South Australian Rifle Association from 1861 uses shooting range in south parklands; risk to people, cows and trains

This 1865 panorama taken from Adelaide Town Hall shows the row of butts and targets for the South Australian Rifle Association shooting range in the city's south parklands.
Image by Townsend Duryea, courtesy State Library of South Australia

The South Australian Rifle Association was formed as a sporting body in January 1861 at a meeting representing a “who's who” of early South Australia. With the governor Richard MacDonnell presiding, others attending included George Hawker, John Morphett, George Hall,. J. H. Barrow, Tom Reynolds, William Younghusband, E. J. Spence, and George Strickland Kingston.

While the sporting aspect of shooting was always foremost in the minds of the colony’s founders, defence was also a great concern and led to the close link of rifle association with the then-colonial defence forces that continued until the 1960s.

The association first started shooting on a mile-long range set up in Adelaide city’s south parklands range, also used the Adelaide Regiment of Volunteer Rifles. Targets were affixed to “butts”, large earthen mounds at the end of narrow 1,000-yards clearings, with targets as tall as a two- or three-storey building.

The rifle range was not fenced off from the public walking between Unley and Adelaide City, nor from the cows that were still permitted to graze in the parklands. There were several reports of near misses from gunshot. In 1877, a delegation from Glenelg expressed concern about the safety of passengers on the train to its suburb from South Terrace to its suburb.

In about 1887, the association shifted to what was then known as the defence reserve at Port Adelaide, land extending from the wharves in Port Adelaide around the Barker Inlet and up to Dry Creek. This area was reduced over the years until all that was left was the Dean rifle range where the South Australian Rifle Association stayed until 2003, when it moved a new range at Lower Light, 45km north of Adelaide.

The first south Australian king’s/queen’s prize competition, the premier shooting event in the colony/state, was conducted in 1879 and has been fired at 1879-80 (Glanville), 1881-86 (Smithfield), 1887-2002 (Dean rifle range) and from 2003 at Lower Light.