MILLBROOK - A Submerged Story That Still Stirs Preview

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

View this rare and remarkable video filmed in 1955 (licenced under the National Film & Sound Archive TAKE 3 initiative) before discovering more details on the places, people and events of Millbrook - the township and the reservoir.

The Township (4m 18s)
Millbrook, situated in the Hundred of Para Wirra (which is an Aboriginal Peoples name for ‘river forest’) about 30 km northeast of Adelaide was first settled by European pioneers who were motivated by an anticipation of opportunity greater than which existed in their country of origin. One of the early settlers to the area, John Tippett, had an association with the town of Millbrook in Cornwall, England and it was this name which was adopted for the town established on subdivision of his section of land, 6136, Hundred of Para Wirra in 1877. The town was officially proclaimed in 1886 but Millbrook was already a hamlet from around the time the hotel opened in 1857.

Millbrook was a modest yet thriving rural community. It had a large flour mill, hotel, general store, post office, blacksmiths shop, and a temporary police station at one time. The land surrounding the township was quite fertile, being both agricultural and pastoral. Wheat was grown in small quantities, but the great majority of the land was laid out in fruit gardens producing some particularly fine specimens of apples. Private houses surrounded the orchards and agricultural fields throughout the township.

Its circa 1900, and there is Millbrook’s blacksmith's shop and forge. 'The Smithy' staff are standing outside with a horse, and a wagon drawn by four horses is waiting nearby. In an agricultural area like Millbrook, great importance was attached on the blacksmith and his services, for like the modern service centres and petrol outlets for the cars of today, the blacksmith was indispensable to the economic life in a community like Millbrook.

This is Millbrook’s post office, circa 1900, with a horse and cart at the front and look at this carefully tended garden attached to a cottage. Here's a road showing a general store and two-storey house in 1917 and in this view the location of the hotel can be seen on the left.

Look at the Millbrook community proudly standing in front of their new public hall during the opening of the building in 1914 which cost 130 pounds to build. Unfortunately, it was never used that much as even before the final payment to the builders was made, the Government announced the construction of the reservoir and soon began the compulsory acquisition of the township.

The People
The residents were clearly affected by the scheme and naturally opposed the project, their concerns largely not being recognised by the government with many disputes and compensation claims being settled by an arbitration court. By June 1919, 16 houses, the community hall, a private school and a church at Sunning Hill had been demolished with only the hotel and three houses remaining. By now the reservoir was beginning to fill and within several months the hotel and remaining buildings were demolished and became covered by the waters of the Millbrook Reservoir as well as the Methodist Church, store and a bridge at nearby Sunning Hill. The population of Millbrook which reached 167 in 1913, fell to 70 in 1919 and further to 40 by 1930. Many of those who left did not go very far and the population of nearby Chain of Ponds rose from 114 in 1913 to 150 by 1930.

Disclaimer
The locations of the places along Millbrook's roads shown in the video and in the section below are only approximate. While every effort has been made to identify their locations accurately, no definitive evidence is available to confirm their exact positions.

Millbrook Hotel (3m 01s)
The hotel was a fine two-storey building constructed between 1856 and 1857 by Mr Richard Jolly. It was of Georgian style, where proportion and balance of a property's architectural features were key.

It was the favoured ‘watering hole’ for both Millbrook’s town folk and as a popular stopover for travellers from Adelaide. It was the venue used for gatherings and dinners, including those of the Millbrook Rifle Club and for important community meetings, several being for choosing the site for the new Millbrook school.

The hotel had 20 proprietors during its history. The first was John Tippett from1857 to 1863 who named his public house ‘Millbrook Hotel’ in remembrance of the township in Cornwall he was associated with before migrating to Australia in 1848. Some of the longest serving proprietors were Richard Jolly (1864 to 1867) and (1870 to 1872). Oliver Philp had it from 1884 – 1890, James Ledgard from1872 to 1884, Albert Seppelt from 1909 to 1914 and William Seppelt at its closure from 1914 to 1918.

The hotel and other nearby premises were burgled in April 1896 and £8 stolen from the till. It had a few scandals too, one in 1873 between Police Trooper Pollitt and the publican’s wife at the time, Phillipa Ledgard. Interestingly, later that same year, Pollitt was charged with ‘disobedience of orders’ by the Chief Police Inspector and resigned! Could the two events have been connected? You can listen to a short podcast and/or read newspaper reports of both these events in the section below.

Oliver Philp was proprietor in 1886 during the time this Parliamentary Party from the Pastoral Lands Commission arrived in stagecoaches from Adelaide, probably in the summer, as some passengers are holding parasols for shade.

And here is the hotel in 1900 and again in 1908 when J.F. Fitzgerald was the proprietor.

The hotel was demolished later in 1918 and covered by the waters of the reservoir. If the hotel were allowed to remain standing, the water in the reservoir when full would be just about deep enough at this location to fully submerge the two-storey building.

The Millbrook Flour Mill (2m 58s)

The four-story Millbrook flour mill was a major industry in Millbrook but here you see it abandoned and falling into ruin in circa 1890. The central part of the building has started to collapse, probably because of damage done when its machinery was removed.

The flour mill was built through investment from Whitford, Soward, Davies and Tippett in 1856 when wheat yields in the local areas were high. The Foundation stone was laid by Francis Symonds on April 29th, 1856. The mill, built at a cost of approximately £1,000 was equipped with the largest steam engine available in the colonies at the time and the mill chimney was the tallest in the State when it was built so that it could serve the wheat processing requirements of the surrounding areas as well.

It was first worked by Mr Whitford and closed by Messrs. Cornish & Barclay in 1867. Before this time flour in SA was largely being imported from interstate with a large duty (tariff) payable. As a result, self-sufficiency in flour was encouraged by the government and investment money used to erect local flour mills. These early mills used stone rollers (called mill stones), like the ones shown here that were part of the Caltowie mill in the mid north of South Australia. If the mill stones so much as touched, it they could spark and with all the flour dust in the air being flammable, cause a fire and explosion.

Flour mills like Millbrook serviced only small communities so when growing seasons failed and the price of wheat was high, small mills became financially non-viable. There is no evidence to support fire damage causing the Millbrook mill to close prematurely in 1867, and it was more likely that both the hilly nature of the surrounding land made it uneconomically profitable in the longer term and / or sufficient flour was being produced in South Australia from other mills to now meet local demand. As a result, the Millbrook mill ceased operating after only 11 years of operation and its machinery sold to the Port Pirie Milling Company.

However, for many years after it closed, the lower story of the mill was used as an entertainment venue for the local community and for Salvation Army meetings until it was fully demolished in 1900. There is now about 24 metres of water above the ground where the mill once stood.

The Police Station (1m 45s)
Millbrook had its own police station for a short time while the reservoir was being constructed. It opened on the 28th of February 1914 and closed on the 22nd September 1918. It was set up in a rented house located opposite the Millbrook general store.

A large number of men were engaged in the reservoir construction, clearing the site of trees, building the reservoir wall, constructing new roads and demolishing the Millbrook buildings within the township. There was a large work camp consisting mainly of tents to accommodate the workers and the Millbrook police station was established to maintain law and order amongst the workers, to prevent the sale and supply of illegal alcohol and provide reassurance to the local community. It was initially staffed by Foot Constable Thomas Latimer and an unknown mounted Constable. The station was issued with a police horse and a bicycle. In March 1915 Latimer was transferred out and was replaced by Mounted Constable Frederick Weidenhofer. He was later joined by Mounted Constable Leslie Merrett. Weidenhofer was the last officer to be withdrawn from Millbrook on 2nd October, 1918.

Listen to a short podcast about Mounted Police Constable Frederick Weidenhofer in the section below.

The Sunning Hill Bridge (1m 31s)
The surviving 19th-century Sunning Hill bridge usually hidden below the reservoir water still becomes visible when the water level of the reservoir is very low. The bridge constructed by contractors Redman & Coad was opened in 1863 when a Miss Lillecrapp broke a bottle of wine against the structure, naming it the ‘Chain of Ponds Bridge’. However, it soon became known as the Sunning Hill Bridge, after a nearby vineyard of the same name. It was on the main road to Millbrook and subsequently proved invaluable to travelers through the district before being submerged by the reservoir.

Its stone abutments are detailed with projecting stone coursing at road level, and stone capping above the curving parapet walls which form the bridge entries. The arch is detailed with timber railings with crisscross trusses for both the balustrade and girders. The bridge is the finest surviving example of a mid-19th-century timber-arch bridge in South Australia and is an outstanding surviving example of early bridge construction techniques.

Millbrook School (3m 10s)
Standing on a hill overlooking the reservoir is the Millbrook school, where from an uncertain beginning, through big class sizes and small, wars and peace, apathy and enthusiasm, the gift of education was passed on from generation to generation for over a century. The school opened in 1879 with a first day attendance of 26 students.

Can you picture the evolution of school lessons through its 104 years: starting with slates, moving to paper, pencils, and nib pens dipped into inkwells, and then advancing to ballpoint pens, typewriters, computers, and finally, the internet? Can you hear the rustle of paper as knowledge was exchanged, the steady scratch of chalk on blackboards weaving lessons into the minds of students? Imagine the countless teachers who inspired, the generations of students who learned, dreamed, and grew within these walls.

The school was a fine stone building constructed in 1878 of lined local rock with red brick dressings for a cost of £977 with a five-roomed residence for the head teacher attached. It witnessed a wealth of history over the period 1879 to 1983 before, on February 13th of that year, the original building and house were badly damaged in the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires and closed for safety reasons as a result. Schooling at Millbrook didn’t stop though and continued through to 2010 using transportable buildings situated across the road from the original stone building.

Millbrook’s first head teacher appointed in 1879 was Mr John Risely. During its 104 years the school had only 28 head teachers, the longest serving being Mary Belcher competing 17 years between 1895 to 1912.

For whatever the reasons chosen for its location, the decision to build the school on a hill to serve as a seat of learning for children from the local districts of Millbrook, Sunning Hill, Chain of Ponds and Cudlee Creek was a lifesaver, for when the valley was drowned in 1918, the school became the only remaining structure of the Millbrook township to survive!

Millbrook Reservoir (4m 13s)
Sixty years after South Australia was officially settled by Europeans arriving from England in 1836 there had been considerable growth in the capital city Adelaide and the government increasingly recognised the growing threat of a water shortage, making it evident that constructing an additional reservoir was crucial for the city's future growth and prosperity.

Following a Royal Commission report in 1910 on the best means of supplying additional water particularly to the eastern suburbs of Adelaide, a Parliamentary Act entitled the ‘Millbrook Waterworks Act 1912’ was passed and assented to in October of that year for the construction a new reservoir at the junction of the Millbrook and Chain of Ponds Creeks at an estimated cost of £335,400 pounds.

The scheme began in 1913 with the construction of the reservoir headworks. This consisted of building a weir across the River Torrens near Gumeracha a few kilometres north-east of Millbrook and creating an underground inlet tunnel to discharge water held back by the weir through the tunnel and into an open concrete channel outlet at the northern reaches at the reservoir 1.6 kilometres away. The building of an earthen-clay core dam wall 288 metres long and 31 metres high from the bed of the Chain of Ponds Creek about a mile south of the Millbrook township would form a large natural water storage basin amongst the surrounding hills. An outlet tower, tunnel and outlet pipe would then gravity feed water from the wall end into the River Torrens below the township of Cudlee Creek to supply the existing Hope Valley reservoir with the additional water which Adelaide required. Work also included several new road diversions between Chain of Ponds and Cudlee Creek.

Construction continued until 1918 with the reservoir filling for the first time in 1920 and the picturesque and quiet little village of Millbrook slowly became submerged to become a lost town hidden forever beneath the waters of the reservoir.

One can only imagine the feelings of the former residents of the valley who were gathered to witness the event, as they watched the water sweep across the land where once they had lived!

The total holding capacity of the reservoir, when full is 16,500 megalitres, and the water, when spread, occupies an area of 176 hectares at surface level and impounded. When completed the reservoir doubled Adelaide's water storage at that time.

From 1913 when the inlet tunnel at Gumeracha was started to the end of 1920 when the reservoir was completed about 500 men were engaged in its construction. And despite the use of heavy manual labour and over 1,000 tons of explosives during this time the operation was free of fatal accidents. However, in December 1920, after its completion, the first and only tragedy affecting one of the workmen took place. Richard Andrews a cook for the Waterworks Department looking after the operation of the reservoir was mistaken for a rabbit and shot in the hip by another employee standing 30 metres away. As a result of significant blood loss and treatment on site, he was pronounced dead on arrival at the Royal Adelaide Hospital some hours later.

Listen to a short podcast of the tragic event as it was reported in the ‘Register’ newspaper on December 20, 1920 and more about ‘The Passing of the Millbrook Township’ in The Register on Monday 26th August 1918.

Gumeracha Weir and Inlet Tunnel (1m 55s)
The weir is a major structure associated with the Millbrook Reservoir Scheme. It was constructed between 1915 and 1917 and its purpose was to divert water from the River Torrens to Millbrook Creek via a 1600 metre underground tunnel and so increase the catchment of the reservoir. It is a 10-metre high and 45-metre-wide concrete barrage with steps to the southwest and is flanked by low concrete towers to either side.

Constructed on the northern side is a 230-metre reinforced concrete conduit to bring water from the upstream side of the weir to the start of the underground inlet tunnel which is 3.28 metres high and 2.1m wide. It was drilled through solid rock by workmen and machines, took over two years to complete and was fraught with difficulties during construction, the main one being large inflows of ground water which clogged the tunnel and required large pumps to be installed to de-water it. At the outlet end, 1.6 kilometres west, water is discharged into the northern reaches of the reservoir through an open concrete channel.

The inlet tunnel can deliver up to 682 megalitres of water into the reservoir per year.

The Outlet Channel (0m 51s)
The western outlet of the inlet tunnel from the weir on the River Torrens is an open channel which releases water directly into the reservoir at its northern section. Construction began in 1915 and completed in 1918 when on July 5th of that year the first water was admitted to the reservoir from the River Torrens through the inlet tunnel.