Wellington/Kudnartu Square, North Adelaide, one of two to retain Wiliam Light's design as park not cut by roads
Wellington/Kudnartu Square, in North Adelaide, was originally named after the British military hero and prime minister who helped secure the passage of the South Australia Foundation Act 1834 though the United Kingdom parliament. In 2003, it took on the dual name of Kudnartu after the first Kaurna woman recorded in 1848 as marrying a European settler.
Images courtesy Adelaide Park Lands Association and Wikipedia
Wellington/Kudnartu Square, among six in founder colonel William Light’s 1837 design for Adelaide city and North Adelaide, was one of two (with Whitmore) that escaped later having a road built through their original mini-park form.
Wellington Square was near the centre of the largest of the three grids that comprised North Adelaide. The square was named in May 1837 by South Australia’s street naming committee after Arthur Wellesley, the first duke of Wellington, the Ireland-born British military field marshall, victor at the battle of Waterloo, and prime minister of the United Kingdom 1828-30.
Wellington was credited with securing securing the passage of the South Australia Foundation Act through the British House of Lords in 1834. William Light, first surveyor-general of South Australia and a member of the street naming committee, had briefly served under Wellington in the British army as a junior staff officer, a deputy assistant quartermaster general, during the Peninsular War.
In 2003, the square was assigned the dual name "Kudnartu", as part of the City of Adelaide’s project with Adelaide University, to recognise the Kaurna people as original inhabitants of the Adelaide area and beyond. Kudnartu (also spelt Kudnarto and meaning “third born if female”) was a woman from the Crystal Brook area in South Australia’s mid north.
Kudnartu married a European settler, shepherd Tom Adams, in January 1848 at the registry office in Waymouth Street, Adelaide city. This was the first recorded official Aboriginal/European marriage in South Australia. Also known as Mary Ann Adams, Kurdnatu had attended the Native Establishment School (later used as thd destitute asylum off Kintore Avenue in Adelaide city), to learn "the arts of domestic life and household duties". She taught the illiterate Adams to write. They had two sons, Tom (born 1849) and Tim (1852) but they and their father were left destitute after Kudnartu died at about 23, around 1855, when land allocated to her was repossessed by the government.
Kudnartu had many descendants, including activist, leader and elder Vince Copley.
