Cowandilla Places

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COWANDILLA

(+ former suburbs of Cowandillah, West Hilton)

Cowandilla was one of the early villages in West Torrens, subdivided from part of Section 92. An advertisement in the Register on 1 August 1840 claimed the village to be the cheapest in the neighbourhood of Adelaide and indicated that it was intended to be laid our in 112 one acre allotments for sale or lease for 'industrious and deserving persons such as market gardeners, small farmers and other productive classes'. The advantages of the area were described as including 'the richness of its soil, its proximity to the town, the road from Adelaide to Glenelg passing through the village and other advantages too numerous to mention'.

While the Bay Road was certainly a long way south from Cowandilla in Section 92, the other claims were no doubt reasonably factual. Of the twenty odd settlers listed in the land returns of 1843 most of them were small farmers cultivating only one or two acres of wheat or barley, and a very small number of livestock. 

The only substantial settler listed in the Cowandilla land returns was Richard Counsell, whose property was known as Dunskey, with twenty acres of wheat and twenty-five cattle, still not a large holding. As with the other speculative village subdivisions, Cowandilla developed slowly and by 1853 when the first assessments were made for the District Council of West Torrens, there were just eleven dwellings in the village. The area around the village, which focussed on what is now Burbridge Road [Sir Donald Bradman Drive], remained open paddocks and fields up to the 1880s.

As the area became more settled in the early 20th century, Cowandilla was the location for a pumping station for the deep drainage system from Glenelg in 1909. This enabled homes in Hilton and Cowandilla to be connected to the sewerage system at that time, although other parts of West Torrens were not. Housing in the area was mainly modest, for working people, and there are no large residences within the suburban boundary. Consequently residents in this suburb suffered during depressed economic times. The next increase in population throughout West Torrens and in Cowandilla particularly was during the post Second World War period. [From 1998 Heritage Review - UPDATED]

Burbridge, Cowandillah (Cowandilla), Rowland, Hilton Roads - Sir Donald Bradman Drive: Sir Donald Bradman Drive is made up of several former roads. From the mid-1970s to 2001 Sir Donald Bradman Drive was named Burbridge Road. Burbridge Road in turn was made up of Burbridge, Cowandillah (Cowandilla), Rowland and Hilton Roads. The latter three names had been in use since the 1850s. Cowandillah Road ran approximately between today’s Marion Road and Bagot Avenue, Rowland Road from Bagot Avenue to South Road and Hilton Road from South Road to the eastern boundary of West Torrens