Constructed from east to west in January 1880, Adelaide’s most distinctive commercial complex of14 shops and hotel, heading west along Rundle Street, was built for The South Australian Company.
South Australia was unique among the Australian colonies in that the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association assembled a subscription library before the settlers left Britain.
Robert Barr Smith had a genius for business. He was also a generous philanthropist, though his modesty dictated that much of the funding was dispensed anonymously.
Best known as a governor of South Australia, Sir Mark Oliphant was also a pioneering nuclear physicist, who became an outspoken anti-nuclear campaigner.
This hotel on North Terrace was first licenced as a public house in 1878 and was closed and demolished in 1971. To many, ‘The South’, the city’s three-storey grand hotel, was Adelaide.