Arthur Rymill staunch conservative as mayor of Adelaide, politician, businessman but loves high speeding in boats
Arthur Rymill, as Adelaide lord mayor during the 1950s, worked with long-time town clerk W.C.D. Veale to significantly improve the city parklands including what became the eastern Rymill Park.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia and City of Adelaide
Arthur Campbell Rymill asserted his conservative outlook as businessman, solicitor, Adelaide lord mayor and Legislative Council member in 20th Century South Australia.
Born in Adelaide in 1907 to businessman Arthur Graham Rymill and wife Agnes Lucy, and grandson of South Australian family patriarch Henry Rymill, Arthur Campbell Rymill was educated at Queen’s School, North Adelaide; St Peter’s College and Adelaide University. He was admitted to the Bar in 1930.
First elected to Adelaide city council in 1933, Rymill represented Young Ward until 1937 and then Robe Ward (1938-39). In 1940 he enlisted as a private in the 2/14th Field Regiment, 2nd AIF, and was commissioned as lieutenant in 1941. Injured in an army vehicle accident (in Sydney according to one report), Rymill was elected out of the service and returned to his legal practice, and later serving as a part-time Red Cross representative and with the naval auxiliary patrol off Adelaide’s Outer Harbor.
Rymill represented Adelaide city’s MacDonnell Ward 1945 to 1950 when he became, after John Lavington Bonython, youngest elected lord mayor of Adelaide and served four terms. Assisted by long-time (1947–1965) Adelaide town clerk (and close friend), W.C.D. Veale, Rymill commissioned significant improvements to the city’s parklands. He was, for a time, chairman of the city council's parliamentary and bylaws committee.
Rymill was a lifelong supporter of the conservative wing of South Australia's Liberal and Country League. He supported Robert Menzies’ Australian government 1951 referendum to ban the Communist Party of Australia. Knighted in 1854, Rymill was elected unopposed in 1956 (until 1975) to the Legislative Council as a member for Central District No.2, chairing the council's finance committee and became president. He supported limiting Legislative Council voters to property owners (and citizens with overseas war service). Such views brought him in conflict with to the party’s little-l liberal politicians such as Robin Millhouse and Steele Hall, emerging in the 1960s.
Rymill was chairman of Advertiser Newspapers Ltd 1953-79, and director of Public Companies of South Australia, Bennett and Fisher and South Australian Brewing Company. And a member of the AMP Society’s principlal board (1964-80). He held many public offices included first president of the National Trust in South Australia; vice president, Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust 1954–63; and member of foundation board of Adelaide Festival of Arts and Adelaide Children’s Hospital board. He was a member of the Adelaide Club from 1929 (president 1979–1980) and a member of the Melbourne Club from 1956.
Rymill represented South Australia in interstate polo matches 1933–1951, including the Gold Cup tournament in Sydney in 1938. As a speedboat driver, he won the 1933 Australasian hydroplane championship in his father's hydroplane Tortoise II against H. McEvoy's Cettein. The next year it sank in Outer Harbor after flipping at 70 miles an hour.
Whitehead, built for his father on Brougham Place, North Adelaide, in 1907, became home for Rymill and his wife Margaret Earle Cudmore when they married in 1934. Later state heritage listed, Whitehead became the principal’s resident for Adelaide University's Lincoln College.
