Flaxman Valley
Charles Flaxman (25 December 1806 – November 1869) was employed by George Angas as his chief clerk. Flaxman received a loan from Angas to invest in land in South Australia. He travelled to Australia aboard the Prince George in 1838. He took up land in Tanunda, and Flaxman Valley in the area was named after him.
A letter written from Joseph Keynes to George Fife Angas, on the land that was surveyed and named Flaxman Valley:
Flaxman's Valley
Joseph Keynes to George Fife Angas: Flaxman’s Valley, 27 March 1840
... I believe I gave you a rather different report of it (Flaxman’s Valley) in one of my last letters representing it as ascending with a gentle slope towards the hills on both sides of the water, which was true of the part I first saw, but since I have had the pleasure of examining it more fully I find it to be a succession of hills with here and there a flat fit for cultivation. But this I can confidently assert, it is one of the best sheep runs in South Australia, indeed I should not like to change with any one. A hilly country is more suited to sheep than a flat one, however rich it might be, there is a greater variety of herbage and in the dryest season you have always plenty of food. For whilst all the plains round Adelaide were burnt cup and the water dry in many of the streams, yet in Flaxman’s Valley there was an abundance of green herbage and plenty of water. The contrast was so great that in my journeys to the town, the land around it looked like a wilderness, whilst our valley resembled the Garden of Eden.
Flaxman’s Valley was where John Howard Angas, George Fife’s second son, chose to settle on his arrival in 1843. His first home, Tarrawatta, and his later home, Collingrove, still stand.
Keynes’s account of the Adelaide area as dry and dusty is supported by nearly all the reminiscences of early settlers in the colony.
More Settlement Related Information Coming Soon...
Sources:
Scenes of Early South Australia: the letters of Joseph Keynes of Keyneton 1839 - 1843