Modelled on the gentlemen’s clubs that proliferated in London from the eighteenth century, the Adelaide Club resembles bodies established at about the same time in the capital cities of the other Australian colonies.
Carpenters, tailors, bakers, carriers, cordwainers and coachmakers had formed unions within ten years of European settlement of South Australia, and by the 1870s there were thousands of union members in the colony.
The Wattle Day League was responsible for campaigning to establish 'Wattle Day', a national day of celebration, within Australia and helped raise funds on the home front to help support Australian soldiers fighting in the First World War.
Founded in 1888, the Women’s Suffrage League was an organisation dedicated to extending the political franchise to South Australian women, which was achieved in 1894.
Institutions transplanted to Australia were not always successful but the WEA, brought from England, survived an early period of adaptation before becoming a significant South Australian educational institution.