Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital and largest city of South Australia, ranking as the fifth most populous in the country. The name can refer either to the broader Greater Adelaide area, which includes the Adelaide Hills, or to the central city district. People from Adelaide are called Adelaidans. The Kaurna people are the traditional custodians of the region; the area covering the city centre and its surrounding Park Lands is known as *Tarntanya* in the Kaurna language. The city sits on the Adelaide Plains, north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, with Gulf St Vincent to the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges to the east. Its metropolitan area includes more than 430 suburbs, stretching from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south, and from the coast to the eastern foothills.

The city was named for Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the wife of King William IV, and was founded in 1836 as the planned capital of a freely settled British colony in Australia. Colonel William Light chose the location near the River Torrens and designed the city centre. His plan, now a national heritage listing, arranged the centre in a grid pattern with wide boulevards, large public squares, and a ring of parklands. In colonial times, Adelaide became known as the "City of Churches" because of its religious diversity. It was Australia’s third-largest city until after World War II.

Today, Adelaide is a popular destination for travellers and hosts numerous festivals and sporting events, including the Adelaide 500, Tour Down Under, Gather Round, LIV Golf Adelaide, the Adelaide International, the Adelaide Fringe, and the Australian MotoGP Grand Prix from 2027. The city also launched Australia’s automotive industry and hosted the first Formula One Australian Grand Prix from 1985 to 1995. Adelaide is recognised for its food and wine industries, its coastline and hills, and its defence and manufacturing sectors. It has consistently ranked among the world’s top ten most liveable cities for much of the 21st century.

As South Australia’s government and commercial centre, activity is focused in the central business district along North Terrace and King William Street. The Globalization and World Cities Research Network classifies Adelaide as a Gamma+ level global city. Public transport is provided by Adelaide Metro, which runs buses, trains, and trams, with the main railway station in the city. The city is also served by Adelaide Airport and the port of Port Adelaide.

**History**

**Before European settlement**

Aboriginal people have lived in the area around modern-day Adelaide for what is described as millennia, tens of thousands of years, or thousands of generations. At Hallett Cove Conservation Park in the southern suburbs, archaeological evidence of Aboriginal culture dates back 40,000 years. The area was originally inhabited by the Kaurna people, one of many Aboriginal tribes in South Australia. The city and parklands area is also known as Tarndanyangga, Tandanya, Tarndanya, or Tarntanya, meaning "male red kangaroo rock," referring to a now-destroyed rock formation on the site.

The surrounding landscape was an open, grassy plain with patches of trees and shrubs, managed by hundreds of generations. Kaurna country included the plains north and south of Tarntanya and the wooded foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges. The River Torrens was called Karrawirra Pari (Red Gum forest river). About 300 Kaurna people lived in the Adelaide area, referred to by settlers as the Cowandilla. More than 20 local clans across the plain lived semi-nomadic lives, with extensive mound settlements where huts were built repeatedly over centuries, and a complex social structure that included a class of sorcerers separated from regular society.

Within a few decades of European settlement, Kaurna culture was almost entirely lost; the last speaker of the Kaurna language died in 1929. Extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both the language and culture, including commitments by local and state governments to rename or include Kaurna names for many local places.

**19th century**

Based on Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s ideas about colonial reform, Robert Gouger petitioned the British government to create a new colony in Australia, leading to the South Australia Act 1834. Physical settlement began with the arrival of the first British colonists in February 1836, and colonial government started on 28 December 1836. Proclaimed by the governor near The Old Gum Tree in what is now Glenelg North, this day is commemorated annually as Proclamation Day. Named for Queen Adelaide, the colony’s capital was surveyed and laid out by Colonel William Light, the first surveyor-general of South Australia, with his own original, topographically sensitive design. Adelaide was established as a planned colony of free settlers, promising civil liberties and freedom from religious persecution, based on Wakefield’s ideas.