Peter John Badcoe was born on 11th January 1934 at Malvern, South Australia, the son of public servant Leslie Allen Badcoe and his wife Gladys Mary Ann May (née Overton).
‘South Australia’, wrote the early twentieth-century author of The Cyclopedia of South Australia, ‘owes its existence to a movement which had its origins in philanthropy’.
JM Freeland characterises Australian pubs as among ‘the most socially significant, historically valuable, architecturally interesting and colourful features of Australian society’ (Freeland 1977, p. 1). South Australia’s pubs are no exception.
Radicalism has been inherent in South Australian history from its founding as a free settlement. Based upon the English radical liberal thought of its founders, the State's reputation grew as a progressive colony and the first to entirely separate church from state.
In the early years of European settlement the distinction between retail trade, wholesale trade and importing in South Australia was unclear, with many businesses combining all three functions.
Opening in 1933, inheriting the place of a cinema which had existed on the spot since 1910, the Rex Theatre was a popular cinema on Rundle Street that was demolished in 1961.