Elections to select members of parliament or local councillors are an important part of the democratic system. Who is allowed to vote is determined by the franchise, and who may stand for election by other provisions of electoral law.
Although amateur scientists had tinkered with it, electricity was not put to public use in South Australia until the arrival in 1855 of Charles Todd, who pioneered electrical telegraphic communications and introduced the notion of using electricity for street lighting.
Throughout the 1890s South Australia was at the forefront of the Federation movement that created the Commonwealth of Australia from six British colonies.
In October 1896, within one year of the Lumière brothers’ first public screening of film in Paris, the first public film screening in South Australia occurred at the Theatre Royal in Hindley Street
Paradoxically, the only parts of South Australia to experience occasional serious disruption of by flooding are the far distant sparsely populated deserts around Lake Eyre
The franchise has proved a lively issue in South Australia’s political history. Before representative government, wealthy men of property claimed that parliament should represent only those with a stake in the country, whereas many colonists sought popular representation.
Equal parts naturalist and artist, George French Angas depicted the South Australian landscape, Aboriginal inhabitants, and flora and fauna with meticulous accuracy.
George William Hannaford was born on 4 January 1852, the son of farmer George Williams Hannaford and his wife Ann (née Cornish) of ‘Hatchlands’ in Hartley Vale, near Gumeracha, South Australia.