A2ZACT With Brent Ford – Downer

Downer was originally part of the CSIRO. The shopping centre has recently had a major renovation. Brent Ford continues his alphabet journey.

Sir John Downer Premier of South Australia and a member of the first Australian Senate in 1901. The buildings of the Downer community centre and shops, were built for the CSIRO in 1930s, the area now comprising Downer was an agricultural research facility for the CSIRO. #A2ZACT pic.twitter.com/tInClmM8vJ

— Brent Ford FC 🐝🐝 (@BrentFord26) January 30, 2021

I lived in Downer for a short while. The “shops” was in name only, there was literally nothing open there. Over recent years there has been a major improvement, with the Gang Gang Cafe in the middle of that.

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You can see a bit of the timeline through this series of photographs below.

Funnily enough the first video I ever put on Youtube was filmed while living at that house in Downer.

The land which is now the suburb of Downer was once part the CSIRO (CSIR at that time). You can actually see an old Stump Jump Plough at the National Museum of Australia. Some years ago they actually brought it back to Downer.

We enjoy going to the park at the Downer Oval every now and then, we used to live a lot closer and go there fairly often. There’s a few other parks around the suburb, with a new addition being a “micro forest“.

The suburb is named after Sir John Downer, formerly Premier of South Australia as well as being one of Australia’s first senators. He was heavily involved in many of the pre-federation conferences and also hoped to be named on the High Court once it was established.

You can get a very detailed writeup of his life and career from the Parliament House website. It notes that he struck up a great friendship with Edmund Barton. Aside from having a suburb named after him, he is also the “father” in the “Father and Son” artwork in Garema Place. The family name has also continued in the political cycle.