Mount Pleasant between the Murray River and Barossa Valley

Mount Pleasant has always been a service district and today provides medical, banking, and postal services, as well as hardware, stock and station agents which host a monthly authentic farmers market, garage, general store, crash repair, antique store, small manufacturing industry, butcher, Kindergarten and Primary School, as well as two churches and two hotels, one providing motel accommodation, as well as a caravan park, and bed and breakfast accommodation. The township is central to Adelaide, Barossa, Gawler, Murraylands and Mount Barker, making it a convenient stopping point for travellers.

It is host to the Farmers Market each Saturday, and also one of the largest country shows in South Australia, held the 3rd Saturday each March. August sees the Rally SA use Talunga Park as their service area, and the cycling Tour Down Under annually passes through.

Settlers have been moving through the Mount Pleasant district from as early as the 1830s, with the Phillis family being the first to farm the area in 1843, but it wasn’t until the 1850s that the hamlets of Totness, Hendryton and Mount Pleasant were surveyed.

There is no definitive answer as to how the name Mount Pleasant came about; however, there is a definite link to the Phillis family, with a hill on their property, just north of the town, named Mount Pleasant by the family. It is believed that this became common use by the family and those passing through. William McBeath named the first hotel in 1853, the Mount Pleasant Inn, which supports this reasoning.

In 1856 Henry Glover surveyed the central section of today’s township, as Mount Pleasant, with Totness (named after the area from which his wife came) the eastern section, being surveyed by Henry Giles snr. in 1858, and an additional section of North Totness surveyed in 1869. John Hendry, a local blacksmith, surveyed the western section as Hendryton in 1865. The townships have now merged and are seen as one township.