About Us
Gawler Heritage Accommodation
The Courthouse was bought on a whim and has been a passion project since...everyone needs one! Living in the Riverland at the time, I returned home after a weekend in Adelaide, to sheepishly ask my husband-to-be, how he'd feel about living in Gawler? He thought I was joking when I explained I had put an offer in on a courthouse in Gawler, a town neither of us had lived in.
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Over the past 20 years, the building has slowly revealed itself and I have the utmost respect for the artisans who crafted it piece by piece and the labour that went into creating a building of this stature in 1881. Each stone quarried and carted, each stone-face tooled, the lime for the mortar made at a local kiln before being mixed into mortar containing sand carted from the river.
After converting the Courthouse into a residence, a quaint, little cottage with a curious curved stone wall and protruding addition caught my eye. The Counting House and its weigh-bridge office were part of the original Old Victoria Mill complex, built in 1845. Gawler was only surveyed in 1839, so this is seriously old. Original timber shingles are still visible beneath the iron roof, and the boot-scraper and flagstone flooring on the mill-side are a contrast to the more 'genteel' side of the house, with arch over the doorway.
The current project is to convert the Mill Office into a one-bedroom apartment and to set the site buildings up, for conservation into the future. I love a good challenge and sharing Gawler's history!
Enjoy, Natalie.
