South Australia

European settlers with Aboriginal Australians, 1850

Charles Sturt's expedition leaving Adelaide

Nicolas Baudin, who mapped the coastline of South Australia, along with Matthew Flinders

Satellite image of eastern South Australia. Note the dry lakes (white patches) in the north.

The rugged coastline of Second Valley, located on the Fleurieu Peninsula

Vineyard in Eden Valley. South Australia's wine industry is the largest in Australia.

Flinders Medical Centre. Health care and social assistance is the largest ABS defined employment sector in South Australia.

Wheat fields at Nuriootpa. Agriculture is a large industry for the state.

Estimated resident population since 1981

Adelaide is the largest metropolitan area in the state.

South Australian cities, towns, settlements and road network

Eyre Highway west of the Nullarbor, South Australia

A ferry crossing the Murray River towards the town of Waikerie, South Australia

State in the southern central part of Australia.

- South Australia

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States and territories of Australia

The states and territories are federated administrative divisions in Australia, ruled by regional governments that constitute the second level of governance between the federal government and local governments.

Map showing the states of Australia and their governing political parties as of 2022.

The Federation of Australia constitutionally consists of six federated states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia) and ten federal territories, out of which three are internal territories (the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory and Jervis Bay Territory) contiguous to the Australian mainland; and the other seven are external territories (Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Coral Sea Islands, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Norfolk Island, and the Australian Antarctic Territory), which are offshore dependent territories.

Kangaroo Island

Australia's third-largest island, after Tasmania and Melville Island.

Loading grain from horsedrawn wagons to the ketch Free Selector

Eucalyptus cneorifolia along Cape Willoughby Road, Kangaroo Island

Burn scars from 2007 show red in this false-colour satellite image

False colour imagery from Terra satellite showing burnt area from 2019–20 bushfire season

It lies in the state of South Australia, 112 km southwest of Adelaide.

Great Australian Bight

Large oceanic bight, or open bay, off the central and western portions of the southern coastline of mainland Australia.

The Great Australian Bight south of the Nullarbor. Credit Jacques Descloitres, Visible Earth, NASA.

Great Australian Bight Marine Park, 2007

Cliff overlooking Commonwealth Marine Reserve

The AHS defines the bight with a smaller area, from Cape Pasley, Western Australia, to Cape Carnot, South Australia - a distance of 1160 km.

Murray River

River in south-eastern Australia.

Lower course of the Murray River at Murray Bridge

The confluence of the Murray River and Murrumbidgee River near the town of Boundary Bend

The confluence of the Darling and Murray Rivers at Wentworth, New South Wales

Murray Mouth viewed from Hindmarsh Island

The PS Murray Princess is the largest paddlewheeler operating on the Murray River

The PS Melbourne passing through Lock 11 at Mildura

A paddle steamer passing another on the Murray at night, about 1880

A branch of the Murray in its middle reaches, near Howlong

Locations of the barrages at the mouth of the Murray

Goolwa Barrage viewed from the freshwater side

Dead and dying River Red Gums on the lower Murray near Berri, South Australia

The Murray rises in the Australian Alps, draining the western side of Australia's highest mountains, then meanders northwest across Australia's inland plains, forming the border between the states of New South Wales and Victoria as it flows into South Australia.

Nullarbor Plain

Part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north.

A road sign displaying the distance from Eucla and Ceduna
(Regarding the information on the road sign, this stretch of the Eyre Highway lies not in the Nullarbor Plain, but south of the plain, in the Hampton bioregion of Western Australia, on the Roe Plains, somewhere around Mundrabilla. The Nullarbor Plain stretches behind the hills or, rather, the Hampton Tableland, seen in the background)

Sign defining the edge of the plain at the western side. (This photograph depicts Nullarbor Roadhouse, seen from the west. Nullarbor Roadhouse lies on the South Australian side of the Eyre Highway, at the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain as well as Nullarbor National Park, which both extend miles farther west into Western Australian territory.)

Vandalised road sign designating the beginning of the 90-mile (or 146.6 km) straight section of the highway

Tree full of shoes in "the middle of nowhere", the Nullarbor, Western Australia

The group that walked from Port Augusta to Norseman, including the Nullarbor Plain, in 1985

At its widest point, it stretches about 1100 km from east to west across the border between South Australia and Western Australia.

Eyre Peninsula

Unusual herringbone crystals of evaporite gypsum, from Sinclairs Gap Lake, Middleback Range, Eyre Peninsula. Size: 10.8 x 9.8 x 6.0 cm.

Tourists can cage-dive with great white sharks off Eyre Peninsula.

Murphy's Haystacks are a unique geological feature.

Highway map of South Australia including highways on the Eyre Peninsula identified by their route number

Little penguins nest in Eyre Peninsula's coastal protected areas.

Bushfires on southern Eyre Peninsula in 2005

The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia.

Convicts in Australia

Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.

Convicts in Sydney, 1793, by Juan Ravenet

Prison hulks in the River Thames, England

The First Fleet arrives in Botany Bay, 21 January 1788, by William Bradley (1802).

The Costumes of the Australasians: watercolour by Edward Charles Close shows the co-existence of convicts, their military gaolers, and free settlers.

"Views in New South Wales and Van Diemens Land" - Earle Augustus (1830)

Penitentiary at the Port Arthur convict settlement, Tasmania

Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, depicted by convict artist William Buelow Gould, 1833

William Buckley's transportation and escape to live with the Wathaurong in 1803, as depicted by 19th-century Aboriginal artist Tommy McRae.

Fremantle Prison gatehouse. The prison was built using convict labour in the 1850s.

Painting of the 1804 Castle Hill convict rebellion

Fenian convicts escape from Fremantle in the 1876 Catalpa rescue.

Hyde Park Barracks, designed by convict Francis Greenway and constructed by convicts in the 1810s, is one of eleven World Heritage-listed Australian Convict Sites.

South Australia and Victoria, established in 1836 and 1850 respectively, officially remained free colonies.

Kingscote, South Australia

Kingscote is a town in the Australian state of South Australia located on Kangaroo Island about 119 km south-west of the state capital of Adelaide.

South Australian Company

Formed in London on 9 October 1835, after the South Australia Act 1834 had established the new British Province of South Australia, with the South Australian Colonization Commission set up to oversee implementation of the Act.

First office, erected 1836 at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island. (c. 1870)

Office on North Terrace east, corner of Gawler Place. (c. 1872)

The founding board of the company, headed by George Fife Angas, consisted of wealthy British merchants, with the purpose of developing a new settlement in South Australia, building a new colony by meeting an essential financial obligations of the South Australia Act 1834.

Glenelg, South Australia

The Glenelg Marina taken from the Michael Herbert Bridge

Colley Reserve and the newly opened (in 1930) Luna Park on the foreshore at Glenelg

Atlantic Tower During Development, circa mid-1970s

H type and Bombardier Flexity Classic trams on Jetty Road in 2008

The Greek Orthodox Bishop releasing the cross from Glenelg Jetty during the festival of the Epiphany, for a swimmer to retrieve

Glenelg is a beach-side suburb of the South Australian capital of Adelaide.