Adelaide
Adelaide 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 or the Adelaide city centre; 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 from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south and 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 the only freely settled British province in Australia, distinguishing it from Australia's penal colonies. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city centre and chose its location close to the River Torrens. Light's design, now listed as national heritage, set out the city centre in a grid layout known as "Light's Vision", interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and entirely surrounded by park lands. Colonial Adelaide was noted for its leading examples of religious freedom and progressive political reforms and became known as the "City of Churches" due to its diversity of faiths. It was Australia's third-most populous city until the postwar era.
Today, Adelaide is one of Australia's most visited travel destinations and hosts many festivals and sporting events, such as the Adelaide 500, Tour Down Under, Gather Round, LIV Golf Adelaide, and the Adelaide Fringe, the world's second largest annual arts festival. Adelaide also host men's tennis with an ATP250 event, and women's tennis with a WTA500 event. The city has also been renowned for its automotive industry, having been the original host of the Australian Grand Prix in the FIA Formula One World Championship from 1985 to 1995. Other features include its food and wine industries, its coastline and hills, its large defence and manufacturing operations, and its emerging space sector, including the Australian Space Agency being headquartered there. With one of the world's largest foreign-born populations, Adelaide has consistently ranked within the top-ten most liveable cities globally for much of the 21st century, being named in 2021 the most liveable city in the country and third in the world. Its aesthetic appeal has also been recognised by Architectural Digest, which ranked Adelaide as the most beautiful city in the world in 2024.
As South Australia's government and commercial centre, Adelaide is the site of many governmental and financial institutions. Most of these are concentrated in the central business district along the cultural boulevards of North Terrace and King William Street. Adelaide has also been classed as a Gamma + level global city as categorised by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, with the city further linking economic regions to the worldwide economy. Adelaide is connected by extensive bus, train and tram networks, all of which are operated by Adelaide Metro, with its main railway terminus at the Adelaide railway station. The city is also served by Adelaide Airport and Port Adelaide, both of which are among the busiest airports and seaports in Australia, respectively.
History
Before European settlement
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. 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.
19th century
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 immigrants, 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 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 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.