Slaughter house with cattle market and sale yards take over Adelaide city's western park lands from 1841
Looking across to North Terrace,Adelaide city, with the Newmarket Hotel in the background, from the 19th Century cattle saleyards adjoining the city slaughter house in the former military barracks on what became Bonython Park in the western city parklands near Thebarton.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Adelaide city parklands had another early incursion in 1841 when the city slaughterhouse was opened tin their western area near Thebarton, with cattle market and sales yards adjoining it.
Previously, cattle brought South Australia from the eastern colonies were sold at the sites where they arrived, often in the Adelaide Hills or at Bull’s Stockyard on East Terrace, Adelaide city. Cattle sale yards yards were the northern parklands from 1848 and market yards set up near the corner of North and West terraces were joined in 1841 by the city slaughterhouse built to the west of Adelaide Gaol. Slaughter House Road ran from North Terrace, behind the livestock yards, to what later became Bonython Park.
The public slaughter yard (mainly for cattle) was near Thebarton and close to Bagots boiling down works rendering fat from animal carcasses to produce tallow, used make soap and candles, From the 1850s until the 20th century, Adelaide city council’s major income derived from the slaughterhouse and cattle market. Around 10,000 heads of cattle, brought from the nearby cattle and sheep markets (on the future site of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital) were slaughtered annually.
Pigs and sheep were instead slaughtered at the private butcher shops throughout Adelaide city, Port Adelaide and in other mertopitan council areas. Each butcher bought his own requirements at the saleyards set up in the parklands at the corner of West and North terraces. From 1841, private butchers were licensed to do their own slaughtering.
Besides the annoyance of noise, dust and smells, the city slaughter house, added to and upgraded in the 1880s, set off rumours about lack of care, quality and ethics regarding the killing cattle in unregulated conditions. The slaughter house building dated back to the early days of the South Australia province and originally served as the military barracks. (The Kaurna Aboriginal name for what became Bonython Park, Tulya Wardli, meant “soldier house”.) The slaughterhouse roof was lofty, with no ceiling, and made of crumbling old slate covered with iron. Meat was hung was on a mass of dirty stained timber posts and beams.
The conditions in the private slaughter houses of butchers were no more comforting. The South Australian Register newspaper in 1908 reported on an Adelaide city council meeting being told by medical health officer Dr. Tom Borthwick that, of the 38 private slaughterhouse inspected in the city, very few were complying with regulations.
The issue was resolved in 1913 when the Metropolitan Municipal Abattoir was set up at Gepps Cross and took over the work of the city slaughter house and the many private slaughter houses. The city slaughterhouse was demolished in 1915, although the early 1900s push to beautify the area was not realised until 1958 when Adelaide town clerk William Veale presented a master plan for Bonython Park. The park came into being in the 1960s, after remains of the slaughter house and cattle yards were removed with extensive landscaping.
Removing the livestock operations also allowed railway lines to be built across the former route of Slaughter House Road. The railway yards alongside North Terrace would in turn become the site for the new Royal Adelaide Hospital that moved from its site at the other end of the terrace, in 2017.
