year; and a general store. The hotel, which was a large one, opened 1879. Goyder’s Line had been applied by the Surveyor General in 1865 as a demarcation line between pastoral and farming areas, and although Lancelot was outside the line, it looked prosperous. The store established in the town was set up by Mr Peters. His brother had set up earlier stores with a John Martin in Rundle Street, Adelaide in 1866. Mr Peters leased the store in Lancelot to Edward Tiemann.
By 1882 things were not looking so good in Lancelot. Drought had arrived and the wheat yields had dropped from seven or more bushels an acre to two or less. Then in 1884 the government announced that a final decision had been made on the proposed rail line towards the NSW border from the three options then being considered. The new line was to go from Peterborough and by pass the township of Lancelot altogether. This sealed the fate of the township. The extensive droughts of the 1890s brought more suffering o the area. The school population dwindled from around 40 to about 20 students a year. The business in the store moved on to the new rail siding of Ucolta from 1890. The gold rush at Teetulpa near Yunta in 1886 boosted the town a little but not for long as the rush was over within eighteen months. The gold there had been discovered by a resident of Lancelot, Thomas Brady. The district council had been formed in 1888 and met in Lancelot, but even that was moved out of the town in 1899. Lancelot was off the railway line and too near the thriving centre of Peterborough to prosper, and it was beyond Goyder’s Line and agriculture had no good long term prospects.
After the district council moved, the general store closed in 1905; the school finally closed in 1913. The lagoons near the town, which had been the scene of boating regattas when they had filled were dry after a series of droughts. All that was left was the town cemetery. One particularly harrowing tale was that of Mr McMutrie in 1894. Within a couple of days five of his eight children died of diphtheria, followed by his wife. They were all buried in the town cemetery and it was ten pm on a hot February night before Mr McMutrie could dig the hole to bury his wife by moonlight. There headstones are still in the cemetery and testament of the fortitude of these early settlers. Mr McMutrie lived on is his residence, which he called the Olives, farming and sowing a crop in the good years, until he died there in 1925.
Lancelot ghost town in South Australia. The long ruined corridor in the hotel. Nine rooms lead off this corridor.
Places like Lancelot should not be forgotten as in their heyday, they were important little towns. Lancelot was named after Sir Lancelot Stirling, and the first blocks were sold in 1877. At that time, government maps showed that a rail line was projected to continue on from Terowie through the new town to the north east pastoral runs of South Australia. The hundred of Yongala had been surveyed and settled in the early 1870s, and demand for agricultural land led to the surveying of the hundred of Gumbowie where Lancelot is located. Early maps of the town indicate the optimism of the government and the settlers for the town included a university reserve for a future university! Alas, a change of fortune meant the early demise of Lancelot.
Within a year of its founding the town was prospering. Excellent rainfall meant the harvests were good; a school was opened in 1878; a Wesleyan Church was opened in the same year; and a general store. The hotel, which was a large one, opened 1879. Goyder’s Line had been applied by the Surveyor General in 1865 as a demarcation line between pastoral and farming areas, and although Lancelot was outside the line, it looked prosperous. The store established in the town was set up by Mr Peters. His brother had set up earlier stores with a John Martin in Rundle Street, Adelaide in 1866. Mr Peters leased the store in Lancelot to Edward Tiemann.
By 1882 things were not looking so good in Lancelot. Drought had arrived and the wheat yields had dropped from seven or more bushels an acre to two or less. Then in 1884 the government announced that a final decision had been made on the proposed rail line towards the NSW border from the three options then being considered. The new line was to go from Peterborough and by pass the township of Lancelot altogether. This sealed the fate of the township. The extensive droughts of the 1890s brought more suffering o the area. The school population dwindled from around 40 to about 20 students a year. The business in the store moved on to the new rail siding of Ucolta from 1890. The gold rush at Teetulpa near Yunta in 1886 boosted the town a little but not for long as the rush was over within eighteen months. The gold there had been discovered by a resident of Lancelot, Thomas Brady. The district council had been formed in 1888 and met in Lancelot, but even that was moved out of the town in 1899. Lancelot was off the railway line and too near the thriving centre of Peterborough to prosper, and it was beyond Goyder’s Line and agriculture had no good long term prospects.
After the district council moved, the general store closed in 1905; the school finally closed in 1913. The lagoons near the town, which had been the scene of boating regattas when they had filled were dry after a series of droughts. All that was left was the town cemetery. One particularly harrowing tale was that of Mr McMutrie in 1894. Within a couple of days five of his eight children died of diphtheria, followed by his wife. They were all buried in the town cemetery and it was ten pm on a hot February night before Mr McMutrie could dig the hole to bury his wife by moonlight. There headstones are still in the cemetery and testament of the fortitude of these early settlers. Mr McMutrie lived on is his residence, which he called the Olives, farming and sowing a crop in the good years, until he died there in 1925.