Adelaide: Australia’s most English city

Adelaide with its graceful buildings and abundant parkland is sometimes described as the most British, even English, of Australian cities. I certainly found many connections there. The Premier, Mike Rann, is English-born. The Governor, Admiral Kevin Scarce, served in Portsmouth as a young naval officer. And Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood had just returned from a study tour in London. British people continue to flock to Adelaide, recently voted the world’s seventh most liveable city. I met several relatively recent arrivals, including a policeman who told me that 15% of South Australia’s police force have been recruited from the UK.

I visited the branch campus of University College London (its only overseas campus), and the first branch of the Royal Institution to be established outside the UK. I also met representatives of the three local universities which all had tie-ups with British counterparts. A number of British companies, including BAE Systems, a major investor in the local economy, told me about their interest in South Australia’s burgeoning defence industry. 

Our excellent Honorary Consul, James Bruce, hosted a recpetion with a large number of representatives of British-linked clubs and societies.  It took place at Adelaide Zoo where Zoo Director Chris West (another Brit) invited me to feed Fu Ni the Giant Panda – a rare treat.

The quest for renewable energy sources is a priority for both our countries, so I was interested to learn that South Australia is second only to Denmark in wind-farms, which produce some 20% of its energy requirements.  The state has a particularly good wind resource endowment, in the form of the “Roaring Forties”, the winds which used to power the superfast Clippers in the great age of Sail.