Dick Ragless leaves his part of historic Tonsley farm (later Adelaide suburb) in 1947 to South Australia's art gallery
Dick Ragless, right, and on a horse-drawn roller in about 1907 at the future St Marys suburb section of his Tonsley farm, with the future Adelaide suburb of Pasadena in the background.
Dick Ragless image courtesy Ragless M. Dust storms in china teacups (1988) and main image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Dick (Albert Richard) Ragless’s 1947 bequest of about £10,000 for South Australia's art gallery on North Terrace, Adelaide city, to buy paintings came from the selling the part of a farm, with its origins in 1839, on what became the future Adelaide southern suburb of Tonsley.
The first section of the Tonsley farm was bought by Henry Watts in 1839 and used by other lessees until it was bought in 1869 by Richard Ragless, who’d arrived, aged 19, in Adelaide on the ship Eden in 1838. An innovative and progressive farmer, Ragless, who named it Tonsley, added to the property up to 500 acres on both sides of South Road. When he died at Tonsley in 1901, the property was divided between his sons Charles Cobb, Christopher Henry, Albert Richard (Dick) and Alfred John William Ragless.
Dick Ragless’s inheritance was Tonsley, the farm’s homestead block. He was unmarried and lived there for the rest of his life with his unmarried sisters Alice, Florence and Jean. Electricity or a telephone was never connected to the house. David Ragless recalled his great uncle and aunts as “formidable people because they were very stiff and very upright ... children were to be seen and not heard”.
Tonsley house was surrounded by a large garden with picket fence and shaded by Moreton Bay fig trees. The sisters grew many flowers in the garden beds and pots: blue daisies, yellow violas, scented verbena, stocks, geraniums, red tulips and dahlias. In the 1930s, the garden was redeveloped in Italianate style. In 1929, the four siblings went on an overseas trip funded by selling 106 acres of the Tonsley property as South Road Estate: the southern part of later St Marys. A small area where Wattiparinga Creek ran was set aside as Ragless Reserve.
Due to the Depression and World War II, most of the estate’s housing blocks weren’t built on until the 1950s. In 1956, many allotments were bought by the South Australian Housing Trust. The timber-framed houses, clad with asbestos, became occupied by workers at the new Chrysler car factory that would occupy the original homestead block of Tonsley.
In the 20th Century, wheat and pea growing gradually became less profitable, and Ragless concentrated more on vines and almond trees. Until the mid 1920s, 50 to 100 sheep were kept at Tonsley but he gradually changed to horses and cattle as less susceptible to dog attacks, In 1939, the Tonsley home was still surrounded by vineyards and almond orchards. The Ragless siblings continued to work the property, picking almonds, olives, oranges and grapes, pruning vines, drying fruit such as apricots, digging potatoes, cutting chaff, stooking hay and ploughing and hoeing. As late as 1949, the area was almost exclusively farms, market gardens and vineyards, with no urban development.
Dick Ragless died in 1946 and left the Tonsley property, valued at £10,000, to the “National Art Gallery" (of South Australia) – its fourth largest bequest. Sisters Alice and Florence continued to live at the property until 1952 when they moved to a private hospital, and Dick’s younger brother Alfred walked daily from Edwardstown to work on the property until he died in 1954.
In 1954, the art gallery sold the property to the housing trust of South Australia with its assurances of preserving trees and the name Tonsley. By 1955, the property, apparently as instructed by premier Tom Playford’s state government, had been sold to Chrysler for its car manufacturing plant (later taken over by Mitsibishi and later the Tonsley technology innovation district). At that time, Tonsley was still in a rural setting. South Road was only a two-lane highway with trees and bush alongside it.
The other Ragless brothers also sold of parts of their farms in the 20th Century.