'Even in the daytime the streets of classy North Adelaide and Unley Park can be tunnels, enclosed by green leaves. And so quiet, so secretive, all the people shut away behind their high walls ... At night, Adelaide turns film noir...' Barbara Hanrahan's 'Weird Adelaide', The Adelaide Review, 1988
I've been away for 20 years from the City of Churches but it seems like 50. Adelaide has almost doubled in size stretching 90 km north to the Barossa Valley and south past Christies Beach. It seems town planners left about the same time I did.
That Adelaide functions at all as a city is due to the hegemony of the car and truck. Just as the original wide streets were designed so that a bullock team could do a u-turn, the city's post-war growth was due to the triumph of the car. One wonders though what the future of the city will be once petrol becomes prohibitively expensive.
There's still a whiff of Protestant righteousness in the air — of every person and thing in its place. It's a beautiful, quiet and healthy place to live where you can still buy a house that won't leave your grandchildren paying it off. At worst it brims with hypocrisy and small town bitchiness.
The bitchiness is no more evident than in the guerrilla war going on between the heritage lobby of environmentalists, social conservatives, urban professionals and NIMBY's who are ranged against business developers, the property lobby and the Rann Government.
Those who favour protecting Adelaide's heritage buildings and parklands take a hardline. They say Adelaide's colonial buildings are Brand Adelaide and are a tourist magnet.
Depending on one's point of view, Adelaide is a progressive, arts-embracing city with a proud record on social justice. These people applaud the Don Dunstan era and look wistfully back to a time when pink shorts equalled progressive politics.
The contra point of view is that Adelaide's riches and charms are plain to see and for all to enjoy. They are a product of a predominantly Liberal history that goes back generations. In short, in a world of change, well, 'we won't be having any of that thank you'.
Unfortunately SA's national share of visitors fell from 7.5 per cent in 1999 to 7 per cent in 2009 and continues to fall. The highlights are the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the Fringe Festival, Womadelaide and the Clipsal 500. Without these events SA's share