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 (including the Adelaide Hills) 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,SCD2018/001 – Kaurna Peoples Native Title Claim National Native Title Tribunal. Retrieved 1 October 2022.Kaurna Heritage City of Adelaide. Retrieved 1 October 2022. with the name 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 a freely settled British colony in Australia. Colonel William Light 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 with wide boulevards and large public squares, surrounded by parks. Colonial Adelaide 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 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. Adelaide 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. Adelaide has also been classed as a Gamma + level global city as categorised by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Adelaide is connected by large 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.
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 (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.
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 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,Wakefield cites: Edward Curr, An Account of the Colony of Van Diemen's Land, principally designed for the use of emigrants, George Cowie & Co., London, 1824; Henry Widdowson, Present State of Van Diemen's Land; comprising an account of its agricultural capabilities, with observations on the present state of farming, &c. &c. pursued in that colony: and other important matters connected with Emigration, S. Robinson, W. Joy and J. Cross, London, and J. Birdsall, Northampton, 1829; and James Atkinson, An Account of the State of Agriculture & Grazing in New South Wales; Including Observations on the Soils and General Appearance of the Country, and some of its most useful natural productions; with an account of the Various Methods of Clearing and Improving Lands, Breeding and Grazing Live Stock, Erecting Buildings, the System of employing Convicts, and the expense of Labour generally; the Mode of Applying for Grants of Land; with Other Information Important to those who are about to emigrate to that Country: The result of several years' residence and practical experience in those matters in the Colony., J. Cross, London, 1826 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, Letter from Sydney, December 1829, pp. 99–185, written from Newgate prison. Editor Robert Gouger. 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.Wakefield wrote about this under a pseudonym, purporting to be an Australian settler. His subterfuge was so successful that he confused later writers, including Karl Marx, who wrote "It is the great merit of E.G. Wakefield to have discovered not anything new about the Colonies, but to have discovered in the Colonies the truth of as to the condition of capitalist production in the mother-country.' Das Kapital, Moscow, 1958, p 766" 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.Plan of a Company to be Established for the Purpose of Founding a Colony in Southern Australia, Purchasing Land Therein, and Preparing the Land so Purchased for the Reception of Immigrants, 1832; in Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, Prichard, M. F., (ed.) The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Collins, London, 1968, p 290. 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.J. W. Bull; Early Experiences of Colonial Life in South Australia (Adelaide, 1878) p.67 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.