Adelaide, South Australia

24/11/2018

Christie's Beach

Port Noarlunga

South Australia was officially declared an English colony on 28th December 1836
near where the “old gum tree lies in the suburb of North Glenelg. Colonisation history took a different path to the likes of Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Brisbane. The approach to South Australia was a planned colony of free immigrants, promising civil liberties and freedom from religious persecution. Land would be surveyed and sold at a rate too expensive for labourers and journey man, this was to raise funds to immigrate working class settlers. These ideals were originated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield after reading about Australian settlements when he was serving time in prison for attempting to abduct a heiress. The ambition of a free settler colony was to create a utopian style crime free civilisation. Not even a Gaol was in the plans. This changed quickly in 1837 when there were reports of escaped convicts on the run from New South Wales on the South Australian Register. While a temporary Gaol was put on the cards, a burglary, a murder and two attempted murders occurred, this forced South Australia’s first governor John Hindmarsh to make the decision to employ the state’s first ever police force in 1838. Adelaide was off to a slow start economically until wool and livestock imports arrived in 1838 from Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. By 1860, wheat farms expanded as far as Encounter Bay to Clare, alongside producing wool, fruit, meat and wine, which were all strong exports in Adelaide. Through the mid 1800’s Adelaide was seeing large economic growth through it’s exports, the boom brought gas lighting, a university, a couple of reservoirs and the South Australian Art Gallery to the city. The 1890’s brought on an economic depression, the value of South Australia’s exports almost halved leaving their two main exports as wine and copper. Mining towns like Burra and Broken Hill lent an economical hand with Copper, Lead and Silver. The 1900’s brought in electric lighting and a tram network to Adelaide. The finish of World War 1 started a prosperous postwar boom, its growth made Adelaide the third most populous metropolitan area in Australia. The boom was short-lived with the droughts and great depression in the 1930’s. World War 2 times transformed Adelaide’s industry from agriculture to manufacturing. Companies like General Motors took advantage of Adelaide’s more safer location to bring the manufacturing industry to life, driving the city into the 20th century. The 1950’s brought an Airport and the Murray River pipeline, the 60’s was Flinders University and Medical Centre. The 1970’s started a social reform with the Adelaide Festival of arts, which created a cultural revival in the city. More recent highlights for Adelaide was being the host for the Formula 1 grand prix in the 80’s and V8 supercars to now, which shuts off parts of the city for cars to paint the roads with tyre marks.

Cultural Capers Adelaide Walking Tour

South Australia has had quite a progressive history, leading the nation and the world by example. It was the first Australian capital city to be connected to London by telegraph in 1872. In 1895, South Australia was the first place in the world to allow women to stand for parliament, in that year women were also granted the right to vote. In 1936 Adelaide was the first city to generate public housing for families in need known as the South Australian Housing trust. The first Aboriginal flag was raised in 1971 on Victoria Square to support land rights for Aboriginal people. In 1975, South Australia was the first state to decriminalise homosexuality. In 1977 South Australia introduced a 10 cent refund on every can or bottle recycled, which was a first. In more recent times, South Australia is still reputable for a progressive approach to combat issues. In 2017, U.S Company Tesla installed the worlds biggest lithium ion battery pack just outside Jamestown to combat wind power outages around the state, its response rate to power outages is within milliseconds beating its hydro, coal and gas competitors by well over 2 minutes. Although South Australia gets forgotten about by its east coastal neighbours, they’re a step ahead of the country.

Glenelg

On our first day in Adelaide, we took a train into the city to do a walking tour. Our guide Graham met us at the Parliament building steps away from the train station.Graham took us around the city and enriched us with his knowledge on Adelaide’s history. We started off with no idea about Adelaide and South Australia and finished the tour with a new founded appreciation of Australian History. Our walking tour inspired us to visit the Adelaide City Library, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australia Museum. The Art Gallery journeyed us through many eras of art ranging from Ancient Egyptian Art right up to modern contemporary art. Its variety of paintings and sculptures take you on a trip around the world and back in time with out a plane ticket. Adelaide’s South Australian Museum is filled with a wealth of natural history knowledge. The museum had an impressive display of taxidermied animals from around the world, the realness of the specimines leaves you waiting for them to come to life. The museum features a level of Australian Indigenous History and a level of Papua New Guinea History, all filled with paintings, clothing and beautifully handmade tools for hunting and gathering. The four story high squid keeps you interested, although just a plastic replica, it is 11 metres long and based on a real squid caught in New Zealand, the largest one caught at that time, the most recent largest recording stands at 13 metres. After hours of fuelling our minds with art, culture and science, we went for a walk around the Mortlock Wing, the first building of the Adelaide library. The Library was opened in 1884 to the public, and now still stands strong with a collection of 23,000 books. Every part of the library is so well preserved it feels like it hasn’t aged since the day it was built. Walking through the entrance feels like you’ve blasted through a time machine making you feel a part of the history. Its a beautiful inspiring place to wonder around, relax or maybe even read a book. On one of our days in Adelaide, we took a walk up to Mount Lofty, Adelaide’s lookout. The track begins at Waterfall Gully, named for obvious reasons, it has two running waterfalls which flow elegantly at the start of the track. It made for a very active day out in Cleland Conservation Park’s nature. Nestled on Adelaide’s shore is the coastal suburb Glenelg, its gorgeous town hall and Anzac memorial was surrounded by unfortunate lifeless feeling beach apartments. While walking around Glenelg we felt like it lacked a lot of atmosphere, shops lacked colour, cafes lacked taste and people lacked excitement of being there. Adelaide has spoilt us with a large amount of convenience. Everything to do there was just…..easy. Everything there just felt so easy to do, getting to a beach, getting to the city, getting groceries, a franchise acai bowl cafe we loved called Delicia would pop up every where we go and even to park a car somewhere, barely a sweat! Although Adelaide can lack hype compared to its other cities, it filled our days with some good solid chill.