The 1834 British statute authorising the establishment of the colony of South Australia described the region as ‘waste and unoccupied’, making no mention of the Indigenous owners of the land.
South Australia’s Foundation Act, passed by the British parliament in 1834, made no reference to the Aboriginal peoples who owned and occupied the land that was being annexed from the other side of the world.
The distribution of government rations to Aboriginal people, begun in the earliest days of European settlement, continued well into the twentieth century.
The city of Adelaide refers here to the area within the outer boundary of the parklands; that is, the ‘square mile’ of the commercial centre, plus North Adelaide, the city’s first suburb.
Andrew Tennant was the son of a Scottish shepherd who became a pastoralist and counted mining and the Adelaide Steamship Co. among his business investments.
George Fife Angas (1789–1879), described by his biographer Edwin Hodder, who was attracted to Angas’s nonconformist piety, as ‘one of the Fathers and Founders of South Australia’, helped shape South Australia’s institutions
The distinctive architectural character of Adelaide and its suburbs has disappeared since 1980 - city high-rise offices and derivative styles in suburban housing are all-pervading
Adelaide’s art galleries contribute to its reputation as a city of the arts. The South Australian Society of Arts, established in 1856 and the oldest Australian fine art society still in existence, had as one of its earliest objectives the setting up of a permanent gallery.
Audrey Tennyson (1854-1916), wife of South Australian governor Hallam Tennyson, took a particular interest in the conditions of South Australia’s poor and sick.
Robert Barr Smith (1824–1915), the son of a Scottish clergyman and his wife Marjory, née Barr, migrated to Melbourne in 1854. Moving to Adelaide just as Thomas Elder’s brothers were leaving South Australia, he threw in his lot with Elder.
Bonython Family is distinguished by a capacity for hard work, a leaning towards public service and significant benefaction to the institutions and people of Adelaide.
Settlers believed that using land intensively maximised its value and civilised its occupants, and that holdings should be small to allow people to hold land
South Australian mineral discoveries of the 1840s (especially at Kapunda and Burra in the Mid North) and extension of the farming frontier, were a magnet to the Cornish.
Edward Bates Scott migrated to New South Wales in 1838 from England, he later settled in the Murray Region, establishing a cattle station, becoming a magistrate, protector of Aboriginals, and finally a superintendent of a labour prison.
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.
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.