South Australians have taken great pride in their history, especially in the nineteenth century, but this article will explore how different South Australia and Adelaide really is from the rest of Australia.
- The history of South Australia:
The land where Adelaide was settled was explored British Commander Matthew Flinders, the first person known to have circumnavigated Australia, and by French Captain Nicolas Baudin, who independently charted the southern coast of the Australian continent, with the notable exception of the inlet later known as the Port Adelaide River.
In 1802 Flinders named Mount Lofty, but recorded little of the area which is now Adelaide.
It was not until later, in 1830, that Charles Sturt explored the Murray River and was impressed with what he briefly saw, later writing:
“Hurried ….as my view of it was, my eye never fell on a country of more promising aspect, or more favourable position, than that which occupies the space between the lake (Lake Alexandrina) and the ranges of the Gulf St Vincent, and, continuing northerly from Mount Barker stretches away, without any visible boundary”.
- Visiting down under – a famous story:
A report was latched onto by a group in Britain led by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who were looking to start a colony based on free settlement rather than convict labor.
After problems in other Australian colonies arising from existing settlement methods, the time was right to form a more methodical approach to establishing a colony.
In 1829 Wakefield wrote a series of letters about systematic colonization which were published in a daily newspaper.
Wakefield suggested that instead of granting free land to settlers as had happened in other colonies, the land should be sold.
The money from land purchases would be used solely to transport laborers to the colony free of charge, who were to be responsible and skilled workers rather than paupers and convicts.
Land prices needed to be high enough so that workers who saved to buy land of their own remained in the workforce long enough to avoid a labor shortage.
These letters and Wakefield himself, became founders of a group that then sought approval and financing from the British government to set up a new colony in South Australia. The colonists first landed on Kangaroo Island, but finding little water there, government officials finally established the city of Adelaide in its current location.
“It is interesting then to note that while South Australia was in fact the only part of Australia that was not colonized by convicts, the colony of South Australia was, nevertheless, designed and started by a criminal who was at worst a kidnapper and at best an opportunist.”
