Tinteán

by Dymphna Lonergan

Within three weeks of arriving at Pennington Hostel in Woodville (all very English names), I was startled to see that our nearest shopping centre was Arndale, Kilkenny (now called Armada Arndale). I was not overtly familiar with the town of Kilkenny in Ireland, but I was puzzled to see a ‘Kilkenny’ in an Adelaide suburb that bore no resemblance to that famous 13th century Irish walled city.

I was 23 when I arrived from Dublin with a deeply imprinted Irish world view. Along with that, was an interest in words, and place names especially. Many years later during my research into Irish place names in South Australia, I found out that Kilkenny, the suburb north west of Adelaide city, was possibly named after The Rev. John O’Reily, Adelaide’s second Catholic Archbishop. Perhaps that was the case, but the Rev. was born in 1846 and ‘the township of Kilkenny’ was named in 1849. It may be that the land was undeveloped until John O’Riley’s time. Place name research can be lengthy, complicated, and frustrating.

The foundation for my research into Irish place names in South Australia at that time was Geoffrey Manning’s research that had been digitised and made available through the State Library of South Australia’s website (https://manning.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/) With this help and much trawling through local histories, I put together a collection of place names in South Australia that had an Irish connection. One of these was the town of Middleton.

Middleton, Fleurieu Peninsula

Recently I visited the Fleurieu Peninsula south of Adelaide to meet with friends over from Melbourne who were staying in Goolwa. It is a beautiful part of the world with its pristine beaches, soft hills, and placenames that capture both Indigenous history and French exploration. One day we were driving from Goolwa to Port Elliot, and on seeing a sign for Middleton, I mentioned that it had been named for Middleton in Ireland, but I could not remember who named it or when it was named. The name Middleton seemed appropriate for this midpoint between Goolwa and Port Elliot, but I was unable to pinpoint where in Ireland the original Middleton was, presumably a place between two towns or villages. I needed to go back to my research.

To start with, I returned to the Manning data base and searched for Middleton. Here, I was reminded of Manning’s scepticism about an ‘old world’ origin for Middleton, South Australia. He says that Mr Higgins, who named the town, ‘was born in Beck’s Hill, Sussex and no connection has been found to indicate he had any relationship with the village of ‘Middleton, in that County.’ He further points out that the supposed Irish connection through a grandfather’s estate [Higginsbrooke] in County Meath is questionable as according to his source, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) by Samuel Lewis, ‘There is no evidence of a place called “Middleton” in that County’. Manning concludes that Middleton in South Australia was more likely, ‘all but conclusively’ named for the spot being the ‘Middle Station’ on the Goolwa-Port Elliot railway.

Geoffrey Manning did not have the digital resources we have today. Since 2008, anyone interested in the origin of Irish place names can access the Irish sponsored website logainm.ie. It was here that I found an entry for Middleton in Westmeath.

Thomas Walker Higgins

Another internet search found mention of a Thomas Walker Higgins, ‘a pioneer of Currency Creek and Middleton, about 80 kilometres south of Adelaide’, along with photographs and the following text

Irish-born Thomas Walker Higgins (1810-1899) emigrated to South Australia in September 1839. The following year, he and his wife and their only child ‘journeyed to the South Coast where good land was plenty. They took up a run near Currency Creek, and on Section 2147 in the hundred of Goolwa they built their home, naming it “Higginsbrook” after his family’s ancestral home back in Ireland…

https://www.treloars.com/pages/books/105589/thomas-walker-higgins

Finally, from the website https://middletonsa.com.au/middleton-history/ is evidence that Middleton, South Australia can be claimed as an ‘Irish’ place name.

In 1846 Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Walker bestowed the name ‘MIDDLETOWN’ on our town after associations in Ireland. Then in 1849 Thomas Walker Higgins bought an 80 acre section of land, after a canal, then a railway were proposed to link Goolwa and Freeman’s Knob (Port Elliot). This land speculation paid off when he subdivided the land for town blocks in 1856 and changed the name to Middleton.

If Thomas Walker Higgins is related to the Thomas who bought Killelan and renamed it Middleton, we may have the Middleton Higginsbrooke connection. I will leave that conundrum to another researcher. Suffice to say that Geoffrey Manning’s theory that Middleton was simply named for the mid point between Goolwa and Port Elliot and has no Irish connection, cannot be discounted, even if the Irish story seems more interesting. The true history may be a combination of both.

Dymphna’s collection of Irish place names in South Australia can be seen in Irish South Australia: New histories and insights, Wakefield Press 2019. She is a retired with academic status from Flinders University and a member of Tinteán’s editorial collective.

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