South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres, it is the fourth-largest of Australia’s states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population.
About South Australia in brief
South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres, it is the fourth-largest of Australia’s states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. The state comprises less than 8 percent of the Australian population and ranks fifth in population among the six states and two territories. The majority of its people reside in greater Metropolitan Adelaide. Most of the remainder are settled in fertile areas along the south-eastern coast and River Murray. The first recorded European sighting of the South Australian coast was in 1627 when the Dutch ship the Gulden Zeepaert, captained by François Thijssen, examined and mapped a section of the coastline as far east as the Nuyts Archipelago. The coastline of South Australia was first mapped by Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin in 1802, excepting the inlet later named the Port Adelaide River which was first discovered in 1831 by Captain Collet Barker and later accurately charted in 1836–37 by Colonel William Light. The land which now forms the state of South Australian was claimed for Britain in 1788 as part of the colony of New South Wales. Although the new colony included almost two-thirds of the continent, early settlements were all on the eastern coast and only a few intrepid explorers ventured this far west. The South Australian Company established a temporary settlement at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, on 26 July 1836, five months before Adelaide was founded.
The guiding principle behind settlement was that of systematic colonisation, a theory espoused by Edward Gibbon Wakefield that was later employed by the New Zealand Company. The goal was to establish the province as a centre of civilisation for free immigrants, promising civil liberties and religious tolerance. Although its history is marked by economic hardship, South Australia has remained politically innovative and culturally vibrant. Today, it is known for its fine wine and numerous cultural festivals. It is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. South Australia shares borders with all of the other mainland states, and with the Northern Territory; it is bordered to the west by Western Australia,. to the north by theNorthern Territory, to the east by Queensland, and to the south by Victoria. It took more than forty years before any serious proposal to establish settlements in south-western portion of New. South Wales were put forward. In contrast to the rest of Australia, terra nullius did not apply to the new province to fix the boundaries of the province. The Letters Patent of 1834 did not affect the actual occupation and enjoyment of Aboriginal Natives in their own land. The act stated that the land would be allotted to the colony and it would be free-free and convict-free. The province would be erected between 132° and 141° longitude from 26° south to the southern ocean.
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This page is based on the article South Australia published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
