MC ‘Thistle’ Anderson was a Scottish born actress turned writer. Best known for her pamphlet Arcadian Adelaide; she also published poems and short stories.
From the 1880s Tommy Walker, or Poltpalingada Booboorowie, was a leading figure among the community of Aboriginal people who lived on the fringes of white Adelaide society.
Robert Barr Smith had a genius for business. He was also a generous philanthropist, though his modesty dictated that much of the funding was dispensed anonymously.
Sarah Jane (Jeanna) Young (née Foster) (1866–1955), inspired by Catherine Helen Spence, became secretary of the Effective Voting League (1897), wrote and lectured on proportional representation and, with Spence, campaigned for eight weeks in Sydney to have the Hare-Spence voting system adopted in Federal elections. She would later run for parliament and receive an OBE.
Sir Charles Todd was a leader in the fields of meteorology, astronomy and communications, and is best remembered for masterminding the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line.
Philosopher, Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, and a teacher of economics, psychology and literature, Sir William Mitchell was nothing if not a polymath.
Thomas Hardy lectured and wrote on the wine business and olive growing, was a member of the Phylloxera Board, Wine Growers’ Association, South Australian Agricultural and Horticultural Society and the Chamber of Manufactures, judged local horticultural shows, published regularly in the local press and wrote two books, Notes on Vineyards in America and Europe (1885) and A Vigneron Abroad, Trip to South Africa (1899).