South Australia

The Adelaide Plains are Kaurna country; the Ngarrindjeri live along the Coorong and the lower Murray, the Adnyamathanha in the Flinders Ranges, and the Anangu of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands in the far north-west. The Adnyamathanha name for Wilpena Pound, Ikara, is now part of the national park's official name.

South Australia was founded in 1836 as a planned colony of free settlers, based on Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory of systematic colonisation; it never received convicts. Colonel William Light laid out Adelaide on a grid surrounded by park lands. The founding documents acknowledged Aboriginal rights to land, but in practice Kaurna and other peoples were dispossessed, and conflict on the frontier and along the overland route from New South Wales was violent. From 1838 German Lutherans fleeing religious restrictions in Prussia settled Hahndorf and the Barossa, and copper finds at Kapunda and Burra helped save the young colony's economy.

South Australia was a political pioneer: in 1894 its parliament voted to give women the vote and, as the first place in the world, the right to stand for parliament. In the 1950s Britain tested nuclear weapons at Emu Field and Maralinga, contaminating the lands of Anangu people. In 1981 the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act returned a vast area of the north-west to Anangu ownership, and in 2023 South Australia legislated its own First Nations Voice to Parliament, the first state to do so.

Adelaide has long been called the "City of Churches", and its reputation is of a quiet, orderly, somewhat conservative city — one that has also produced social reforms, from women's suffrage to Don Dunstan's premiership of the 1970s. It is proud of never having been a convict colony.

Festivals are the state's calling card. February and March, known locally as "Mad March", bring the Adelaide Fringe — one of the largest arts festivals in the world — the Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide and the Adelaide 500 motor race. The Tour Down Under cycling race runs in January. Australian rules football dominates, and the "Showdown" between the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide is the state's biggest derby.

German heritage remains visible in the Barossa and the Adelaide Hills, in Lutheran churches, brass bands, place names and food. The state has its own vocabulary: fritz for the processed meat called devon elsewhere, and Stobie poles, the steel-and-concrete power poles invented in Adelaide. Aboriginal art centres in the APY Lands produce paintings sought by galleries across the country.

South Australia has about 1.9 million people, and around three-quarters of them live in Greater Adelaide. The rest of the state is thinly populated: Mount Gambier in the south-east is the largest regional city, with about 27,000 people, followed by the industrial towns of Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Pirie on Spencer Gulf and the fishing port of Port Lincoln.

The economy rests on wine — the state makes around half of Australia's wine — along with grain, seafood, and mining, including the huge copper and uranium deposit at Olympic Dam. Car manufacturing ended when Holden's Elizabeth plant closed in 2017, and defence shipbuilding at Osborne has become a large employer. South Australia gets most of its electricity from wind and solar power.

Water is a constant issue in a dry state that depends on the lower Murray River, and the health of the Coorong and the Murray mouth is watched closely. Adelaide's relatively low cost of living has drawn residents from the eastern capitals, but rising housing costs and keeping young people from moving interstate remain concerns.

South Australia is the heart of Australian wine. The Barossa Valley is famed for rich shiraz from vines well over a century old, McLaren Vale for shiraz and grenache, the Clare Valley for dry riesling, Coonawarra's red terra rossa soil for cabernet sauvignon, and the Adelaide Hills for cool-climate whites and pinot noir. Penfolds Grange, Australia's most famous red wine, was first made in the 1950s by Penfolds, which began at Magill on Adelaide's edge.

The Barossa's German settlers left mettwurst, a smoked sausage, bienenstich, a cream-filled "bee sting" cake, and other Lutheran baking. Adelaide's own street foods include the pie floater, a meat pie served upside down in pea soup, and the frog cake, a small iced sponge shaped like a frog's head. Farmers Union Iced Coffee, a sweet flavoured milk, commands fierce loyalty, and Coopers of Adelaide is the largest Australian-owned brewery.

Seafood is a highlight: King George whiting, the mainstay of the state's fishery; Coffin Bay oysters; Spencer Gulf prawns; and southern bluefin tuna ranched off Port Lincoln. Kangaroo Island produces honey from Ligurian bees, and the Adelaide Central Market gathers dozens of produce stalls under one roof.

Adelaide's North Terrace holds the Art Gallery of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the State Library; nearby are the Botanic Garden, the Central Market and Adelaide Oval. A tram runs to the beach at Glenelg. The Adelaide Hills offer the German village of Hahndorf and views from Mount Lofty, while McLaren Vale and Victor Harbor lie on the Fleurieu Peninsula to the south.

The Barossa Valley, north-east of the city, has Tanunda and Angaston, the palm-lined avenues of Seppeltsfield and the Mengler Hill lookout; the Clare Valley's Riesling Trail is a cycle path through vineyards. Kangaroo Island, reached by ferry from Cape Jervis, has Flinders Chase National Park, with the Remarkable Rocks and Admirals Arch, and the sea lions of Seal Bay. In the south-east, the Coorong's lagoons, the Blue Lake at Mount Gambier and the fossil-rich Naracoorte Caves, a World Heritage Site, lie close to Coonawarra.

The Flinders Ranges begin a few hours north: Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park has Wilpena Pound, Brachina Gorge and Aboriginal rock art, and Arkaroola lies further north. Coober Pedy has opal mines, underground churches and dugout homes, and the flat-topped hills of the Breakaways nearby. The Eyre Peninsula has Port Lincoln, Coffin Bay National Park and the sea lions of Baird Bay, and at its western edge the Nullarbor meets the sea at the Bunda Cliffs, where whales are watched from the Head of Bight.