Watervale. In the Clare Valley. Architect Daniel Garlick designed this fine romanesque style church in local sandstone. It was opened in 1867 as a Bible Christian Methodist Church, .
Image by denisbin
Watervale.
The Country of Stanley was declared in 1842 named after the then Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby and within it the Hundred of Clare was proclaimed in 1850. But white settlement began in this district in 1845 but only because of earlier Special Surveys in 1839 of £4,000 for 4,000 acres. Immediately to the north of Watervale John Horrocks and John Morphett took out 4,000 acres along the Hutt River from the boundary of Watervale to about where Clare developed. Horrocks kept 960 acres, Edward Gleeson of Clare took 500 acres and others in their syndicate took 500 acres. Immediately to the south of Watervale John Morphett and several others took out the Lower Wakefield Special Survey from Watervale to Auburn and Undalya. As the government usually surveyed 15,000 acres for each special Survey they had around 22,000 acres in the Clare Valley to sell at public auction in 80 acre sections. The actual surveys did not occur until around 1842 and land sales to the general public occurred from around 1844/45. White settlers came to Watervale in 1845 and one of the early land owners subdivided some of his lands in 1851 along the banks of Eyre Creek, a tributary of the Wakefield River, to create a private town. The first settler Reuben Solly who took up land in 1845 which he named Watervale Farm. Another early settler was David Davies from Wales who named his property Dalore which in Welsh means “best field”. It was on part of Dalore that the private town of Watervale was laid out in 1853. The town plan submitted to the local Council had a park around the spring in the middle of the town with crescents each side. This feature is still just visible today. The town was destined to be a stopping place on the journey from Auburn to Clare and on to the copper mines at Burra.
Before the town was laid out the Stanley Arms Hotel was licensed from 1847. Its name was later changed to the Watervale Hotel. Next a town school opened in 1853 and a Bible Christian Methodist Church was erected in 1855. This 1855 church became the church hall when a second larger Romanesque style of stone church was built in 1867. It is now the Uniting Church. The architect of this second church was Daniel Garlick who also had commissions in Clare. The small village of the 1850s and 1860s soon had stores as well as the hotel and a blacksmith, grain store and butcher shop. The most prominent structure in the early town was the Stanley Grammar School which was constructed in 1861 as an exclusive academic institution. The first headmaster Mr Cole, who ran the grammar school in the Bible Christian Church from 1858, ran the grammar school until his retirement in 1904. A Board of Trustees financed and controlled the grammar school and Mr Cole the headmaster eventually replaced the Board and became the owner of the Grammar School. In 1917 the then struggling school, which also had boarders, closed. Watervale still had a state school next to Stanley Grammar School which had operated as such from 1884. Members of the Hughes family attended the Grammar School including Sir Walter Watson Hughes’ nephews from the Duncan family.
Sir Walter Watson Hughes had Hughes Park just outside of the town from 1861. It was on some of his land that the first grapes vines Riesling and Shiraz were planted in the district at Spring Vale farm in 1863 and the first wine was produced in 1868. Spring Vale Farm was established by Francis Treloar in 1851 and he sold it to Sir Walter Watson Hughes in 1863. Hughes employed Carl Sobels as the manager of the vineyard and winery in 1868. When Sir Walter Watson Hughes died in 1884 he left Spring Vale to his sister and her husband Mr and Mrs James Richman. They in turn sold Spring Vale property to Carl Sobels and his brother-in-law Hermann Buring in 1889. They translated Spring Vale to Quelltaler, the German for that name and that was the name they used for their winery. Hermann’s younger brother Leo Buring later established his own winery in 1931 in the Barossa Valley.
The town seemed to progress in the early 20th century with the pretty Anglican Church built in 1907 and the town Institute was built in 1915. Mrs Carl Sobels (Meta Sobels) laid the foundation stones of both buildings. The War Memorial obelisk was erected in front of the Institute in 1922. The town was also boosted with the arrival of the railway line from Riverton in 1919. The railway station which is now a winery on the east of the town still exists. In the 20th century the old flourmill which had been built opposite the hotel in 1868, when wheat was the main agricultural crop of the district, was demolished in 1928. The last passenger train, a Barwell Bull car to Watervale was on 24th May 1954. A year earlier there were trains from Adelaide to Watervale, and Clare, weekday mornings at 6:50 am or 7:55 am and on weekday evenings at either 5:05 pm or 6:15 pm. The train trip took around three and a half hours. On Saturday evenings a train left Adelaide, after football games had ended, at 6:55 pm reaching Watervale at 10:23 pm. and again on Sunday evenings departing Adelaide at 7:05 pm and reaching Watervale at 10:15 pm. There was the same frequency of trains from Watervale to Adelaide. A refreshment stop of ten to twenty minutes was available at Riverton railway station.
