Media: BOOK - 72 pages
Author: R. Maerschel
Year: 2024
ISBN: 9781922935106
Other: b&w & colour photos and maps
Publisher: Unlock the Past

This book is about the read (Bat to Birdwood) and the places they pass through – not the events, the cars or the people, but about the roads – the hills and valleys made easy, the bridges built, the sand and mud made firm, and the flooding stopped. Scary rides with horses and buggies are recalled. Many buildings along the way, mostly gone, are pictured, and some maps show the way things used to be.

Pioneers and engineers with forgotten names are honoured here. Early days of Holdens are noted as well as some enterprising adaptions of cars for other uses. The smooth rides we enjoy today can be upset in seconds by nature which has its own agenda and timing, so floods and earthquakes are mentioned here.

This short history illustrates how Adelaide’s traffic jams in the 1840s were with sheep and cattle being herded to parkland slaughterhouses. Then we see how two impassible ridges in the Hills, and a deep valley in between, were conquered by pioneering European immigrants intent.

CONTENTS

1. Roads across the Years

2. Why have we come here?

• Different ways of thinking
• Enticement to migrate
• The colony’s roads
• Venturing into the wilds

3. From the Bay to the City

• Glenelg and Holdfast Bay
• West Beach
• Benefactors and Thieves
• Towards the City
• Keswick Barracks
• Keswick Bridge

4. Crossing the City of Adelaide

• King William Street
• The Ring Route
• Leaving the city

5. No One Here

6. Climbing the Tiers

• Tea Tree Gully
• Anstey Hill
• Tea Tree Gully or Anstey Hill?
• Montacute
• Torrens Gorge
• The impossible gap

7. Bridging the Gap : Zadows’s Track

• Breakneck Hills
• Breakneck Hill #2
• Millbrook
• Chain of Ponds
• Vast improvements celebrated
• Red Hill

8. An Easy Run to the Finish Line

• Gumeracha

9. Nature versus the Best Laid Plans

10. Epilogue

• Some personal reminiscences of the mill, cars and roads
  
  

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A DOWNLOADABLE EBOOK

Roads from Bay to Birdwood: Then and now - ebook