When was adelaide founded

Our City has a long proud history, and our resources, people and suburbs have played an important part in the development of our state. An understanding of Kaurna history and knowledge is integral to the history and cultural development of the Port Adelaide Enfield area.

Kaurna people have occupied the lands we now know as Port Adelaide for thousands of years, and the region is of great importance for Aboriginal people. The Kaurna people called the land around the Port River Yertabulti , Yerta meaning place or land, and Bulti meaning sleep or death. The Wirra Kaurna, a northern tribe, occupied land on the eastern bank of the Port River, while the Port River Tribe resided on the western bank of the river, with their territory stretching from West Lakes to the tip of the Lefevre Peninsula, and from Glanville to the sea.

The Kaurna people have a strong spiritual attachment to and partnership with the land, and the rich and diverse eco-zone of the Port Adelaide region prior to European settlement, provided them with food, shelter, and areas of spiritual significance. The river provided flax, rushes, reed covered dunes, mangrove forests and marshes and swamps, which offered fish, crabs and oysters as food sources, flax was used to make nets to catch fish and hunt game animals such as kangaroo, while reeds were made into mats, baskets and clothing, and trees and plant life, including the gum and honeysuckle, provided shelter and could be used to make tools.

In the booms, such as the one following the discovery of copper in the Mid North in , wealth poured into the city, lavishly endowing the university and the cultural resources on North Terrace and financing the construction of grand mansions. During the busts, as in the s and s, when up to a third of male workers were unemployed, the ramshackle encampments by the River Torrens at Pinkie Flat expanded and the semi-slums around Light Square became ever more derelict. Development in the first century of white settlement was limited mostly to the infilling of the vacant town acres and, particularly in the west end and North Adelaide, their sub-division by small cross-streets and lanes lined with terraced cottages.

Except in the small commercial core, the city was still a place where people lived, even though its share of the metropolitan population fell steadily. Fifty years after settlement 40 per cent of urban residents were living within the parklands; but after another 50 years only 12 per cent were still doing so.

The population had peaked at 43 in , remaining fairly stable at about 39 until the end of World War II. But in the s virtually all the square mile became a de facto industrial zone. Warehouses, business premises, workshops and waste ground used for car parking replaced houses in many of the cross-streets. For at least a decade after the city lost dwellings and people each year.

Indeed, a planning report of foresaw, and welcomed, no dwellings at all in the South Adelaide of 30 years hence. Fortunately the dangers were recognised in time. It was the very first city in Australia to be incorporated in Having a population of 2, in a mere few years of settling, in due course this was to grow even more and become a whopping 14, in The first mayor of the city was James Hurtle Fisher. The city is now responsible for many ground-breaking establishments for the entire country, including prohibiting sexual and racial discrimination, capital punishment, as well as recognising traditional Aboriginal land rights.

Related article: Interesting facts you might not know about Adelaide. Home » Settlement and development. There were many subsequent bursts of land development including: settlement of returned servicemen after WW1 and WW2 drainage of the South East swamps development of irrigation schemes along the River Murray discovery of trace elements to enable farming of many sandy soils.

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