Salem’s Lot
William Beavis Randell made his packet growing wool in Gumeracha, a short drive east of Adelaide. Back then, in 1840, Gumeracha was a blank canvas, with no highway, no store, no video arcade and no place of worship.
So being a good Baptist, Randell bankrolled Salem Baptist Church in 1846. To complete the job, the farmer head-hunted an English missionary called John Buttfield, fresh from the jungles of Honduras. Thus, Gumeracha got religion.
But the church – the state’s oldest Baptist chapel still in use – is a boxy thing, with no room for a full-body font, as all good Baptists require. Hence the local flock planted a circle of 14 oak trees across the road. The trees surrounded a natural spring for Salemites to immerse members new to the faith.
Go to Gumeracha now, and all eyes fall upon an 18-metre tall rocking horse standing outside the toy factory. (Really, how can you ignore it?) But make sure you enter the village’s stranger story just down the road. The holy spring has evaporated but the circle of quirky Quercus trees still stand witness to a curious past.
[Opposite the Salem Baptist Church, on the western side of the Lobethal Road/John Fisher Avenue junction.]
February 12th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Our family traditions say that this ring of trees and the avenue of oak trees also in Gumeracha were actually planted by my great great grandfather, Christian Frederick Ernst Theel (1833-1904), an active member of the Salem Baptist Church. His daughter Annie Theel was married in the church in 1887.