General meeting April 2023

Who owns our roads? ‘King Charles III does! He allows us to live on his land.’ That was Allan Barnes’s introduction to his interesting talk about the types of roads and ownership at the Yankalilla and District Historical Society’s general meeting last month. Before arrival of Europeans, the Indigenous occupants used ‘tracks’ to travel from place to place and these then often became our ‘roads’. Today, tracks are surveyed, and government-surveyed roads are still owned by the Crown. Roads for traffic come under the Road Traffic Act 1961. Main roads come under the Highways Act 1926. One of the first main roads was the Victory Road, Sellicks Hill, after which Norman’s Victory Inn was named. John Norman, Chairman of the Aldinga District Council had incessantly campaigned for a road from Noarlunga to Myponga and Yankalilla over the Mount Terrible Range. The road opened for traffic on 15 March 1859.