Early Years of the Return to Port Adelaide

People started returning to the Port and Peninsula from the Missions in the mid 1900's.

"There was a big exodus from Point Pearce and a majority of Point Pearce mob lived in Port Adelaide  The majority of time we stuck together. Though many of our families lived in separate areas, most of the time we came to Port Adelaide to socialise with each other. So even though we were in a white man's world, it was as if we were in our own world, but in a white man's setting."
Pat Waria-Read

"When we go here in the late 1940s, all the stuff you see on the map wasn't there. Taperoo wasn't around, the road on the Peninsula ended at Fort Largs, from there on it was sandhills and goats. There were some industrial sites on the river such as ICI and SA Light Co (before it moved to Torrens Island)."
Vincent Copley

"When I was young my mum lived at Mile End and everyone went to Light Square.  They were coming into Adelaide but not going anywhere other than the city. There was a big change in 1951 when the migrants came. The start of Taperoo came in 1952 when they started to build homes at Taperoo to take the migrants."
Vincent Copley

"At that stage, Aboriginal people weren't the flavour of the month, so the only other Aboriginal family in the district was my aunty who lived across the road from St Paul's church in St Vincent Street. We didn't know anything about Aboriginal history in the Port area and for a period of time there were no black faces in the Port. We opened the doors for sporting, going to work, mixing."
Vincent Copley

"I came from a black community to Port Adelaide. I didn't even consider the whitefellas, I was still in my black thinking. Even though I came from a black community and shifted to Adelaide, I held true to my black cultural and identity. I moved to Port Adelaide when I was eleven. We were lucky because the area we shifted into there were a whole heap of Nungas around us. The Housing Trust used to put us all in the one area together, and there was us, the Bransons, the Wilsons, the Weetras, the Agius’s, the Williams and Sansburys, to name a few. We all were around that area. We still had that connection."
Pat Waria-Read


Kids will be Kids