The National Park 
Historical Account 
By J. M. Black, A.L.S. 
]T was in very early colonial days that the present site of the 
Park was reserved as a “Government Farm,” and for 
many years it was used for depasturing horses belonging 
to the Police and Survey Departments. The stockyards 
below the curator’s house and the remains of the neigh- 
bouring cottage are relics of that period. In an official 
statement for the year 1840 (four years after the proclamation 
of the Province), the cultivator’s name is given as John McLaren. 
There was then a well ten feet deep, with three feet of water, 
a dwelling house, outhouses and stockyards, and one thousand 
acres of land were enclosed with posts and four rails. Of the 
pre-colonial days we know nothing. We may well suppose that 
the natives lived as those along the Flinders Range lived in 
historic times, that is to say, they hunted on the plains in the 
winter, and in the summer they wandered up into the hills, 
hunted, danced, and built their campfires beneath the giant gums 
of the National Park, but they have left no trace of their passage 
across the scene. The names now given to the gullies and ridges 
of the Park are artificial in the sense that, although they are 
chosen from aboriginal languages as appropriate terms, they 
are not a genuine local relic of the blackfellow. 
“Old Government House” 
IT was in October, 1851, that tenders were invited for a lease 
of the farm for a term of seven years, but nothing appears 
to have come of this proposal. In 1858 a sum of £1,000 was 
placed on the estimates for the erection of a “cottage residence” 
for the Governor and £500 for the renewal of fences. This 
“Old Government House” still exists, near some ten acres which 
have been reserved as a nursery, both the house and the ten 
acres being under the control of the Conservator of Forests. 
This was the summer residence of the Governors of South 
Australia in the days of Sir Richard MacDonnell (1855-62) and 
Sir Dominick Daly (1862-68). In the estimates of 1859 Govern- 
ment Farm is referred to as the “Park,” but in the following 
year the old title is resumed. 
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