In 1856 Australia's first Polish settlers made their home in the hills east of Sevenhill. Their stone church still stands, and the valley they farmed now grows some of Clare's most prized riesling.
Drive the back road east of Sevenhill and the names on the gates change. This is Polish Hill River, and it is exactly what it sounds like: a pocket of the Clare Valley settled by Poles - the first Polish migrants to Australia.
A ship called August
In August 1856, 131 Poles arrived at Port Adelaide aboard the ship August, fleeing hardship in partitioned Poland. They headed north to the Clare district, settling around Sevenhill, Penwortham, Mintaro and the valley then known simply as Hill River. So many Polish families took up land there that the district was renamed Polish Hill River.
They were farmers, labourers and tradesmen, and they set about recreating the village life they had left behind - with church at its centre.
A church of their own
By 1869 the community had formed a committee to build one. John Nykiel, a butcher who later turned vigneron, donated the land, and the arrival of the Polish Jesuit Fr Leon Rogalski in 1870 pushed the project home. The church of St Stanislaus Kostka was consecrated in November 1871, with a school alongside that taught around 50 pupils in both Polish and English.
The Jesuit connection was no accident. The mission at Sevenhill - whose priests had been making sacramental wine since the 1850s, a story told in the Jesuits who planted the first vines - supplied the little Polish parish with its clergy for decades.
The church becomes a museum
The stone church still stands, and today it houses the Polish Hill River Church Museum, whose displays follow the three waves of Polish settlement in South Australia through photographs, documents, tools and the household objects of the pioneer families. It is a small museum with an outsized story: a community that crossed the world and quietly endured.
And then came the vines
There is a neat postscript. The valley the Poles farmed is now one of the Clare Valley's most respected wine addresses. Polish Hill River fruit - grown on harder, slatey ground than neighbouring Watervale - makes rieslings of legendary austerity and longevity, and cellar doors like The Wilson Vineyard and Pikes carry the sub-region's name to the world.
The pioneers came for farmland. They ended up lending their name to some of Australia's greatest white wine country.
