The City of Adelaide is responsible only for the "Square Mile", which is the central business district (CBD), North Adelaide and the surrounding Adelaide Parklands. It is the oldest municipal authority in Australia and was established in 1840, when Adelaide and Australia's first mayor, James Hurtle Fisher, was elected. From 1919 onwards, the City has had a Lord Mayor, the current being Lord Mayor Michael Harbison. The City of Adelaide has a population of approximately 18,000 people in an area of 15.57 km². The population of the inner city has dwindled from its peak of about 250,000 as the metropolitan area has expanded. The entire metropolitan region, including the city proper, has a population of 1,080,990 people (2001 census) in an area of 870km², and is divided into 18 autonomous local government areas. However, as South Australia's capital and most populous city, the State Government co-operates extensively with the City of Adelaide - a relationship manifest in the Capital City Committee, which is primarily concerned with the planning of Adelaide's urban development and growth.

Demographics

According to the 2001 Australian Bureau of Statistics census, Adelaide has a metropolitan population of more than 1,080,990, making it Australia's fifth largest city. In the 2002-2003 period the population grew by 0.6%, while the national average was 1.2%. Some 70.3% of the population of South Australia is resident within the Adelaide Metropolitan Area, making South Australia one of the most centralised states. Major areas of population growth in recent years were in outer suburbs such as Mawson Lakes and Golden Grove. Adelaide's inhabitants occupy 325,000 houses, 57,000 detached, row terrace or town houses and 49,000 flats, apartments and caravans.

Major areas of population growth in recent years were in outer suburbs such as Mawson Lakes and Golden Grove. Overseas born Adelaideans composed 24.6% (242, 092) of the total population. The North-Western Suburbs (such as Golden Grove and Salisbury) and suburbs close to the CBD had a higher ratio of overseas born residents. Wealthier and more well-educated Adelaideans are concentrated on the coastal suburbs (such as Brighton and Hallett Cove) and South-Eastern suburbs (such as Burnside and Waterfall Gully). Almost a fifth (17.9%) of the population had university qualifications. The number of Adelaideans with vocational qualifications (such as tradespersons) fell from 62.1% of the labour force in the 1991 census to 52.4% in the 2001 census.

Overall, Adelaide is ageing much more rapidly than other Australian capital cities. Just under a quarter (24.1%) of Adelaide's population is aged 55 years or older, in comparison to the national average of 19.9%. To further compound the situation, Adelaide has the lowest number of children (under-15 year olds), which composed 18.7% of the population, compared to the national average of 20.4%. In regards to ancestry, 38% of the population identified themselves as English, 34% as Australian (which is most likely primarily of British background ), 8.4% as Irish, 3.5% as Italian, 2.3% as Greek and 1.2% as Vietnamese.

Economy

Adelaide's economy is primarily based around manufacturing, defence technology and research, mining and corresponding service industries. It has large manufacturing, defence and research zones. They contain car manufacturing plants for General Motors Holden and Mitsubishi, and plants for medical equipment and electronic component production. Almost half of all cars produced in Australia are made in Adelaide. The global media conglomerate News Corporation was founded in and until 2004 incorporated in Adelaide and is still considered its 'spiritual' home by Rupert Murdoch. Australia's largest oil company, Santos (South Australia Northern Territory Oil Search) is also headquartered in Adelaide. The collapse of the State Bank in 1992 resulted in large levels of state debt (as much as A$4 billion). The collapse had meant that successive governments had enacted lean budgets, cutting spending, which had been a setback to the further development of the city and state. The debt has recently been reduced with the State Government once again recieving a AAA+ Credit Rating. The South Australian economy (very closely tied to Adelaide's) still enjoys a trade surplus and has higher per capita growth than Australia as a whole.

Adelaide is home to a large proportion of Australia's defence industries which contribute over AUD$1 billion to South Australia's Gross State Product. 70% of Australian defence companies are located in Adelaide. The principal government military research institution, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and other defence technology organisations such as Tenix are located in Salisbury near RAAF Base Edinburgh and others near Technology Park. The Australian Submarine Corporation, based in the industrial suburb of Osborne was charged with constructing Australia's Collins Class Submarines and recently won a AUD$6 billion contract to construct the Royal Australian Navy's new air-warfare destroyers.

There are 466 829 employed people in Adelaide, with 62.3% employed full-time and 35.1% employed part-time. In recent years there has been a growing trend towards part-time (which includes casual) employment, increasing from only 11.6% of the workplace in 1991, to over a third today. 15% of workers are employed in manufacturing, 5% in construction, 15% in retail trade, 11% in business services, 7% in education and 12% in health and community services. The median weekly individual income for people aged 15 years and over is $300-$399 per week. The median family income is $800-$999 per week. Adelaide's housing and living costs are substantially lower than that of other Australian cities, with housing being notably cheaper. The median Adelaide house price is half that of Sydney and two-thirds that of Melbourne. The unemployment rate (as of October 2005) was 4.8%.

Culture

Adelaide is sometimes referred to as the 'City of Churches', although this is a reflection more on Adelaide's past than its present. Rumour has it that for every church that was built in Adelaide, a pub was also built to serve the less pious. From its earliest, Adelaide attracted immigrants from many countries, particularly German migrants escaping religious persecution. They brought with them the vine cuttings that founded the acclaimed wineries of the Barossa Valley. After the Second World War Italians, Greeks, Dutch, Polish, and possibly every other European nationality came to make a new start. An influx of Asian immigrants following the Vietnam War added to the mix. These new arrivals have blended to form a rich and diverse cuisine and vibrant restaurant culture.

Adelaide's cultural life flourished in the 1970's under the leadership of premier Don Dunstan, removing some of the more puritanical restrictions on cultural activities then prevalent around Australia. Now the city is home to events such as the Barossa Music Festival, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Adelaide Film Festival, Adelaide Festival of Ideas, Come Out youth arts festival, the Fringe Festival, among others. WOMADelaide, Australia's premier world music event, is now annually held in the scenic surrounds of Botanic Park, emphasising Adelaide's dedication to the arts which has prevailed since the days of Don Dunstan.

The annual Royal Adelaide Show, first held in 1840, began as a simple event for the state's farmers to show off their produce. Over time, it grew into a more general commercial fair held in early September in the inner suburb of Wayville, with carnival rides, food and entertainment surrounding the more traditional agricultural exhibitions and competitions.

Musically Adelaide has been the birthplace of various artists that have achieved both national and worldwide fame. Notably the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Adelaide Youth Orchestra, The Mark of Cain, The Superjesus, I Killed The Prom Queen, Testeagles and Eric Bogle. American artist Ben Folds considers Adelaide his second home, epitomised in his song "Adelaide" and resides here with his Adelaide-born wife for a number of months each year. The first Australian Idol winner, Guy Sebastian hails from the Adelaide suburb of Golden Grove and the popular Australian hip-hop outfit Hilltop Hoods reside in O'Halloran Hill.

Adelaide hosted the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix from 1985 to 1995 on a street circuit in the city's eastern parklands. The Grand Prix became a source of pride and losing the Grand Prix to Melbourne in a surprise announcement left a void that has since been filled with the highly successful Clipsal 500 V8 Supercar race event, held on a modified version of the same street circuit. Adelaide is the home of two Australian Football League teams: the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide Power, as well as a local league, the SANFL. Most large sporting events take place at either AAMI Stadium (formerly Football Park) or the historic Adelaide Oval. Adelaide has hosted the annual Tour Down Under bicycle race since 1999, an event which has gradually built an international reputation with each sucessive year it has been held. It is also host to the extraordinarily successful Bay to Birdwood run, featuring vintage and veteran cars from around the world.

Education

Main article: Education in South Australia

Adelaide is home to campuses of all three of South Australia's universities. The University of Adelaide is a member of the Group of Eight and was founded in 1874, making it the third oldest university in Australia. It has five campuses in the Adelaide area; one being its primary campus on North Terrace and another being the National Wine Centre. The University of South Australia was formed in 1991 from a merger between the South Australian Institute of Technology and the South Australian Colleges of Advanced Education. Four of its six campuses are located in Adelaide, with two in the CBD itself. Flinders University, located in Bedford Park is named after Australian navigator and explorer Matthew Flinders and was founded in 1966. It is a mid-sized institution with a medical school at the adjacent Flinders Medical Centre. Leading US private university, Carnegie Mellon, is to establish two Adelaide campuses offering both Australian and US degrees in 2006. The Heinz School will specialise in IT and government management and be based in Victoria Square, while another campus at Light Square will specialise in new media and entertainment . These institutions attract students from across Australia and around the world, earning Adelaide’s international recognition as a ‘City of Education’.

School education in Adelaide is provided by a variety of public and private schools, which are the responsibility of the State Government. These schools operate under the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE), with International Baccalaureates (IB) offered at many as well. The Tertiary Education system in Adelaide is extensive, with five out of eight centres of TAFE South Australia in the city itself, including the Douglas Mawson institute of Technology. They specialise in non-university higher education offering a viable alternative.

Transport

Being centrally located on the Australian mainland, Adelaide forms something of a strategic transport hub for east-west and north-south routes. The city itself has a comprehensive public transport system, which is managed by and known as the Adelaide Metro. The Adelaide Metro consists of an extensive contracted bus system including the unique Adelaide O-Bahn (a guided busway), metropolitan railways, and the historic Adelaide-Glenelg Tram.

Road transport in Adelaide is comparatively easier than many of the other Australian cities, with a well-defined city layout and wide multiple-lane roads from the beginning of its development. Historically, Adelaide had been known as a "twenty-minute city", with commuters being able to travel from metropolitan outskirts to the city proper in roughly twenty minutes. In the late sixties the MATS plan for Adelaide (Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study) was thrown out, which advocated a large network of highways rather than an expanding public transport network. The consequences of the rejection of this plan are now being seen as increased traffic has seen travel times increase, and congestion on main thoroughfares such as South Road is not uncommon. Adelaide is connected to Port Wakefield Road and the Sturt Highway in the north, and the South Eastern Freeway in the South East. The Southern Expressway acts as a bypass for the often congested South Road.

The Adelaide O-Bahn is one of a few guided busways in the world. With large growth in the Northern Suburbs of Adelaide in the 1970's and 80's Adelaide was faced with a transport dilemma. The Adelaide O-Bahn was constructed in 1986 in response, after beating competing proposals of expanded rail and road networks (one of the competing proposals was to build an Adelaide underground, but proved to be cost-ineffective in comparison).

Interstate bus routes to and from all the major Australian towns and cities connect to Adelaide. Its main terminus for intra- and inter-state coach-liners is the Franklin Street Coach Terminal at Franklin and Bowen Streets in the city-centre. Beginning in 2005, the terminal is to undergo a complete $25 million reconstruction, in conjunction with the much larger $375 million former Balfours-site redevelopment – the end-product being a new multi-storey bus-station and various residential and commercial towers. [1]

While Adelaide's rail-network does not suffer the chronic delays of its inter-state counterparts, it is comparatively under-developed; Adelaide is the only mainland capital with a non-electric network. Amid increasing criticism over the ailing and ever-dilapidated rail-system, the State Government is in the process of developing a State Transport Plan, expected to be released in late 2005. The plan will reportedly set out the framework for upgrading the public transport system. Conversely, Adelaide’s sole remaining tramway, from Victoria Square in the CBD to the historic beachside resort of Glenelg, is under-going a AU$56 million upgrade in which new tram-cars will operate with the existing historic H-type’s of 1929. Adelaide is the midpoint of the Indian Pacific railway between Perth and Sydney, as well as the terminus of The Overland to Melbourne and The Ghan via Alice Springs to Darwin.

The Adelaide International Airport, located at West Beach, is Australia's newest and most advanced airport terminal and serves in excess of 5.4 million passengers annually. The new dual international/domestic terminal replaces the old and ageing terminals, and incorporates new state-of-the-art features, such as glass aerobridges and the ability to cater for the new Airbus A380. The airport can now handle 27 aircraft simultaneously and it is capable of processing 3,000 passengers per hour. It was officially opened in a ceremony in October 2005 by South Australian Governor Majorie Nelson-Jackson, Premier Mike Rann and Prime Minister John Howard. Major carriers include Qantas, Virgin Blue, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Jetstar, National Jet Systems, Regional Express (REX), O'Connor Airlines and the soon to be shut down Airlines of South Australia.

Prominent Adelaideans

Notable Adelaideans include Sir Mark Oliphant (physicist and Governor of South Australia), Nobel Prize winners William Henry Bragg, his son William Lawrence Bragg, Robin Warren and Howard Florey (honoured for his role in making penicillin readily available), Andy Thomas (astronaut), Lleyton Hewitt (former world number one tennis player), Ian, Greg, and Trevor Chappell (past international cricket players).

Adelaide was also home to pioneer Antarctic explorers Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Hubert Wilkins cricketer Sir Donald Bradman and Australia's first female judge and first female Governor, Dame Roma Mitchell. Janine Haines, born in Tanunda in 1945 was the first female to lead an Australian political party (the Australian Democrats). Natasha Stott Despoja (born in Adelaide, 1969), was the youngest woman to enter Commonwealth Parliament and in 2001, was the youngest person in Australian history to lead an Australian political party (the Australian Democrats). Sir Charles Cameron Kingston, son of the Adelaide surveyor Sir George Strickland Kingston, was the Premier of South Australia from 1893-99 and went on to be the Minister for Trade and Customs in the first Commonwealth Parliament.

James Unaipon (1834-1908) and his son, the remarkable David Unaipon (1872-1967), commemorated on the Fifty Dollar banknote, were both highly intellectual and spiritual men. David Unaipon, a scientist, writer, preacher and prolific inventor, became known as the "Australian Leonardo"; one of his best ideas improved the efficiency of the mechanical sheep-shears. Catherine Helen Spence, (1825-1910), was a suffragist, electoral reformer, prohibitionist, feminist and novelist. She pioneered the way for South Australia to become the second place in the world to grant women the right to vote (after New Zealand), and was the first female political candidate in Australia — standing for the Constitutional Conventions of the 1890s.

Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold and his wife Mary Penfold established Penfolds Winery in 1845 which now produces the prestigious Penfolds Grange Hermitage.

Prominent artists, bands, and musicians to hail from Adelaide include film directors Scott Hicks and Rolf de Heer, actors Anthony LaPaglia and Jonathan LaPaglia. Sir Robert Helpmann (1909-1986), while born in Mount Gambier, is rumoured to have resided in the eastern suburb of Rose Park during his career in Adelaide. Artist Sir Hans Heysen lived in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, painting spectacular South Australian landscapes. Musicians include Jimmy Barnes, Glenn Shorrock, The Mark of Cain, The Superjesus, Undertone, Guy Sebastian, Testeagles, and Snap to Zero. Of recent note are hip-hop outfit Hilltop Hoods, who have attained nationwide recognition. North Carolina pop pianist Ben Folds has been living in Adelaide since 1999.

Melbourne-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch ran his first newspaper in Adelaide. In 1952 he took over management from his father of the afternoon paper "The News", turned it into a success and went on to build his now far-reaching media empire News Corporation, which was, up until the end of 2004, headquartered in Adelaide. According to Murdoch, a recipient of the City Keys, Adelaide remains News Corporation's "spiritual home".

Media

Print

Newspapers in Adelaide are dominated by News Corp. tabloid publications. The only South Australian daily newspaper is The Advertiser, published by News six days per week, while the Sunday paper is the Sunday Mail. There are eleven suburban community newspapers published weekly, called The Messenger[2], also published by a subsidiary of News Corp.

A recent addition to the news scene in the city is "The Independent Weekly", providing one alternative view.

There are two national daily newspapers - The Australian (Monday–Friday) and its weekend publication, The Weekend Australian (Saturday), also published by News Corp., and The Australian Financial Review published by Fairfax.

The Adelaide Review [3] is a free paper published fortnightly and other independent magazine-style papers are published, but are not as widely available.

Television

All of the five Australian national networks broadcast both analogue PAL and widescreen digital services in Adelaide. They share three transmission towers on the ridge near the summit of Mount Lofty. The two government-funded stations are ABC and SBS. The Seven Network and Network Ten both own their Adelaide stations (SAS-7 and ADS-10 respectively). Adelaide's NWS-9 is affiliated with the Nine Network but is actually owned by Southern Cross Broadcasting. Adelaide also has a community television station, Channel 31.

The Foxtel pay TV service is available as cable television in a few areas, as is satellite television to the entire metropolitan area. It is resold by a number of other brands, mostly telephone companies.

Radio

Major FM and AM stations include:

• FM 107.9 — Life FM
• FM 107.1 — SA-FM
• FM 106.3 — SBS Radio
• FM 105.5 — Triple J Website
• FM 104.7 — Triple M Website
• FM 103.9 — ABC Classic FM
• FM 102.3 — Mix FM
• FM 101.5 — Radio Adelaide - community & student radio
• FM 99.9 — 5MBS - Music Broadcasting Society of South Australia: classical music & jazz
• FM 93.7 — Three D Radio - community radio
• FM 92.7 — Fresh FM - youth community radio
• FM 91.9 — Nova FM (FM 99.1 for the Adelaide Foothills)
• FM 88.7 — Coast FM - community radio

• AM 1395 — 5AA (talk-back)
• AM 891 — 891 ABC Adelaide Website
• AM 729 — ABC Radio National Website
• AM 972 — ABC NewsRadio Website

Sister cities

Adelaide has several sister cities. They are:

• Austin, Texas, United States - 1983
• Christchurch, New Zealand - 1972
• George Town, Penang - 1973
• Himeji, Japan - 1982

See also

• List of Adelaide railway stations
• List of Adelaide suburbs
• List of Churches in Adelaide
• List of sports clubs in Adelaide

Further reading

• Kathryn Gargett; Susan Marsden, Adelaide: A Brief History. Adelaide: State History Centre, History Trust of South Australia in association with Adelaide City Council, 1952. ISBN 0730801160
• Derek Whitelock et al, Adelaide : a sense of difference. Melbourne: Arcadia, 2000. ISBN 0875606571

External links

• City of Adelaide
• SA Central
  • City highlights
  • Metropolitan highlights
• Wikitravel: Adelaide
• Terraserver.com navigable satellite map of Adelaide