Brickmaking
Click here for facts about brickmaking in the Little Hampton and Nairne districts.

Coppin's brickyard at Little Hampton 1856
J.Watts brickyard at Scott Creek 1858
Childs family brickyard at Little Hampton 1895
Littlehampton Brick Company at Little Hampton 1912 (and continues to this day).

Ham, Bacon & Smallgoods
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Elias Davies Bacon Factory, Dawesley
Monks of Old, Little Hampton
George Chapman, Nairne
Walter Jacobs, Nairne then Mount Barker
Charles Watts, Murray Bridge

Hotels & Breweries
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There are dozens of 19th-century hotels and former hotels scattered about the hills, several in each of the major towns. Several of the earliest hotels are now gone or have been much altered. Significant survivors are the German Arms and Australian Arms (Hahndorf), the Crown Hotel & Gray's Inn (Mt Barker), the District Hotel (Nairne), the Hahndorf Inn and the Great Eastern Hotel in Littlehampton.

Silk Industry
There was a silk industry in Littlehampton in the 1850's run by a Mrs Fleet. Several neighbours with mulberry trees placed their leaves at her disposal, but the labour of gathering them from large trees, and the impossibility of supplying them fresh to the worms, was seen as continual drawback. Mrs Fleet had between ten and twenty thousand worms in boxes. She displayed her silk in several Febuary shows.

Bee Keeping
In South Australia around 1880, beehives were transitioning from traditional shapes to more modern designs, with dome-shaped straw skeps and rectangular wooden boxes being the most common types. In the mid 1880s amidst a crisis over the threat to the honey industry from the hive disease 'foul brood', 86 bee-keepers in the Mount Barker area added their signatures to a petition in support of a parliamentary bill aimed at curbing the spread of the disease.

Milling
Dunn's first mill, Hay Valley (c1841-42)
Nixon's mill, nr Hahndorf (1842)
Dunn's flour mill, Cameron Street Mount Barker (1844)
Johnson's mill, Nairne (c1850s)
Albert Mill, Nairne (1857)
Wittwer's mill, Hahndorf (1864)
Burley flour mill, Meadows (1840-63)

Mining
Some of the State's most significant early mines were established in the Mount Barker District. Major mining areas included Echunga/Meadows (gold, etc.), Callington/Kanmantoo (mostly copper), Aclare near Callington (produced the highest volume of silver in 19th Century), and Brukunga (Iron Pyrites) The Mount Barker Mineral Survey was undertaken in 1845, and in the following year the Paringa and Kanmantoo mines were opened. The Bremer mine was discovered in c1847, and by 1848 the country's first smelter was established there. The Bremer mine settlement became the town of Callington. Other mines in the area were West Kanmantoo; Wheal Fortune, Margaret, Prosper, Mary, Friendship, Elizabeth & Maria; also Menkoo & Tresevean.

Dairies
Creameries at Bull Creek, Dawesley, nr. Dawesley (Native Valley) & Echunga
Dairy factories at Blakiston, Mount Barker, Macclesfield & Meadows
Kondoparinga dairy factory, nr. Meadows
SA Farmers' Union factory, Mawson Rd, Meadows

Smelting
Australia's first copper smelter was established at Callington in 1848. An uncommon surviving example of a 'creeping chimney' can be found at the Paringa Mine near Kanmantoo. The smelter at Scott's Creek was the catalyst for the establishment of the town of Dawesley.

Tanneries
South Australia's first tannery outside of Adelaide was established by Henry Timmins at Nairne in c.1851. In 1853, Storch constructed a tannery near the Hahndorf Windmill in 1853, and moved nearer to Verdun in 1858. There were also several wattle-bark mills in the district.