Mount Pleasant

A small township on the northern perimeter of the Adelaide Hills in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

Where is it?: Adelaide Hills. 55 km north east of Adelaide; 440 metres above sea level.




Natural features: Tunkillo (448 metres); Burns (502 metres); Mt. Pleasant (542 metres); Scott Hill (473 metres); Saunders Gorge; Palmer Granite Boulders Area.

Heritage features: Police Station (1860s); Old Talunga Hotel; Palmer Granite Boulders Area Aboriginal rock art; Cookes Hill Aboriginal rock art.

RockBare Cellar Door

Adelaide Hills Wine Region

Wine grapes were first planted in the Adelaide hills in the early 1840s. Situated east of Adelaide, the long and narrow Adelaide Hills region runs through the southern Mt. Lofty ranges. It is one of South Australia's largest wine growing regions, stretching from the edge of the Barossa and Eden Valleys in the north, to the boundaries of McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek in the South. The high altitude combines brilliantly with the favourable climate, to allow grapes to mature at a slower pace than other regions, giving the wines intense elegant flavours and characteristics.

Herbig Family Tree

Herbig Family Tree: located in Springton north of Mount Pleasant, The Herbig Tree is an extraordinary chapter in the German history of the area. Friedrich Herbig was a tailor turned farmer who arrived in South Australia in 1855. He travelled to the area where he leased 80 acres from George Angas. Desperately poor he decided to live in the famous Herbig Family tree. It was a large, hollow red gum. It was between 300-500 years old, had probably been struck by lightning, had a huge area inside and secondary growth was starting to occur above the old trunk. A year after his arrival Herbig married Caroline Rattey, an illiterate 18-year-old peasant girl, at Lyndoch. He took her back to live with him in the tree and it was there that the first two of their sixteen children were born. In 1860 Herbig and his family moved out of the tree to a two room pine and pug hut he built about 400 metres away. By 1864 the family was living in a stone cottage. The Heritage Homestead centre includes the original cottage, a barn and a cellar. It offers a rare insight into the life of the early settlers

Brief history: No one is exactly sure how the town got its name but there seems to be some consensus that it was probably named after a Mrs Pleasant who was a relative of one of the early settlers. These settlers moved into the area in the late 1830s with flocks of sheep and with bags of grain. One of the early settlers, James Phillis, had arrived in Adelaide in 1839 and literally rode a horse into the Adelaide Hills looking for suitable land to farm. He settled at Mount Pleasant in 1843, planted wheat, harvested the crop, and then had to take it to Adelaide to sell. From the profits he sailed to England where he bought a flock of romney marsh sheep which he shipped back to the area. Over the years he became one of the district's most prosperous and successful farmers.

Gold was found in the district in the 1860s but the deposits were small and the miners soon moved on. The town grew slowly never being anything more than a small service centre for the surrounding region. The Police Station, which dates from the 1860s, has been largely replaced by a building with 'ER' on it and the Old Talunga Hotel is quite charming. The main street, Melrose Street, is lined with beautiful plane trees.

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