Hackham, South Australia

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Hackham
Adelaide, SA

Population:

13,730 (2006 Census)

Established:

1856

Postcode:

5163

Property Value:

AUD $200,000 (2007)

Location:

25 km (16 mi) from Adelaide (Straight Line)

LGA:

City of Onkaparinga

Suburbs around Hackham:
Hackham West	Morphett Vale	Onkaparinga Hills
Huntfield Heights	Hackham	Onkaparinga Hills
Huntfield Heights	McLaren Vale	McLaren Vale

Hackham is a metropolitan suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. It lies within the City of Onkaparinga.

[edit] History

See Also: History of Adelaide

See Also: European settlement of South Australia

The township of Hackham was surveyed for Edward Castle on Section 25 Hundred of Noarlunga in 1856. Castle had arrived in South Australia in 1839 and it is thought named the new settlement after his former home in Gloucestershire. Another version of the naming of the place states that J.B. Hack, an early colonist, lent his name to it and yet another has it that James Kingdon, the first owner of the section prior to Castle, named it.

One contemporary account stated that town of Hackham was ‘peculiarly adapted for its purpose, being in the centre of a large agricultural district. The land is sloping and dry in winter’.

By 1866, Hackham was linked by a daily coach to Adelaide and it contained a post office, licensed school, and a hotel, the Golden Pheasant. The town did not flourish however and during the 1880s dwindled to virtually nothing more than gardens, farms and wattle plantations. One of those gardens, a plant nursery maintained by F.W. Hutchinson, became well known for its seed production.

The Craig, Collins, Hutchinson, Holly, Humphris, Forsyth and Sparrow families were just some of those that pioneered the place. It was predominately a farming region, specialising in cereal production until the 1960s and 1970s when the encroachment of suburban subdivisions changed land use.