Celebrating 43 years of Community History
A community based group that promotes interest in the history of the City of Burnside, a local government area in the eastern foothills of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.
Established in 1980, the Society has a membership of around 120 and new members are most welcome.
General meetings, which feature an address from a visiting speaker, are free and are held at the Burnside Community Centre at 7.30pm on the third Monday of each month (not January or December). Members of the public are welcome to attend any of the general meetings, however we would like a gold coin donation.
A quarterly Newsletter was published until September 2020. The Bulletin replaced the Newsletter in October 2019. This is emailed to most members and posted to others.
In 2021 the first Annual Journal was published and it includes articles about Burnside.
Day and Half Day Trips are arranged a couple of times a year
Historical Walks
Take a walking tour seeing historical sites of interest in the streets of the City of Burnside. View all the self-guided historical walks which cover the suburbs of Beaumont, Burnside, Eastwood and Parkside, Glen Osmond, Knightsbridge, Leabrook and Hazelwood Park, Rose Park, Magill and Waterfall Gully.
Historic Magill Wesleyan Cemetery
A walk through this heritage-listed Historic Magill Wesleyan Cemetery illustrates over 150 years of life in Magill: its industries, its people and their occupations.
The Kaurna people, the Traditional Owners of the Adelaide Plains, were the first to live in this area and have cared for the land for thousands of years.
When the village of Makgill (now known as the suburb of Magill) was subdivided in 1838, Alexander Cock set aside part of his land for a chapel and cemetery. The chapel, however, was never built. It is thought that a chapel was considered unnecessary because the Wesleyan Chapel had been built in 1855 nearby on Chapel Street.
In 1878 the Cock family donated the site to the Magill Wesleyan Chapel, which established a group of Trustees to manage the land. In March 1974, the land was transferred to the City of Burnside.
