If you’ve been following the media in recent months, you will know that South Australia has become a bit of national joke due to the apparent fragility of its electricity infrastructure. In September 2016, the state experienced a near-total electricity blackout after three of the four electricity interconnectors with the eastern states were taken out simultaneously…
Category: Adelaide
Gigcity Adelaide Needs a City-Based Technology Precinct
So I wrote this article in October 2016 and guess what? It came true! The State Government is to be applauded for its newly-announced plan for Adelaide to become Australia’s first ‘Gigcity’. Adelaide is the first international city to join the growing US Ignite Smart Gigabit Communities Program, creating new opportunities for innovative businesses to…
Five local government areas in 5km
Adelaide has got to be the only city in the world where you can drive 5km and pass through five different local government areas. Heck, when I walk my dog, I pass through three council areas and am subject to three different by-laws in relation to dog walking! In Walkerville, it’s OK to have the dog off…
The Pie Floater, Adelaide’s Most Famous Culinary Contribution?
Doesn’t that photo of a pie floater just make your mouth water? Tender beef chunks in a rich gravy, encased in golden, flaky pastry, up-ended in a steaming hot bowl of hearty green pea soup. Optional condiments, often applied liberally, include tomato sauce, vinegar or Worcestershire sauce. There’s nothing I like better than devouring a hot pie floater,…
The only state in Australia to spell ‘harbor’ incorrectly
One of the vagaries of South Australian history is that two of our best-known harbours are spelt incorrectly. The word ‘harbour‘ in Australian English follows the British model – it has a ‘u’ in it. But the Americans spell it without the ‘u’ – ‘harbor‘. Curious, then, that popular coastal holiday town of Victor Harbor…
Annual lycra-clad mamil plague
The annual cycling extravaganza that is the Tour Down Under has just concluded in Adelaide with South Australia enjoying some excellent exposure on the world stage. Whilst the professional stages of the TDU are compelling viewing for even the most casual cycling enthusiast, more curious for me is the amateur cycling milieu that takes over…
New Rundle Mall website live in time for Christmas
I’ve spent the last 5 weeks working feverishly on the new Rundle Mall website and it has now gone live just in time for Christmas. Take a look at http://rundlemall.com. Faced with the prospect of keeping the old site in place until mid-2016 (due to a variety of factors), I convinced the Rundle Mall Management Team that…
Red point posts at the footy
On this grainy Youtube clip, the voiceover suggests that this is probably the most embarrassing moment of Malcolm Blight’s football career, as commentator Lou Richards incredulously exclaims ‘I think he may have put that through for a point, he’s run the wrong way…he thought that was the goals!’ There is of course a simple explanation for Blight’s error. At…
Is the ‘goon bag’ South Australia’s finest invention?
South Australia is home to some of Australia’s (nay, the world’s) best-known inventions – the Hills Hoist clothes-line, the stump-jump plough and, yes, we’ll even lay claim to founding pharmacological penicillin (Howard Florey was a South Australian). It is a little known fact, but perhaps SA’s finest invention of all is the humble ‘goon bag’ – a…
An Apricot, Peach & Chocolate Sensation from SA
Is there any better Easter gift for a Canberra-based friend than a 6kg bag of SA’s favourite chocolate treat, Menz FruChocs? I think not. I personally would love to be on the receiving end of such chocolately, apricoty and peachy goodness. Yet my goodwill offering was received coolly – ‘they were OK, but nothing to write…
Retractable Floodlight Towers
I have been revelling in frequent trips to the fantastic new Adelaide Oval to watch the cricket, AFL and soccer, much to the chagrin of my wife who bemoans having to stay home with the ‘clowns’ (our two children aged 4 and 6). The stadium is truly world-class and it has given the city of Adelaide…
Single-carriage passenger trains
The non-appearance of a booked taxi, and the resultant mercy dash to deposit my agitated Sydney-bound guest at the airport, recently highlighted for me a peculiarity with Adelaide passenger trains. Speeding down Park Terrace towards Port Road, what should befall this hurried duo but a pair of rapidly descending level-crossing gates and the ‘ding-ding’ of the…
Pigs in a pedestrian thoroughfare
Strolling through Canberra’s City Walk, the city’s most popular pedestrian thoroughfare, one can’t help but be taken aback by the confronting pose adopted by one of the merino sheep sculptures. On its back with legs in the air, the sheep seems to be ‘presenting’ to its woolly companion a couple of metres away. Hardly an…
How about this for a hybrid product?
It was reported last week in The Advertiser that Cooper’s has teamed up with Haigh’s to develop a new hybrid product, Cooper’s Stout Ganache chocolates, to mark Haigh’s centenary. I understand that this is just one of numerous collaborations that Cooper’s is trialling with other iconic South Australian brands. To date, Cooper’s best known hybrid product has been Beerenberg’s Cooper’s Ale…
Buses on tracks that run to Paradise
You know you’re in Adelaide when the nightly news bulletin is headlined by yet another story about a moronic, drunken European backpacker destroying the undercarriage of their hire car by accidentally entering the O-Bahn Busway at Hackney. Not only is the entrance clearly sign-posted, but there’s a special ‘second chance’ exit for cars that fail the…
‘Bung Fritz’-Dispensing Butchers
One of the enduring memories of my childhood is spending time at my Nan’s place in the Riverland town of Renmark and accompanying her to Lindner’s, a local family-owned butcher just around the corner. Once my Nan had completed her transaction, the generously proportioned butcher would smile at us kiddies, give his offal-stained hands a cursory…
Wellington Adds Up, but does Adelaide?
I read with some dismay yesterday in The Australian that Aussie startup companies are being actively courted by the city of Wellington in New Zealand. Recently, five Australian startups were lucky winners of the ‘Wellington Adds Up‘ competition and were flown ‘over the ditch’ to inspect the city’s tech and startup scene. They came away…
The ‘stobie’: our indestructible electricity pole
Back in the late 1980s, the number one ruckman for our Adelaide Hills-based Under 14 footy team was a kid that we called Stobie pole. I’m not even sure that he had a real name. At least, I have no recollection of him having any other name. The nickname was apt. Having already broken the…
A South Australian drink that outsells Coca-cola
The servos, delis and bakeries in the eastern border towns of Pinnaroo, Bordertown and Yamba were always well stocked with South Australia’s flavoured milk of choice, Farmers Union Iced Coffee. Homesick, car-weary South Australians, returning home for Christmas via the badlands of New South Wales and Victoria, would pine for their first taste of the…