Adelaide Achievement

One of the world’s most remote cities, Adelaide has been a site of extraordinary achievement and global relevance.

Artisan Culture

Invention of:

  • Ridley Stripper- precursor of a header
  • The mechanical hand shearing piece
  • The stump jump plough
  • The globally-used Torrens Title
  • The photocopier
  • The motor-home
  • The dual-flush toilet
  • The Shearer and Lewis steam cars
  • RibLok plastic piping
  • The washing machine
  • Plastic optical lenses
  • The disposable syringe
  • The wine cask
  • Pedal-powered radio
  • Sunscreen
  • Elfin racing car
  • Hills Hoist
  • Overland Telegraph
  • Zeta micro car
  • Stainless steel teeth braces
  • Mass production of penicillin- Florey
  • The Both lightweight polio respirator
  • FH Faulding and Solyptol Eucalyptus based antiseptic
  • Bowel cancer screening
  • X-ray crystallography leading to its part in discovery of the double Helix DNA structure- Braggs’ Nobel Prizes 
  • Development of mass production of insulin

Social policy innovation

  • City origins in Wakefield Plan originated by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and other major Enlightenment thinkers
  • Freedom of religious belief – Paradise of Dissent- source of the early City of Churches label
  • First city in the world to be placed in parkland- Colonel Light
  • First polity in the world to legislate female suffrage and the female right to stand for parliament
  • Indigenous suffrage including right to stand for parliament
  • Indigenous right of access to traditional land
  • Global first use of the secret ballot
  • First State to ban property qualification for the House of Assembly 
  • First state of the Commonwealth to allow trade unions
  • First non-English newspaper in Australia
  • First state to form a football league, and one of the first in the world
  • Australia’s first women judge – Dame Roma Mitchell
  • Adelaide University the first to admit women
  • Oldest extant mosque in Australia

Some areas of international high achievement

  • High-end loudspeaker and amplifier production
  • Medical equipment manufacture
  • Farm machinery- design and manufacture –  Horwood Bagshaw. – John Shearer
  • International Film Effects
  • Ad Festival and Fringe
  • Sustainable fishing tech and processes
  • Defense tech invention and manufacture
  • Space tech
  • Water purification tech
  • Feature film 
  • Ediacaran fossil research
  • Wine production tech