Bank with us to get local legendary customer service, award-winning Bendigo Bank products and competitive rates. ‘Landrover on a Pole’ and AMP Huts – This memorial to the settlement of the agricultural area, through a scheme funded by the AMP Society, depicts the ever trusty Landrover, this time atop a pole and the typical hut that families settling in the district as part of this scheme would hav
e lived in. The Keith and District Community Bank Project Steering Committee is working to harness and build on the resilience and strength of character that these early pioneers showed, to improve the future for our community. Keith is a service centre for an agricultural district and is located on the Duke’s Highway, 228 km south east of Adelaide and 31 metres above sea level. Like so many of the towns on the Dukes Highway, it owes its existence to the miracle of trace elements which converted the great Ninety Mile Desert from a wasteland into a rich agricultural area. A large granite outcrop outside the town called Mount Monster was a basis for the area's name until it was surveyed in 1884 and officially proclaimed Keith in 1889. It is believed that the town is named after the home town of the Governor of South Australia at the time, Lord Kintore, whose home in Scotland was called Keith Hall. The Post Office opened around 1874 as Mount Monster, and was renamed Keith in 1904. In 1905 the general store was opened, and in 1907 the education department rented rooms out of the local institute to use as the school. 1910 saw the opening of Keith Hotel and the town's provisional school became a public school in 1912. During the 1940s, the CSIRO found prosperity in the area. With the addition of trace elements, the area became a very productive area. The AMP Society funded the clearing of land to set up farming establishments. A Land Rover sits atop a pole in the town, as a memorial to this significant development. Over the next two decades, Keith became the centre of a productive area where cattle studs, grain crops and lucerne were grown with considerable success and in 1969 the district's lack of suitable water was thought to be solved when a pipeline from Tailem Bend brought water from the Murray River to the town. In 1957, the local school was made into an area school to accommodate the influx of students. Today, the local community remains a vibrant agricultural community, with an expanded range of industries supporting the economy of the town.
