Pioneers of Lowaldie SettlementPrint Page

The cairn commemorates the pioneer settlers who established the Lowaldie settlement.

Farmers took up land in 1912 with the expectation of a rail siding on the Tailem Bend to Brown’s Well railway. Lowaldie siding opened in 1913 after protests to the railways as they had not planned for a siding at Lowaldie. Lowaldie station finally closed in 1974. A town of 72 allotments was surveyed in 1913 with parklands and suburban lands beyond. By 1916 only two allotments had been sold! The first building in town was a stone Post Office shed.

One allotment was set aside for an institute and the locals began amassing money but very slowly. In 1919 they purchased the Post Office stone shed for an institute. It served this purpose from 1920 to 1925. In 1920 the institute was hired out for Methodist church services but this stopped with a year or so for want of a good sized congregation. The building was sold in 1927 to a new postmaster. It remained the Post Office until 1958. A school opened in the Institute in 1922 but closed at the end of that year. The Lowaldie School was then started up a few miles out of town in a rural location to the north of the town. It operated from 1930 to 1940 before final closure. Nothing remains on that site now except for a memorial cairn.  

In 1934 the residents began to plan for a second institute which was built of limestone and red bricks and it opened in 1935. Sporadic Methodist church services were held in the new Lowaldie Institute from 1936 through to 1970. From 1930 the town parklands and suburban lands were leased to broad acre farmers for cropping. Only two residential allotments were ever sold in Lowaldie.

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