The Port Adelaide Institute served as a centre for social and cultural activities within Port Adelaide for over a century, and was the predecessor of the South Australian Maritime Museum and Port Adelaide Public Library.
Installed in the 1860s as Port Adelaide's first fixed navigational beacon, and later used at South Neptune Island, the Port Adelaide Lighthouse today functions as an iconic museum display in the heart of the Port.
Radicalism has been inherent in South Australian history from its founding as a free settlement. Based upon the English radical liberal thought of its founders, the State's reputation grew as a progressive colony and the first to entirely separate church from state.
Sailors' aid societies were first established at Port Adelaide in the 1860s to provide accommodation, entertainment, moral guidance and religious instruction to visiting mariners, and most remained in operation until the late twentieth century.
The bronze bust of Sir Mellis Napier, sculpted by eminent South Australian artist John Dowie, commemorates his distinguished community service, including to the law and legal profession in South Australia
Philosopher, Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, and a teacher of economics, psychology and literature, Sir William Mitchell was nothing if not a polymath.