Seppeltsfield Mausoleum. ⋆ Natatree

Everything is closed on Australia Day and the beaches are packed, so Adam and I just decided to get out of the house by going for a drive. We had no place in mind, so we just kept saying ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ when we got to the end of a road.

We ended up on the highway (first time Adam ever went 100km & over!) and in the Barossa Valley. We soon ended up at Seppeltsfield. Neither Adam or I had ever heard of it, but it was pretty amazing, so we made up our own story.

The Barossa Valley is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by land and lots of vineyards. In Seppeltsfield, the streets are lined with palm trees. There is no water in site. You could tell that the area had been around for many years, so we decided some family had made it big in the US, probably from oil and decided to migrate to Australia, buy up land and live large. This was pretty much concreted into fact when we randomly stumbled across the Seppelt Family Mausoleum. Yes, a mausoleum.

Our fantasy land hopes were dashed when we got out to view the Mausoleum and read the history that was displayed. Joseph Ernst Seppelt was a merchant, who migrated to Australia with his family in 1849, from Silesia, in what is now Poland.

The Mausoleum was completed in 1927, it was the wish of one of the Seppelt family members to be buried here as it looked out over Seppeltsfield. The Mausoleum is on top of a large hill, and while you can’t make it out too good in the photo, it’s a very steep walk up that pathway!

Above shows one of the streets, lined with palm trees. It really was a beautiful area, and of course I came home to read more about it. I find it kind of amusing that we just accidently stumbled upon a Mausoleum (I’ve never seen one before) in the middle of nowhere, then to find out it’s on Nine MSN’s “Australia’s Top 10 Haunted Haunts“. It also doesn’t display any kind of info about the contents of the Mausoleum, so we had no idea it housed 28 people!

We did see the ‘Couch Haus’ before we turned around to go back to the Mausoleum, so I kind of realised it was an early European Settlement, like most of SA is.