Scottish Pioneer Families of Penola DistrictPrint Page

The plaque commemorates Scottish pioneer families of the Penola District.

There were various special recruitments from Scotland, and the first Immigration Agent in Adelaide was a Glasgow doctor, Handasyde Duncan. Most recruits were from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and by the 1870s there were direct sailings from Port Glasgow to Port Adelaide. Other sources included Shetland, where in 1851 the Shetland Female Emigration Society helped to select women for South Australia. Another scheme, in the decade before World War I, attempted to recruit Scottish fishermen to South Australia.

Most came from the central lowlands of Scotland and the heavily industrialised towns, together with a substantial proportion of agricultural labourers, whose services were particularly prized. Scots possessed higher than average literacy levels and the majority increasingly came from modernising counties such as Lanark, Renfrew and Midlothian. The Highlands and Islands were also represented, especially in the early 1850s when emigration schemes were promoted to relieve congestion in the Highlands and simultaneously diminish labour shortages in the colony. Some of these immigrants were extremely poor and included refugees from the Highland Clearances as well as from the recent potato famine. Many settled in the South East, particularly Mount Gambier, Naracoorte and Penola, and established distinctive churches. Presbyterianism was a strong marker of the Scots, although some immigrants were Catholics.

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