Kersbrook
Postcode: 5231
Kersbrook is a town near Adelaide, South Australia. It is located in the Adelaide Hills Council local government area.
The first settlers established farms in the Kersbrook area in the early 1830s due to its relatively gentle slopes. John Bowden, manager of the South Australian Company’s dairy farm at Hackney, bought a 32 hectare (79 acre) section and named it Kersbrook after the Cornish farm where he was born. By 1844, Bowden was recorded as having “800 sheep, 62 cattle, one horse, 13 pigs, 16 acres of wheat, eight acres of barley, plots of oats, maize and potatoes and a fruit garden”.
The settlement itself was created by William Carman, a blacksmith working at a copper mine near Williamstown, who took advantage of the area’s location on the busy road to the Barossa Valley to build a blacksmith shop and wheelwright in 1851. By 1858, some settlers had arrived and Carman gave some of his land to build a town. His preferred choice of name was Maidstone after his home town in Kent, but in 1917 the town was renamed to the locals’ preferred choice of Kersbrook. It became a notable agricultural area, especially for fruit.
Kersbrook is today a fairly quiet rural town, where most of the old buildings still stand.