Engineering A City
Engineering A City Plan your own walking tour of heritage Adelaide’s engineering ge Each of the ten sections in this booklet describes a different aspect of the part engineers and engineering have played in the development of the City. Starting with the basic needs of the first settlers – water, food, shelter, and light and heat – the sections go on to describe the development of infrastructure such as bridges and road networks, public transport, communication systems, public health measures such as deep drainage, and finally recreational assets such as the Torrens Lake.
Plan your own walking tour of the City of Adelaide and discover how it was designed and built
Many of these works are lost to history but some remain – mostly buildings but there are scraps of fabric from the early days such as iron castings which you’ll sometimes find in streets or on buildings. Where there is a remnant or building, a numbered block like this [E14] has been placed in the text. You’ll find the corresponding block on the main map over the page. To guide your stroll, we have grouped the sites into four suggested walks. They can be linked together to really stretch your legs – or you can catch a bus.
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Although Adelaide is a compact city, winding around the streets to see everything will add up to quite a few kilometres – but that’s where the City of Adelaide’s Adelaide Connector bus service will make it easy. This free service circulates around the city and enables you to pick up the sections of these walks that most interest you. One of the buses (below left) – named “Tindo”, an Aboriginal word for “sun” – is also an interesting example of transport and environmental engineering: it’s the world’s first solar-powered electric bus. Its Swiss-made sodium/nickel chloride batteries are recharged by South Australia’s largest grid-connected solar photo-voltaic system at the Adelaide Central Bus Station.
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Engineering A City
(Clockwise from top left) Adelaide’s first water supply was ensured by this weir upstream on the River Torrens • Wheat grown on the Adelaide Plains was turned into flour in this mill at Hackney • From the 1860s, the City’s streets were lit with gas • Early experiments in wireless telegraphy were carried out at the Adelaide Observatory on West Terrace • The Grenfell Street saddlery and coach building business of Holden & Frost was the forerunner of today’s General Motors-Holden • A horse tram travels along King William Road under the electric lights and tram wires of a new century (the 20th)