‘South Australia’, wrote the early twentieth-century author of The Cyclopedia of South Australia, ‘owes its existence to a movement which had its origins in philanthropy’.
A Baptist minister and Waterloo veteran with a dragoon’s pension, South Australia’s first Thomas Playford arrived in 1844 to claim an inherited original town acre. Thomas’s eldest son, Thomas Playford (1837–1915), was a successful orchardist at Drysdale, Norton Summit, in the Adelaide Hills. Thomas’s grandson, Tom Playford (1896–1981), also went into parliament, becoming Australia’s longest-serving premier.
South Australia’s demography is in many ways the most distinctive of all Australia’s states, but the wealth of historical population data available for both the colony and state remains under-analysed.
Originally an informal service provided by a ragtag assortment of 'watermen' and their rowboats, Port Adelaide's ferries evolved into the preferred link between Port Adelaide and Lefevre Peninsula until the opening of the Birkenhead Bridge in 1940.
JM Freeland characterises Australian pubs as among ‘the most socially significant, historically valuable, architecturally interesting and colourful features of Australian society’ (Freeland 1977, p. 1). South Australia’s pubs are no exception.
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.
Regions/Regionalism, meaning extensive and distinctive areas and human attachments to them, these are words to conjure with in the South Australian experience.
In the early years of European settlement the distinction between retail trade, wholesale trade and importing in South Australia was unclear, with many businesses combining all three functions.
The River Murray has been central to South Australia’s existence. Named in 1830 by Charles Sturt after Sir George Murray, British secretary of state for the colonies, the river runs 2576 kilometres from its watershed in the Australian Alps to the sea near Goolwa on the Fleurieu Peninsula, 650 kilometres of the river’s flow being within South Australia.
Before and after the arrival of Europeans, Aboriginal peoples had a well-developed cultural understanding and practical knowledge of plants, animal behaviour, local geology and meteorological conditions. Information they provided was frequently vital to the success – and even survival – of early European navigators and explorers.
The steam engine became part of daily life, thanks to its industrial applications, powering modes of transport and agricultural machinery, and labour-saving utility
Modelled on the gentlemen’s clubs that proliferated in London from the eighteenth century, the Adelaide Club resembles bodies established at about the same time in the capital cities of the other Australian colonies.
Originally a liberal religious faith without dogma or creeds, Unitarians now emphasise the importance of free inquiry, tolerance of religious differences and individual spiritual exploration.
In South Australia, the prime key to wealth has been land. From its inception as a European colony, ownership (or control) of land meant access to agricultural and mineral resources. For the Aboriginal peoples, dispossession meant devastation.
The story of wheat is more than the story of a versatile food grain. In South Australia, the history of the production, transport and marketing of wheat opens wider windows onto society, economics and politics.