On the Road and at Home: Tea Tree Gully, South Australia

Before we set off again on another trip in our caravan, I want to tell you about our little piece of suburbia, our home when we are not away.

Tea Tree Gully is a north eastern suburb of Adelaide.

Rainbow Lorikeet in our garden.
These beautiful birds are in all the parks in and around Tea Tree Gully. They are so colourful and I enjoy seeing them and they always let us know they are around with their particular little call.

Old cottage in TTG
This old cottage on North East Road is a bit of a legend in the area. It has been unlived in for some years now and has got some graffiti on the stone walls which is unfortunate as it is such a lovely old stone building. I can remember when it was lived in probably about 10 years ago.

We moved to Tea Tree Gully in 1968 when we were first married. The area was a new subdivision development among the grapevines. There were only a few houses in our street, the rest of the street was still undeveloped and surrounded by vines. The houses were built on 1/4 acre blocks which are quite a bit larger than the house blocks today. We have seen the area develop and although there aren't the grapevines here today, the area is still very picturesque with many natural parks and walking tracks.
The government of the time wanted to make the north eastern area available for housing development and so the vines went, and schools and shopping centres were built. We do have a great suburb now and there are many parks and open spaces and a wetlands area for all to enjoy.

We love living here and our two children went to school in the "eighties" and it was a great suburb for children to grow up in, it still has a rural feel, and they were able to walk to school with their friends, something that today would not be advisable in some of Adelaide's suburbs, but here in Tea Tree Gully the kids still walk to school.

We have a very good golf course and there is still much of the natural scrub which has been preserved in the parks which attract native birds and wildlife. We have had koalas in our front garden and enjoy seeing the parrots in our trees as well as several species of honeyeaters, spinebills & noisy miners.

Tea Tree Gully is situated 20 km from the city of Adelaide and there is an excellent transport service in the O-Bahn bus system which at 12 km long is the longest guided system in the world and reaches speeds of up to 100 km/hr crossing 12 bridges on its trip from Tea Tree Plaza to Adelaide city centre.

White cheeked Honeyeater

New Holland Honeyeater

A little Eastern Spinebill that was extremely difficult to photograph as he was flitting from flower to flower.

Breakneck Cutting on North East Road, Tea Tree Gully

A township, called Steventon, grew up in the 1850s at the entrance to the gully, when an Adelaide miller, John Stevens acquired a large grant of land and subdivided it. By 1867 the compilers of Sth.Australian Directories were undecided as to whether to call the village, Steventon or Tea Tree Gully, but after 1900 the name Steventon gradually dropped out of official and common use."

Angoves Winery, Tea Tree Gully

The Angove winemaking story began in 1886 when Dr William Thomas Angove established a medical practice in Tea Tree Gully, South Australia. Dr Angove continued to practise medicine at Tea Tree Gully until his death (in England) in 1912 by which time his winemaking activities had expanded to become a serious family business as Angove and Son’s, St Agnes Vineyards.
Why the loss of the original, prized vineyards? Sadly, as Adelaide grew, the State Government began to compulsorily acquire vineyards for housing. The urban sprawl reached St Agnes and Tee Tree Gully and the Angove vineyards were acquired in the late 1970s. T W C Angove, fought hard to hold on to his precious vines without success.

View from North East Road towards Tea Tree Gully

The Rotunda on TTG Green

Tea Tree Gully Hotel

The Tea Tree Gully Hotel was opened in 1854 and was known as the Tea Tree Gully Inn

The Old Post Office - now the TTG Museum

The Highercombe Hotel was built in 1854. Its first licencee was William Haines, then District Clerk of Tea Tree Gully Council. The State Government purchased the building in 1879 and from 1880 to 1963 was used as a post office and telegraph office. Part of the building was used as a school classroom and accommodation of the Headmaster and the Postmaster. From 1963 to 1967 the Tea Tree Gully council used it as an office and library. The National Trust took over the building in 1967 the the Tea Tree Gully branch restored it and converted it to a Museum.

Tuesday 7th August 2012

I haven't written anything on this blog for a while but today I took a walk around my garden and although we are in the middle of winter I managed to get a few photos of some of the flowers which are brightening up an otherwise rather dull day. It makes realise Spring is just asround the corner, and it can't come soon enough for me.

The jonquils are really beautiful and certainly add some colour and perfume to the garden.

The violets are still flowering, they are a bit later this year I think, but they are lovely just coming up in patches here and there among the shrubs and under the mandarin tree.

The iris are just coming out and I have quite a few still not in flower yet so they will make quite a nice colourful display soon.

The wattle is just coming out, this one is a young tree but I have another in the western side of the garden but it is not flowering yet, probably in a couple of weeks time.

The nasturtium has really taken off, I only planted it a few months ago. I have already made some pesto from the leaves and will soon have to make some more.

The rosemary adds a bit of colour on the top of the retaining wall and the birds love it at this time of year when there's not a lot of flowers for them.

THE KINGFISHER WETLANDS

Located on Golden Grove Road, Modbury, these Wetlands are a beautiful feature of the area and the drive along Golden Grove Road is much more pleasant because of these ponds.

Area Wetland – 6000 sqm (approx)
Catchment Area - 80ha
Volume of Water stored – 4.5ML

I have been wanting to do this walk around the wetlands for some time, so today we finally got there, and although it was about 30C, we did a short walk around the ponds. We parked the car near the Men's Shed just off Golden Grove Road and as soon as we got out of the car we were greeted by two Plovers who were obviously distressed by our presence. We soon discovered that there was a baby chick and of course they were protecting their offspring. We decided to get some quick photos and stayed near the car as the plovers are known to be quite aggressive when threatened and they definitely let us know that they didn't want us around, so we got our photos and back into the car to leave them alone. We then drove a few hundred metres to the Wetlands ponds and had a short walk around this beautiful area. There were only a few ducks on the ponds today.