Penola is a town in the southeast of the Australian state of South Australia . The place is about 350 km southeast of Adelaide on the border with the state of Victoria and has about 1,300 inhabitants (as of 2016). Nearby is the well-known Coonawarra wine region .
Well-known personalities related to Penola include the Catholic sister Mary MacKillop (1842–1909), who has been beatified and canonized as the only person from Australia and Oceania , and the polar explorer John Rymill (1905–1968).
history
The first European settlers in the area were the Scottish-born Alexander Cameron and his wife Margaret (née MacKillop ), who lived there from January 1844 and initially ran cattle. Around 1848, Cameron opened the Royal Oak Hotel , which in the following years served as accommodation for adventurers on their way to the gold fields in Victoria (see also Victorian Gold Rush ) and helped him to a certain degree of prosperity. In April 1850, Cameron leased 80 acres of land from the British Crown, laying the foundation stone for the town of Penoola (later Penola ). Shops, a church, and a school opened over the next decade.
John Riddoch introduced viticulture to Penola. In 1890 he founded the Penola Fruit Growing Colony , which was renamed Coonawarra in 1897 .
