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Adelaide is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of South Australia, and is the fifth largest city in Australia, with a population of more than 1.1 million.[3] It is a coastal city beside the Southern Ocean, and is situated on the Adelaide Plains, north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, between the Gulf St. Vincent and the low-lying Mount Lofty Ranges. It is roughly 20 km (12 mi) from the coast to the foothills but sprawls 90 km (56 mi) from Gawler at its northern extent to Sellicks Beach in the south.
Named in honour of Queen Adelaide, the consort of King William IV, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for the only freely-settled British province in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city and chose its location close to the River Torrens in an area traditionally inhabited by the Kaurna aboriginal peoples. Light's design set out Adelaide in a grid layout, interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and entirely surrounded by parkland. Early Adelaide was shaped by religious freedom and a commitment to political progressivism and civil liberties, which led to world-first reforms. Today Adelaide is known for its many festivals as well as for its wine, arts and sports.
As South Australia's seat of government and commercial centre, Adelaide is the site of many governmental and financial institutions. Most of these are concentrated in the city centre along the cultural boulevard of North Terrace, King William Street and in various districts of the metropolitan area.
While established as a British province, Adelaide attracted immigrants from many non-English speaking countries early-on, including German and other European non-conformists escaping religious persecution. The first German Lutherans arrived in 1838 bringing with them the vine cuttings that they used to found the acclaimed wineries of the Barossa Valley. After the Second World War, Italians, Greeks, Dutch, Poles and many other European nationalities came to make a new start. An influx of Asian immigrants following the Vietnam War, and more recently many African refugees, have added to Adelaide's multicultural mix. These new arrivals have blended with dominant Anglo-Saxon culture to form a rich and diverse cuisine and vibrant restaurant culture.
Being centrally located on the Australian mainland, Adelaide forms a strategic transport hub for east-west and north-south routes. The city itself has a limited public transport system, which is managed by and known as the Adelaide Metro. The Adelaide Metro consists of a contracted bus system including the O-Bahn Busway, metropolitan railways, and the Adelaide-Glenelg Tram, which has also now been extended as a metropolitan tram through the city centre. Road transport in Adelaide has historically been 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 was known as a "twenty-minute city", with commuters having being able to travel from metropolitan outskirts to the city proper in roughly twenty minutes. However, these roads are now often considered inadequate to cope with Adelaide's growing road traffic.
Adelaide has one freeway, the South Eastern Freeway, connecting the city with the Adelaide Hills and beyond to Murray Bridge and two expressways; the Port River Expressway connecting Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor to interstate routes and the Southern Expressway, an interchangeable one-way road connecting the southern suburbs with the city proper. The Gawler Bypass skirting Gawler is another expressway style, high speed inter-urban corridor. A third expressway, the Northern Expressway (formerly the Sturt Highway extension), a northern suburbs bypass route, connecting the Gawler Bypass to Port Wakefield Road, is due to start construction in 2008. There are also plans for major upgrades to busy sections of South Road, Adelaide, including road widening and underpasses of Anzac Highway, Grange Road, Port Road and the Outer Harbour Railway Line, during the first stage.
Adelaide International Airport, located in Adelaide's west, is Australia's newest and most advanced airport terminal and is designed to serve in excess of 6.3 million passengers annually. The new dual international/domestic terminal replaces the old and ageing terminals known locally as the 'tin sheds', and incorporates new state-of-the-art features, such as glass aerobridges and the ability to cater for the new Airbus A380. In March 2007, Adelaide Airport was rated the world's second best airport in the 5-15 million passengers category at the Airports Council International (ACI) 2006 awards in Dubai..[36] The airport is designed to handle 27 aircraft simultaneously and is capable of processing 3,000 passengers per hour. Unusually for a major city, it is located only about seven kilometres (4.4 mi) from the CBD. Parafield Airport is Adelaide's second airport, mostly used for general aviation. It is located eighteen kilometres (11.2 mi) north of the CBD.
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