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.
Elder Family of Scots merchants and ship owners saw the infant South Australia as an opportunity to expand their business interests. Alexander Lang Elder (1815–1885), the pioneer, arrived in 1839 and established a trading business.
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 Torrens title system for land ownership was inaugurated in South Australia has led the world in the computerisation of real property title information.