Saturday Snapshot

Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy. 

March 2015 - Penola Australia

We went exploring around town. For more photos of the town click here.

The town is known for its famous resident St. Mary MacKillop whom I wrote about here.

 Penola is also known for its Petticoat Lane. Unlike London’s famous markets, this Petticoat Lane is known for its historic stone and timber cottages and the women who resided there. 

It is said that at one time there were so many petticoats hung on the clothesline that the street came to be aptly called `Petticoat Lane’.

Penola's oldest street, Petticoat Lane, is a State heritage area where you can wander down the red gum kerbed lane with its rose plantings and look at fine examples of historic stone and timber cottages which date back to the 1850's, including Penola's first house Sharam Cottage. The Penola National Trust has restored all cottages with some being Heritage Listed and many now house tourism enterprises.

It is still hard for me to get my head around that it is late summer, going into autumn, here in Australia. As a result the lane is dotted with English Hawthorn hedges, red and pink roses and hollyhocks.. The century old cedar tree and tall red gum trees still stand as a testimony to a bygone era as much as the 1850s small pioneer cottages, now protected and preserved by the Penola branch of the National Trust South Australia. The cottages are leased and the rent is used for their maintenance. 

We come across these guys in a field down the lane.

Trees are getting ready to turn.

A lavender farm.

The Sharam’s Cottage, which is known as the first private residence in Penola, retains much of its yesteryear charm and character. It was built by Christopher Sharam, the town’s first bootmaker who was invited by the founder of Penola, Alexander Cameron. It has two rooms where his wife Ellen, 20 years younger than him, produced nine sons and six daughters.