Lyell Alexander McEwin (1897–1988) received a frugal Mid North upbringing which taught him the motto, ‘waste not, want not’, that characterised his 40 years in the Legislative Council, 1934–75.
Norman Tindale was a prodigious anthropologist and polymath who chronicled aboriginal culture, studied butterflies and moths, and broke Japanese wartime codes.
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).
Best known as a governor of South Australia, Sir Mark Oliphant was also a pioneering nuclear physicist, who became an outspoken anti-nuclear campaigner.
Philosopher, Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, and a teacher of economics, psychology and literature, Sir William Mitchell was nothing if not a polymath.
Theodor George Henry Strehlow (1908–1978) was brought up by his parents, Carl and Frieda Strehlow at the Hermannsburg Mission near Alice Springs. His work as linguist and ethnologist contributed extensively to white understanding of Aboriginal culture and music, but provoked ongoing dispute between settler and Indigenous cultures.
The term 'all-round sportsman' might have been coined for Victor York Richardson, who excelled at cricket, football, baseball, lacrosse, tennis and basketball.