Roseworthy College with John Ridleyıs statue in the foreground

Roseworthy
Home of the famous Roseworthy Agricultural College
Located 51 km north of Adelaide and 7 km north of Gawler, Roseworthy is a tiny and unimportant little rural township in an area which was originally inhabited by the Kaurna Aborigines. In 1855 W. H. Gartrell purchased land in the district. He died soon afterwards and his widow, Mrs Grace Gartrell, laid out a small township in 1867 in the hope that it would become a centre of some significance. She was capitalising on the railway which had just been completed and which ran between Gawler and Kapunda. Mrs Gartrell called the town Roseworthy after the village where she was born in Cornwall.

The importance of this area lies in the success of the Roseworthy Agricultural College which was established in 1883 (1983 was when it celebrated its centenary) as the first agricultural college in Australia. Since then it has educated tens of thousands of students and has been at the forefront of a lot of important agricultural experimentation.

Things to see:  

Roseworthy College

Roseworthy College
Located only 10 km north of Gawler, Roseworthy College was created as the result of an initiative to develop a model farm. The idea was that the College would be an extension of the University of Adelaide and would be run by a Professor of Agriculture. The connection with the University was dropped but in 1882 John Daniel Custance took up the professorship and in 1883 the college's Main Building was completed. The college's centenary publication explains: 'The College encompasses approximately 1,200 hectares of land, most of which is used as a teaching and demonstration farm. There are about 500 hectares sown to wheat, barley, oats, oilseed and medic crops, with 10 hectares of orchard, vineyard and vegetable garden. The farm also carries sheep, Poll Shorthorn beef cattle, Jersey and Friesian dairy cattle, pigs, poultry, and representative range of both light and heavy horses, and some Angora goats ... Roseworthy also has a teaching winery (which includes a distillery) of 150 tonnes production capacity ... The College produces a range of table wines, sherries, ports and brandies.'

On the lawn in front of the College is a statue of John Ridley, the inventor of the Ridley stripper which revolutionised the harvesting of wheat by stripping the heads from the crop and separating the wheat from the chaff automatically. The invention had a profound effect on the wheat industry in South Australia.

	Hotels
	Leitch's Hotel Main North Rd Roseworthy SA 5371 Telephone: (08) 8524 8014
	Restaurants
	Leitch's Hotel Main North Rd Roseworthy SA 5371 Telephone: (08) 8524 8014
	Roseworthy Roadhouse Main North Rd Roseworthy SA 5371 Telephone: (08) 8524 8126