Owen, South Australia


Owen is a rural community in the heart of the Adelaide Plains. Owen is above sea-level and receives a reliable 416 mm of rain annually and was first settled in about 1865. It is about 80 km north of Adelaide in South Australia and is approximately 40 minutes by road to the nearest main regional centre of Gawler. It is in the Wakefield Regional Council. There was a second railway siding about northwest of the Government Town of Owen named Woods. The small village by this station is now considered to be part of Owen. At the 2016 census, Owen had a population of 261 in the town and 511 including the surrounding farmland.

Overview

For a small town, Owen is very well serviced having a community Church, post office, bowling club, Country Fire Service station, primary school, public swimming pools, a pub, children's playground and a golf course. In its heyday in the 1950s, Owen also had a bank, police station, drapery and a butcher.
The countryside surrounding Owen was once largely given over to sheep and cattle grazing. However, since the early 1990s the area has become better known for cropping. The Adelaide-Balaklava broad-gauge railway line passed through Owen and the railway yard is marked by concrete grain silos typical of this region. The town's other main feature is a typical 1940s large concrete water tower of in height.
The drift to country living and the expanding Adelaide city environs has seen a number of young families moving into the town. New homes are being established at the rate of 1-2 per year - a veritable building boom given the almost 40 years in which only a handful of homes were built in the town. In 1997, the primary school had only 35 pupils. By 2005, this number had risen to over 50, a sure sign of a stable future. Owen's main claim to fame is the annual small-horse carriage driving championships which are held on the town's oval around Easter time.

Media

Owen's local newspaper is the Plains Producer, founded in 1903 and published in Balaklava.
Owen was also home to the short-lived Owen's Weekly and Dalkey District Courier , which was printed in parallel with the Hamley Bridge Express by T.W. Broadway. Each was printed in their respective town, and with different mastheads but the same content.

Gallery

Notable people