18/08/2026
A small group of Polish Catholic families landed in South Australia 170 years ago and quietly began shaping its future. Fleeing the crackdown that followed the Greater Poland Uprising of 1848 in Prussian-controlled Poznań, they pushed into the Hill River Valley near Clare in the 1850s and founded a settlement that took the name Polish Hill River.
The community grew quickly, and in 1870 the Jesuit priest Father Leon Rogalski arrived to serve them. Within a year he built the Church of St Stanislaus Kostka and opened Australia's first Polish school right beside it, giving the settlers' children a place to learn Polish alongside English. Preaching in Polish, German and English, he went on to serve the community for 36 years and became Australia's first Catholic migrant chaplain. By the 1880s, around 65 families farmed the valley, and faith, language and tradition travelled together through those decades of growth.
Their work still shapes the region today. The land they cleared grew into one of Australia's finest wine districts, home to producers like Pikes, Pauletts and Wilson Vineyard. Their descendants, carrying names like Nykiel, Rucioch, Malycha and Pawelski, still call South Australia home.
The church they built has become the Polish Hill River Church Museum. Volunteers run it today, keeping alive the story of what many call the cradle of Polish migration in South Australia.
Adelaide's Dom Polski recently supported a celebration marking this milestone anniversary. Dom Polski proudly supports the museum and everything it does to protect this history.
Dom Polski has anchored the Polish community since it opened on Angas Street in 1973. Generations have gathered there to celebrate their language, faith and culture, just as the first settlers did at Polish Hill River more than a century earlier. Supporting the museum lets Dom Polski carry that same spirit forward.
Stories like this show how migrant communities built modern South Australia, and why we owe it to future generations to keep telling them.
The Polish Hill River Church Museum sits at 225B Polish Hill Rd, Polish Hill River SA. It opens the first Sunday of every month, 11am to 4pm.
