File:1935 Paruna Methodist Church which looks more like a Spanish style house than a church. Paruna is near Loxton South Australia. (7524918536).jpg

The original Methodist Church in Paruna South Australia. Looks more like a house. Built in 1935.

This small town is in the Hundred of Kekwick, declared in 1912. During the pastoral era these lands were leased by John Whyte amongst others. He had these so called “Wastelands” as part of his River Murray Thurk station. Whilst Whyte leased this area an employee of his John Brown put down a well near what became the town of Paruna. It is still known as Brown’s Well. The government resumed these leasehold lands in 1891. In 1909 the government passed the Tailem Bend to Brown’s Well Railway Act. The railway line opened to Paruna in May 1913 and the town of Paruna was gazetted in 1914. (The railway line was soon extended on to Meribah and on to Paringa near Renmark.) The government authorised more bores to be sunk in the Hundred of Kekwick and the settlers began to arrive to clear the Mallee and start wheat farming. Paruna is an Aboriginal word meaning “stopping place.” The early settlers stopped for many years but by World War Two many had left and the remaining farms had become much larger. In the early 1920s when Paruna was booming quite a few local farmers took on “Barwell Boys”, youths sent out from England without any family, to train as farmers. They served a three year apprenticeship with a local farmer before they could leave to work elsewhere. This ‘indentured” labour helped get the Mallee cleared and the first crops sown and reaped during the 1920s when most farmers flocked to the district. The boys also replaced the farming soldiers killed during World War One. The scheme operated from 1922 for teenage boys and was established by SA Premier of the day Sir Henry Barwell. It ran until 1927 and some 1,440 boys came to SA under that scheme. Some were ill treated and suicide was not uncommon among the lads, even in Paruna.

In 1916 the Brown’s Well District Council was carved out of the Loxton Council district and Paruna got the Council Chambers. Paruna soon had a Post Office, store, Institute Hall (erected 1917 with a new facade 1938), a bank, a school (1917) and a Paruna North school too (1925 to 1941). In 1966 Paruna School had new buildings added and became an Area School with children bussed from Alawoona and Wanbi for the secondary years. It then became known as Brown’s Well Area School. Unfortunately this school, just a few kms south of Paruna closed in 2007. Paruna got a fine stone Anglican Church in 1925 and a quaint and unusual Methodist Church in 1935. A Catholic Church was erected in 1938 and opened in 1939. But by then the exodus of farmers from the Murray Mallee had already started and the War hastened this. No churches operate services in Paruna these days. Even the Paruna Golf Club closed in 2008! Paruna is typical of the “dying” towns of South Australia’s wheat lands.