Booleroo

Booleroo Centre is a town in the southern Flinders Ranges region of South Australia.

Booleroo Centre is a town in the southern Flinders Ranges region of South Australia.The town is located in the Mount Remarkable District Council local government area, 282 kilometres (175 mi) north of the state capital, Adelaide.At the 2006 census, Booleroo Centre had a population of 516.

In 1853 a pastoral lease was taken out by partners William Spence Peter and George Elder who then pioneered a sheep station which they named the Booleroo run. The name was derived from a local Aboriginal word. Sources vary on its meaning with suggestions including "plenty" or "soft mud". In 1856 W.S. Peter, who also owned Gum Creek Station near Hallett, became a brother in law to George Charles Hawker of Bungaree and Anama Stations. George Elder was a brother of Alex Elder, founder of Elders Limited. On 28 February 1861 the Booleroo run was profitably auctioned when W.S. Peter decided to settle in the Canterbury region of New Zealand as a stud sheep breeder. The purchaser was former Londoner Philip Levi, whose pastoralism interests eventually included Moolooloo, North-West Bend, Gum Creek, Mount Margaret, among others.

Land reforms of the 1870s saw many pastoral leases resumed by the government in order to subdivide the land for closer farming settlement, the Booleroo run being among them. The pastoralists were to be replaced by grain farming agriculturalists.

The Hundred of Booleroo was officially proclaimed in 1875 however no town was surveyed at this time.A town site in the hundred was surveyed by the colonial government in 1878, but the early settlers established the town elsewhere.The town's location at the centre of the Hundred of Booleroo led to the name Booleroo Centre.The historic Booleroo Whim well on the Willowie-Booleroo Road is listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.