Garden Cities and Towns is a display open to all visitors at the Maitland Information Centre. This exhibit explores Maitland’s unique place as the only intact Garden Town in Australia, inspired by Colonel William Light’s original vision for Adelaide. It also reveals Maitland’s remarkable international connection to the lost suburb of ‘South Australia’ in Lier, Belgium—built in 1921 through the efforts of South Australians to aid Belgian families after World War I.

Adelaide is a heritage-listed Garden City of South Australia, built by Colonel William Light. Many towns were also built as Garden Towns inspired by Colonel Light’s plan – Maitland in South Australia is one of those towns, in fact, the only intact Garden Town in Australia.

Come and learn the story of this town and how it has also played a part in the “Lost City of South Australia” in Lier, Belgium. The Garden Suburb of Zuid-Australie was built in Lier in 1921 with funds raised by Lady Galway’s Belgian Relief Fund.

73 dwellings were built and housed 200 people. The Yorke Peninsula of South Australia were instrumental in raising significant funds in honour of their family members who were lost in WW1.

This suburb was destroyed at the end of WW11 in 1945.