Baldina is a rural locality in the Mid North region of South Australia, situated in the Regional Council of Goyder.[2] It was established in August 2000, when boundaries were formalised for the "long established local name".[3]
The name Baldina stems from an Aboriginal word for a set of springs on Baldina Creek. The name was used for two pastoral runs in the area: the Baldina Run, established by Henry Ayers in 1851, and the Baldina Creek Run by Alfred Barker in 1855–1856.[3] The cadastral Hundred of Baldina was proclaimed on 30 December 1875; the hundred boundaries also include roughly half of modern Worlds End and a section of Burra Eastern Districts.[4]
Baldina School opened in 1885 and closed in 1930, held in a Lutheran chapel.[3][5] There were at least four former churches in the Hundred of Baldina: the Upper Bright (Baldina) Lutheran Church (1887-1960), the Baldina Plains (St Paul's) Lutheran Church (1878-1913) east of the Burra-Morgan Road, the Baldina Methodist Church, and the Douglas Primitive Methodist Church.[6][7] A hotel, Midwinter's Hotel, was licensed in 1880 and served as a local meeting place, but was destroyed by fire in 1887.[8][9] Baldina also once had its own post office.[3]
The locality also includes the Red Banks Conservation Park, claimed to be one of the richest megafauna sites in Australia, and the Baldina pastoral station.[3] Baldina Cemetery is now located in Burra Eastern Districts due to changes to local boundaries.[10][11]
There are also two former towns within the current boundaries: Douglas and Kilto. Douglas, along Eastern Road in the north of Baldina, was surveyed in March 1877 and declared to have ceased to exist on 18 June 1981.[12] Kilto, now in the south of Baldina, was gazetted as an unbounded locality; it had originally been named Klaebes, but was one of the Germanic place names renamed during World War I.[13][14] Klaebes Post Office opened in August 1879, closed in December 1910, and reopened around 1913; its final closure date is unknown.[15][16]
^"FIFTY YEARS AGO". The Northern Argus. Vol. LXVII, no. 3, 654. South Australia. 21 May 1937. p. 1. Retrieved 26 November 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
