Maitland, South Australia


Maitland is a town in South Australia located 168 km west of Adelaide by road, 164 km south of Port Pirie and 46 km north of Minlaton known as the "heart of Yorke Peninsula" due to being near the centre of the region. At the, Maitland had a population of 1,029.
Maitland is within a short driving distance of coastal towns on either side, with Port Victoria to the west and Ardrossan to the east, each within 25 km. It has a grain receiving depot operated by AWB Limited, serviced only by road. Maitland is also the home base of the Narungga Aboriginal Progress Association.

History

The town was named in 1872 after Lady Jean Maitland, the wife of the First Lord of Kilkerran, a family connection of the governor of South Australia at this time, Sir James Fergusson; the local aborigines calling it "madu waltu", meaning white flint. Maitland's urban design is patterned after Adelaide's central business district: a neat grid of streets surrounded on all four sides by parkland.
In October 1884 the Adelaide Observer noted:
Maitland in situated about twenty-three miles from Moonta, on Yorke's Peninsula, and is about equidistant between the two Gulfs. The town stands about 490 feet above the sea, and is surrounded by some of the richest soil on the Peninsula. The township is only about nine years old, and has made steady progress, and bids fair to be the next largest town to Moonta on the Peninsula.

Media

Maitland was home to a newspaper called the Maitland Watch. In 1969, the newspaper merged with Yorketown's the Pioneer to become the short-lived Yorke Peninsula News Pictorial, which was then incorporated into the Yorke Peninsula Country Times from June 1970.