Port Adelaide

Fascinating what you find in old maps and can therefore plot the changes in a suburb.

Right at the spot C/4.2 on 1 Santo Parade is the spot where the Colac Hotel stood in 1929 on the wharves of the South Australian Company Basin. It still stands in the same place but the basin is radically changed in shape and there is no longer a bridged creek across St Vincent's Street. The basin from the Gawler Reach is a long rectangle which now laps Ocean Steamers Road, as that part of St Vincent's Street is now called.

The Colac belongs to the Labour Party in South Australia. It has had a long, long association with working men and women in Port Adelaide. The ALP Trades Union has closed the hotel for trading.

Siblings

Ridley was born in the Colac Hotel in December 1895. His brother William was born two years later. William and Catherine were married in 1888 and Ridley's prayer book lists a Doris Mary Reed in the lists of names where it had been used. This was before he was born, so the  initials "A.R.R." in the leather cover of the book were punched in later. Doris may have been a first-born sister who died as an infant.  Given in the time between marriage and Ridley's birth it is possible that Catherine and William had a still-born child before Doris.

Image from website http://www.weddingsa.com/churches

Ridley and William were both baptised in St Margaret's on Port Road, Woodville.