WILLIAMSTOWN - SOUTHERN GATEWAY OF THE BAROSSA VALLEY, visit with Keith Conlon

It's tucked away on a creek that comes off the back of the Barossa Range - and it's certainly pretty enough to call itself the Scenic Southern Gateway of the Barossa.

Williamstown is just past a high country vineyard on the road between Chain of Pounds in the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa town of Lyndoch. From just inside the service gate we could see the pine trees of Mt Crawford Forest rising from the vines, and in the distance to the North we could see where the Mt Lofty Range meets the rounded peaks of the Barossa Range.

To our East lay the magnificent country in the Forest Reserve with its longstanding commercial forest areas and big tracts of native bush over the hills. On a previous Postcards visit we'd seen feral deer down one track, and grey kangaroos along another. Access to its camping and walking charms is via Williamstown. It was not far up the road, just past the road bridge over the picturesque upper reaches of the South Para Reservoir.

The main street leads past the long standing deli - general store to the quintessential verandahed country town Post Office, fifty kilometres from the GPO. The Williamstonians have fought successfully to keep the peculiar spelling on its sign, a legacy of a long gone eccentric sign writer - "Telegragh Office". Meanwhile, the story of how this town with timber in its bones starts just over the road at the sprawling colonial era hotel.

It was originally called the Victoria Creek Hotel and it served the labourers from the pastoral runs on the high country side of the Barossa Range, as well as the timber cutters and saw millers turning the giant gum trees into wharf and jetty pylons and railway sleepers. The pub was named after the stream running through the good country of the Peranangle people - plentiful wildlife, permanent clear waters and shelter in the giant redgums.

And the town? One Lewis Johnstone was moving a mob of horses through here in 1857 when he stopped for a drink. He liked the place so much that he swapped his steeds for the hotel and surrounding land, subdivided a town around it, and named it after his son. And so "William's town" was born.

A carefully restored 1840's coach-stop cottage on the road to Gawler was already part of the scene, and the district church folk soon established their simple places of worship here. The Uniting Church with its brick bell tower is close to the rustic Anglican church that's celebrating its 140th anniversary.

Back to the hotel, the timber days are echoed on the verandah where a long redgum trunk has been fashioned into a massive bench seat. In the old days, if you managed to lift it away from the wall and bring it back, it was the publican's shout! And though the regulars told us various versions of how far it had to be moved, all agreed it had been done.

Beside the road that winds down to Lyndoch, the brightly painted Mechanics Institute is a tribute to the district's keenness for self education in the nineteenth century. The tree cutters' fraternity, the Foresters Lodge took it over in the 1920's, and now it's one of several attractive B&B's round the town. "Vineview" for instance, is an old cottage that lives up to its name, with a vineyard stretching up to a scrub ridge over the road. And Redgum Retreat, a roomy cottage, has views to the rising range and an ancient eucalypt standing guard. Treasured Memories by contrast, sits high on a ridge overlooking the beautiful Victoria Creek Valley.

Back in the town, the old lock-up cottage still has its cells at the back, while some elements of the 1860's school opposite are still visible beside the contemporary classrooms. Along its perimeter stands an avenue of "Diggers Pines", planted for World War I soldiers. Surely the pride of the town was and still is the two-storey edifice on the main street. It began as a modest Council chamber and grew by 1924 to become the Soldiers Memorial Institute. It became the centre for all things social and recreational, including black and white silent movie nights. To the side of it, a rare regional tribute to a Williamstown soldier killed in the Boer War.

Below the cross roads and a giant redgum at the southern entrance to the town, one of the prettiest spots in the town beckons. The creek glistened over a 1930's weir as we were reminded by the long reflecting pool that this is still a water and timber district. The South Para Reservoir is just a kilometre downstream, and there are two others close by.

The tall old stone bridge was the site of Dicky Dyer's generous efforts to dam the creek to provide a summer swimming pool for the kids. It was erected however, to get the timber cutters and their horses across the swollen water torrent so that they could patronise the Cundy brothers blacksmith shop on the T-junction corner.

It now dispenses bakery goodies instead. The bridge now leads to Mt Crawford Forest . . . sure, there are a million or so pines in there, but it's also very popular with campers and walkers. The Heysen Trail and Mawson Trail snake along its forest and scrub tracks through marvellous hills country scenery.

Along that route out of Williamstown is an old sawmill - turned cooperage. It's a remnant of a time when there were several in the region, and the cutters and sawyers provided a livelihood for a number of quaint shops on the road through the town. Pick up an historical tour guide at the deli or bakery, and you'll identify a dressed stone cottage that was once the local haberdashery, with a billiard saloon next door (it is now a craft gallery).

Over the lane, there is a tiny building that once was home to an illegal betting shop. On the rise over the road, there's another sandstone establishment from the 1850's. It's been a butchers shop and bakery, and now it welcomes travellers to the Old Bakehouse Tavern. So there are plenty of reasons why this is a place worthy of spending plenty of time - days even - in its own right. As they like to tell us, it's only 50 kilometres and 50 minutes from the city to the Southern Gateway of the Barossa - Williamstown.

If you have any further questions about Williamstown please email info@postcards-sa.com.au