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capital city of South Australia
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Adelaide ( AD-il-ayd; Kaurna: Tarndanya [ˈd̪̥aɳɖaɲa]) is the capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide central business district; the demonym Adelaidean is used to denote the city and the residents of Adelaide. The traditional owners of the Adelaide region are the Kaurna, with the name Tarndanya referring to the area of the city centre and surrounding Park Lands, in the Kaurna language. Adelaide is situated on the Adelaide Plains north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, between the Gulf St Vincent in the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. Its metropolitan area encompasses over 430 suburbs, extending 96 km (60 mi) from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south and 20 km (12 mi) from the western coast to the eastern foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges.
Named in honour of Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of King William IV, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for a freely settled British colony in Australia. Colonel William Light designed the city centre in a grid layout with wide boulevards and large public squares, surrounded by parks, now listed as national heritage. Colonial Adelaide became known as the "City of Churches" due to its diversity of faiths, being Australia's third-most populous city until the postwar era.
Today, Adelaide is a popular travel destination and hosts many festivals and sporting events, such as the Adelaide 500, Tour Down Under, Gather Round, LIV Golf Adelaide, the Adelaide International, the Adelaide Fringe and the Australian MotoGP Grand Prix from 2027. The city also gave rise to Australia's automotive industry, having also hosted the first Australian Grand Prix under the Formula One banner between 1985 and 1995. Adelaide is known for its food and wine industries, its coastline and hills, and defence and manufacturing industries. The city has consistently ranked within the top-ten most liveable cities globally for much of the 21st century.
Adelaide is South Australia's government and commercial centre, with activity concentrated in the city's central business district along the boulevards of North Terrace and King William Street. It has also been classed as a Gamma + level global city as categorised by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Adelaide is connected by significant bus, train and tram networks, operated by Adelaide Metro, with its primary railway terminus at the Adelaide railway station. The city is also served by Adelaide Airport and Port Adelaide.
The amount of time Aboriginal people have been living in the area around modern-day Adelaide has been described as "millennia", "tens of thousands of years", "thousands of generations", or "innumerable generations". At Hallett Cove Conservation Park in Adelaide's southern suburbs, archaeological evidence of Aboriginal culture has been found dating back 40,000 years.
The area was originally inhabited by the Kaurna people, one of many Aboriginal tribes in South Australia. The city and parklands area also known as Tarndanyangga, Tandanya, Tarndanya or Tarntanya. The name means 'male red kangaroo rock', referring to a rock formation on the site that has now been destroyed.
The surrounding area was an open, grassy plain with patches of trees and shrubs, which had been managed by hundreds of generations. Kaurna country encompassed the plains stretching north and south of Tarntanya, as well as the wooded foothills of the Mt Lofty Ranges. The River Torrens was known as the Karrawirra Pari (Red Gum forest river). About 300 Kaurna populated the Adelaide area, and were referred to by the settlers as the Cowandilla.
The more than 20 local clans across the plain lived seminomadic lives, with extensive mound settlements where huts were built repeatedly over centuries and a complex social structure, including a class of sorcerers separated from regular society.
Within a few decades of European settlement of South Australia, Kaurna culture was almost completely lost, with the last speaker of Kaurna language having died in 1929. Extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both, which has included a commitment by local and state governments to rename or include Kaurna names for many local places.
Based on the ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield about colonial reform, Robert Gouger petitioned the British government to create a new colony in Australia, resulting in the passage of the South Australia Act 1834. Physical establishment of the colony began with the arrival of the first British colonisers in February 1836, followed by the commencement of colonial government in South Australia on 28 December 1836. Proclaimed by the governor near The Old Gum Tree in what is now the suburb of Glenelg North, this day is annually commemorated in South Australia as Proclamation Day. Named for Queen Adelaide, the site of the colony's capital was surveyed and laid out by Colonel William Light, the first surveyor-general of South Australia, with his own original, unique and topographically sensitive design.
Adelaide was established as a planned colony of free settlers, promising civil liberties and freedom from religious persecution, based upon the ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Wakefield had read accounts of Australian settlement while in prison in London for attempting to abduct an heiress, and realised that the eastern colonies suffered from a lack of available labour, due to the practice of giving land grants to all arrivals. Wakefield's idea was for the Government to survey and sell the land at a rate that would maintain land values high enough to be unaffordable for labourers and journeymen. Funds raised from the sale of land were to be used to bring out working-class emigrants, who would have to work hard for the monied settlers to ever afford their own land. As a result of this policy, Adelaide does not share the convict settlement history of other Australian cities like Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart.
As it was believed that in a colony of free settlers there would be little crime, no provision was made for a gaol in Colonel Light's 1837 plan. But by mid-1837 the South Australian Register was warning of escaped convicts from New South Wales and tenders for a temporary gaol were sought. Following a burglary, a murder, and two attempted murders in Adelaide during March 1838, Governor Hindmarsh created the South Australian Police Force (now the South Australia Police) in April 1838 under 21-year-old Henry Inman. The first sheriff, Samuel Smart, was wounded during a robbery, and on 2 May 1838 one of the offenders, Michael Magee, became the first person to be hanged in South Australia. William Baker Ashton was appointed governor of the temporary gaol in 1839, and in 1840 George Strickland Kingston was commissioned to design Adelaide's new gaol. Construction of Adelaide Gaol commenced in 1841.
Adelaide's early history was marked by economic uncertainty and questionable leadership. The first governor of South Australia, John Hindmarsh, clashed frequently with others, in particular the Resident Commissioner, James Hurtle Fisher. The rural area surrounding Adelaide was surveyed by Light in preparation to sell a total of over 405 km2 (156 sq mi) of land. Adelaide's early economy started to get on its feet in 1838 with the arrival of livestock from Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. Wool production provided an early basis for the South Australian economy. By 1860, wheat farms had been established from Encounter Bay in the south to Clare in the north.
George Gawler took over from Hindmarsh in late 1838 and, despite being under orders from the Select Committee on South Australia in Britain not to undertake any public works, promptly oversaw construction of a governor's house, the Adelaide Gaol, police barracks, a hospital, a customs house and a wharf at Port Adelaide. He was criticised for his response to the Maria massacre. Gawler was recalled and replaced by George Edward Grey in 1841. Grey slashed public expenditure against heavy opposition, although its impact was negligible at this point: silver was discovered in Glen Osmond that year, agriculture was well underway, and other mines sprung up all over the state, aiding Adelaide's commercial development. The city exported meat, wool, wine, fruit and wheat by the time Grey left in 1845, contrasting with a low point in 1842 when one-third of Adelaide houses were abandoned.
Trade links with the rest of the Australian states were established after the Murray River was successfully navigated in 1853 by Francis Cadell, an Adelaide resident. South Australia became a self-governing colony in 1856 with the ratification of a new constitution by the British parliament. Secret ballots were introduced, and a bicameral parliament was elected on 9 March 1857, by which time 109,917 people lived in the province.
In 1860, the Thorndon Park reservoir was opened, providing an alternative water source to the now turbid River Torrens. Gas street lighting was implemented in 1867, the University of Adelaide was founded in 1874, the South Australian Art Gallery opened in 1881 and the Happy Valley Reservoir opened in 1896. In the 1890s Australia was affected by a severe economic depression, ending a hectic era of land booms and tumultuous expansionism. Financial institutions in Melbourne and banks in Sydney closed. The national fertility rate fell and immigration was reduced to a trickle.
The value of South Australia's exports nearly halved. Drought and poor harvests from 1884 compounded the problems, with some families leaving for Western Australia. Adelaide was not as badly hit as the larger gold-rush cities of Sydney and Melbourne, and silver and lead discoveries at Broken Hill provided some relief. Only one year of deficit was recorded, but the price paid was retrenchments and lean public spending. Wine and copper were the only industries not to suffer a downturn.
Adelaide was Australia's third largest city for most of the 20th century. Electric street lighting was introduced in 1900 and electric trams were transporting passengers in 1909. 28,000 men were sent to fight in World War I. Historian F. K. Crowley examined the reports of visitors in the early 20th century, noting that "many visitors to Adelaide admired the foresighted planning of its founders", as well as pondering the riches of the young city.
Adelaide enjoyed a postwar boom, entering a time of relative prosperity. Its population grew, and it became the third most populous metropolitan area in the country, after Sydney and Melbourne. Its prosperity was short-lived, with the return of droughts and the Great Depression of the 1930s. It later returned to fortune under strong government leadership. Secondary industries helped reduce the state's dependence on primary industries. World War II brought industrial stimulus and diversification to Adelaide under the Playford Government, which advocated Adelaide as a safe place for manufacturing due to its less vulnerable location. Shipbuilding was expanded at the nearby port of Whyalla.
The South Australian Government in this period built on former wartime manufacturing industries but neglected cultural facilities which meant South Australia's economy lagged behind. International manufacturers like Holden and Chrysler made use of these factories around the Adelaide area in suburbs like Elizabeth, completing its transformation from an agricultural service centre to a 20th-century motor city. The Mannum–Adelaide pipeline brought River Murray water to Adelaide in 1955 and an airport opened at West Beach in 1955. Flinders University and the Flinders Medical Centre were established in the 1960s at Bedford Park, south of the city. Today, Flinders Medical Centre is one of the largest teaching hospitals in South Australia. In the post-war years around the early 1960s, Adelaide was surpassed by Brisbane as Australia's third largest city.
The Dunstan Governments of the 1970s saw something of an Adelaide "cultural revival", establishing a wide array of social reforms. The city became noted for its progressivism as South Australia became the first Australian state or territory to decriminalise homosexuality between consenting adults in 1975. Adelaide became a centre for the arts, building upon the biennial "Adelaide Festival of Arts" that commenced in 1960. The State Bank collapsed in 1991 during an economic recession. The effects lasted until 2004, when Standard & Poor's reinstated South Australia's AAA credit rating. Adelaide's tallest building, completed in 2020, is called the Adelaidean and is located at 11 Frome Street.
In the early years of the 21st century, a significant increase in the state government's spending on Adelaide's infrastructure occurred. The Rann government invested A$535 million in a major upgrade of the Adelaide Oval to enable Australian Football League to be played in the city centre and more than A$2 billion to build a new Royal Adelaide Hospital on land adjacent to the Adelaide Railway Station. The Glenelg tramline was extended through the city to Hindmarsh down to East Terrace and the suburban railway line extended south to Seaford.
Following a period of stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s, Adelaide began several major developments and redevelopments. The Adelaide Convention Centre was redeveloped and expanded at a cost of A$350 million beginning in 2012. Three historic buildings were adapted for modern use: the Torrens Building in Victoria Square as the Adelaide campus for Carnegie Mellon University, University College London, and Torrens University; the Stock Exchange building as the Science Exchange of the Royal Institution Australia; and the Glenside Psychiatric Hospital as the Adelaide Studios of the SA Film Corporation. The government invested more than A$2 billion to build a desalination plant, powered by renewable energy, as an "insurance policy" against droughts affecting Adelaide's water supply. The Adelaide Festival, Fringe, and Womadelaide became annual events.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Adelaide”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.