Sandy Creek, South Australia
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Sandy Creek is a town in South Australia. The town is situated approximately 6 kilometres east of Gawler and is the last town passed through before you enter the historic Barossa Valley at Lyndoch. The Sandy Creek conservation park is nearby, as is Tindoo, a nudist colony with several permanent residents.
The surrounding fields are often populated by wild kangaroos and a significant brown snake population. Nearby Cockatoo Valley is named for the huge flocks of destructive and noisy corellas, a native parrot, which denude the pine trees and feed on the grain crops. Daytime temperatures can reach as high as 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees f) and often exceed 40 degrees.
The Sandy Creek Hotel, which has been open over 120 years, is a famous watering hole. The hotel is best known for the prodigious amounts of alcohol served to the US soldiers during World War II, who had a camp in close proximity. Several of these soldiers have returned in later years and have placed a plaque within the hotel in memory of the good times they experienced there and of fallen comrades. It is believed this pub still holds the South Australian record for the greatest amount of beer served in a single week. This was set, unsurprisingly at the end of World War II.
The Sandy Creek Cricket Club recorded its first ever Para Districts Cricket Club Grade 1 premiership in the 2006/2007 season and boasts former Australian cricketer Darren Lehmann as a junior player. It has several senior and junior teams and has more members than the actual population of the town, drawing its players mainly from Williamstown and Gawler. The Sandy Creek Golf club is a well regarded and challenging course and the club has a deep fresh water dam opposite Curdnatta Oval.
Sandy Creek Primary School has for several years maintained a cultural exchange with the Japanese community of Minami Aiki. There are biannual and reciprocal visits. Sandy Creek Primary and nearby Rosedale Primary send several students to Japan every even year for about 10 days.
Sandy Creek is also the nearest town to Rosedale and Turretfield - the home of Matilda, Australia's first cloned sheep. Sandy Creek is also the name of the small local spring which flows into the North Para River. Sandy Creek originates on "The Glen", a historical property on MacCullum Rd, which is still owned by the family of former Federal Senator and Australian Democrat, the late David Vigor. McLeod's Daughters, an Australian soap opera, is filmed locally and much of the filming is done on location using the local farms and dirt roads as background. The locals are often recruited as extras or to supply livestock or for riding lessons.
The Sandy Creek Store, now closed, was the scene of a notorious murder in the 1980's. Much of the building was destroyed by fire not long after and only the Post Office boxes remain.
