River Murray Towns: Kingston-on- Murray

• Located about 215 kilometres north east of Adelaide, Kingston-on-Murray is surrounded by orchards and vineyards.
• European settlement of the district first occurred when Thomas Wigley established a homestead in 1851. The property was probably called 'Thurk' from an Aboriginal word meaning mouth (the River Murray enters the mouth of a gorge nearby).
• The settlement of Kingston was established March 1894 as a village settlement under the South Australian government's scheme to settle unemployed people from Adelaide in co-operative communities.
• It was named after Charles Cameron Kingston, premier of South Australia from 1893 to 1899.
• In 1918, the settlement was officially re-named Thurk, after Wigley's station. Most people continued to call it Kingston, however, and because South Australia already had a town named Kingston, it was changed to Kingston-on-Murray in 1940.
• After the First World War land in the Kingston area was settled by returned soldiers under the South Australian governments soldier settlement scheme.
• Kingston-on-Murray is in South Australia's fertile Riverland district where grape vines, stone and citrus fruits are grown in abundance.

Further reading

Early years of the South Australian village settlements: Kingston-on-Murray, Pyap, Moorook, New Residence, from 1894, [Loxton, SA: N. Schulz?], 1994

Links

RiverMurray.com - Kingston-on-Murray