‘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.
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.
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.
Construction of Port Adelaide’s fourth customs house commenced in 1878, following demolition of the timber customs house established on the same spot in 1840.
In South Australia probation encapsulated several kinds of opportunity, not only for those prosecuted but also for the criminal justice system and society
South Australia was unique among the Australian colonies in that the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association assembled a subscription library before the settlers left Britain.
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.
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.
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.
Saint Mary's Convent and School is one of several historically significant Catholic church buildings and religious community residences based on Franklin Street and West Terrace.
Saint Patrick's Church on Grote Street is one of several historically significant Catholic church buildings in the southwest corner of the Adelaide CBD. The original building was the first Catholic church in Adelaide.
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.
The Children's Patriotic Fund and Schools' Patriotic Fund were repsonsible for aiding the war effort on the homefront during the First and Second World War, respectively. They achieved this by mobilising school children across South Australia to contribute in any way they could towards the war effort.
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.
Singaporean migration to South Australia has occured from the early nineteenth century, however, when the Restriction Act 1901 was relaxed in 1967 there has been a significant increase of people coming to South Australia.