The town of Dawlish almost had an Australian namesake Down Under - but it never came to be.

Plans to build a government town, with the name Dawlish, were laid out 140 years ago this week on 8 June 1882 in South Australia.

South Australia had just been established in 1836 as a 'free province', ie. not a penal colony, which was unique for the country.

Settlers were busy buying up land. Heading up north from the more temperate Adelaide on the coast, past a town called Peterborough, there was an area of land called Erskine.

The Erskine area today (Google Maps)

This is where plans for a town called Dawlish were drawn up.

The arid land was divided into 160 allotments - but only nine were bought at the time in 1882.

Later, in 1964, due to a lack of demand, the allotments that were sold were taken by the Crown and the area was turned back into 'broad acres' (an Australian land designation, usually denoting farmland).

Plans for a Dawlish in the 'Hundred' of Erskine, 1886 (State Library of South Australia)

One of the towns near where Dawlish would have been is called Peterborough, and is 155 miles north of Adelaide.

It had a population of 1,419 in 2016, and was a major rail transport hub in the 20th century. The temperature ranges from 1-30 degrees, and average yearly rainfall is 253mm (in contrast, Dawlish in Devon gets on average 801mm of rainfall per year, more than three times as much.)