Adelaide Lead

Adelaide Lead, a rural locality and former mining township, is 6 km south-west of Maryborough and 135 km north-west of Melbourne.

Adelaide Lead is on the Timor Creek, near which ran the Adelaide and Inkerman gold leads. In January 1855, the Adelaide Lead was discovered, apparently by South Australian miners who named it after the capital of their colony.

A school was opened in 1863-64, and the hamlet had a post office, a hotel, several stores and both quartz and alluvial mining. A pottery opened in 1869, making decorative wares from local clay. There were nearly 600 people in 1881, but about 100 ten years later. Agriculture gradually took over from mining. Adelaide Lead was described in 1903 in the Australian handbook:

The school closed in 1954 and its building, made from local bricks, was taken over by the shire for a local hall. Adelaide Lead’s census populations were: