"South Australian Capital" a Adelaide Travel Page by Ramonq

Adelaide, the capital city of the State of South Australia, is a city that most Australians tend to overlook. South Australia is the only Australian state that did not originate as a penal colony. The descendants of South Australians were mostly free settlers from the British Isles, although like the rest of the country, there has been an influx of migrants from various parts of the world from Sudan to Germany. As the state's capital city, Adelaide has all the infrastructure of a modern city, but somehow it appears to have bypassed the 1980's and 1990's when many other Australian cities have gone slick and trendy. I think that Adelaide has a bygone era feel about it. It's still fairly low-rise city with many dour and stately sandstone civic buildings of the early 20th century. I felt like I was in Batman's Gotham City of the 1940's. This city is called the "City of Churches" because the free settlers built many of them to reflect their upright moral conduct. Adelaide does have more church per capita than any other capital cities in Australia. But don' t be fooled by the pious architecture, Adelaide is fairly liberal and has an alternative lifestyle district centred around Hindley Street. It's got a high concentration of bikie gangs because the city is a natural pitstop between the eastern cities and Perth.

The streets of Adelaide are in gridlike pattern and they are very wide giving it a spacious feel about it. The footpaths are wide too that in the evenings, away from the usual nocturnal haunts of Rundle, Hindley or Gouger Streets, it can appear quite desolate and foreboding. On its main boulevards such as North Terrace and King William street, there are stone monuments to great South Australian heroes from British explorer Matthew Flinders to Australia's venerated cricketer, Sir Don Bradman. It's also surrounded by well-manicured and beautiful parks filled with elm and oak trees that reminds you of grand European gardens.

But Adelaide has its charm but most of it is hidden in side streets and arcades. Tucked behind old sandstone buildings are quaint shops and neighbourly pubs that tourists seldom see. One needs a local to show you some of the hidden gems of Adelaide. The locals are charming too which is now missing in the stresssed-out Australian mega-cities of Sydney and Melbourne. You can easily strike up a conversation and get valuable information from them.

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