> Royal Oak Hotel
Royal Oak Hotel.
Penola's founder, Alexander Cameron, opened the Royal Oak Hotel in 1848 with one of the earliest hotel licences in South Australia.
The word Penola was the local Pinchunga Aboriginal name for 'wooden house', which was the term used for the original building located at the rear of the current two-storey hotel built in 1872.
Alexander Cameron and his wife Margaret (nee MacKillop) had moved to the district in 1845 to establish grazing land and lived on Old Penola Station. The couple hired their niece, Mary MacKillop, to work as a governess for their children, and Mary arrived in Penola in 1860 at the age of 18.
After briefly returning to her family in Melbourne, Mary MacKillop then travelled to Portland in April 1862 where she worked as a governess and teacher. She returned to Penola in 1866 with her sister Lexie, and met up with another sister, Annie, at the Royal Oak Hotel, which at the time was being managed by their uncle Donald MacDonald. The three MacKillop girls then rented Winella Cottage, which was formerly located in a paddock on the western fringe of the town.