Cooperatives a strong feature of Riverland in South Australia as legacy of 1890s villages settlements scheme
Cooperatives became a strong feature of the fruit and vine industry in South Australia's Riverland. Renmark Wine Growers Distillery (top) in 1916 became Australia's first wine and spirit cooperative: Renmano. Berri grape growers' winery (bottom left) after World War I became Berri Estates, largest grape processor in the southern hemisphere. From 1981, Riverland grape growers were represented by CWW, Australia's largest cooperative. Another Riverland cooperative aspect was the community-owned hotels at Renmark (bottom centre) and Berri (bottom right).
Cooperatives and cooperation in community hotels, the fruit and vines industry, and community service, a significant feature of South Australia’s Riverland, had their heritage in the South Australia’s 1890s communal village settlements scheme during the 1890s.
The aim of the 13 village communities (11 along the River Murray) was to trial collective property ownership, make use of new (especially irrigation) technology and provide jobs for the many city-based unemployed during an economic depression. Radical Irish MP Michael Davitt, during his 1893 Australian tour, regarded this “cooperative communistic plan” a “most courageous action on the part of a state”. The settlements were largely unsuccessful, partly due to their novel management arrangements and because of little precedent for cooperative ownership of property in the sturdy individualism of South Australians.
Other factors brought down the hastily-conceived villages, such as the wrong sites (only six of 11 along the river had good soil) being selected. Very few (45 out of 447) early villagers had farming or farm labouring experience. Some weren’t even aware that irrigation would be needed. Changes in trustees in some settlements reflected the lack of skill in management and decision making. The low rainfall and the low river levels in the years after the settlements were started, combined with lack of experience in hydraulic engineering, and often belated adequate pumps being provided, increased the pressures on the villagers to turn to the “demon drink”.
The South Australian government, under premier Charles Cameron Kingston, faced internal parliamentary pressures over the cost of advances made to the settlements. But, in retrospect, village settlements brought great benefits to the state. They were more constructive in dealing with unemployment than other relief works. The also provided a valuable learning environment for irrigation in South Australia and the benefits for its economy. (Samuel McIntosh, who first worked for the Chaffey Bros., became the village settlement expert and, in 1910, the first director of irrigation in South Australia.) In the longer term, initial government spending, with the villagers’ labour and efforts, on the settlements, and in the individual holdings and irrigation schemes that followed, led to developments later worth billions of dollars.
The individual Riverland holdings came from from 1899-1900 royal commission into the village settlements recommending all unused land from the villages be resumed and land suitable for irrigation be surveyed into blocks of not less than 10 acres to be leased in perpetuity at an annual rent. The village settlements thus eventually provided an alternative for individuals to acquire land in South Australia, giving rise to the cooperative-based fruit and vine industry as the economic backbone of the Riverland region.
The change to more traditional individual tenure on village sites accorded with the attitudes of the village settlers. Communistic principles weren’t widely adopted, except at Murtho, and the trend in settlements was quickly from communalism towards cooperation. In 1897, some village associations, seeking more independence, asked the crown lands commissioner for new rules allowing individuals to work outside settlements on certain conditions and that individual villagers be permitted to occupy and pay an annual rent for five or more acres. This wasn’t granted.
The 1899-1900 royal commissioners visited irrigation settlements in Victoria that were founded on "quasi-communistic" lines but changed to working on the “individualistic principle".
The surviving remnant of the village settlement association, at Lyrup, between Berri and Renmark on the River Murray, continued as the authority providing water to the individually held properties, and it retained titles to commonage land that it leased.