Marion Shopping Centre
In the mid 1960’s, as vineyards were being ripped out of Oaklands park and Seaview and being replaced with houses, a new shopping centre took shape in the Marion area.At first, this centre comprised a Myer, a John Martins and a small mall connecting the two of them which provided two dozen or so specialty shops, including Pinnochio’s coffee shop. It was nestled into a corner of a triangle bounded by Sturt, Morphett and Diagonal roads, with housing and a primary school contained within the triangle. The triangle of land was earmarked for greatness, as it was to be one of the transport hubs that was to be the Metropolitan Adelaide Transport System, which was really only 1960’s vernacular for “Freeway Systems”.
In the mid 1970’s, as the popularity of the shopping centre increased, the Myer and John Martins stores were extended ever so slightly at the edges and some of the housing on the fringer of the centre was bought and turned into carparks. Ownership of the centre was split between several owners, including the South Australian State Government Superannuation scheme and a small Eastern States company called Westfield. Pinnochio’s coffee shop was relocated a little bit but was still in business.
In the mid 1980’s, Westfield assumed full ownership of the centre and embarked on a massive upgrade, buying out the remaining houses in the triangle, arranging to have the primary school closed and building both upwards with an office tower and outwards, with a new mall perpendicular to the original. Pinnochios coffee shop flourished with the increase in business.
In the mid 1990’s, Westfield extended the centre yet again, doubling the under cover space by installing a second storey on the entire mall and doubling its length, making it dog-leg in the middle to stop it from continuing out onto Sturt Road. Pinnochios continued to serve good value tea and coffee, along with cakes and light meals.
Now as we approach the mid 2000’s, the only remaining free space in the triangle is a rather small parcel of land earmarked for a new aquatic centre. Westfield Marion boasts hundreds of shops and a cinema complex with more screens than any other in the southern hemisphere, along with more car parks than one thinks could ever be filled but always seem to be chockers every day of the week. Inside the malls, the shops represented are the same as at any other Westfield anywhere in Australia and are, in the majority, large chain stores that have obviously done deals with Westfield to be slotted into their “Cookie Cutter” shopping centre model…
Bakers’ Delight on the left, Smokemart on the right, Lenards Chicken straight on down, MacDonalds just beyond…
But there is still Pinocchios, serving great tea, coffee and light meals, on the ground floor, just down from David Jones. [CL]
Option C
Say ‘Option C’ to most people and you’d probably get a blank look followed by the question: ‘What were options A and B?’Say ‘Option C’ to someone who lived in the Adelaide Hills during the 1980’s and they’ll immediately know what you are referring to.
‘Option C’ was the decision that lead to the South Eastern Freeway being deviated from its old mule-track like winding course through Eagle on the Hill down to Devil’s Elbow, to be replaced by the cuttings and tunnels that are in place today. It was the third option that was presented in the mid 1980’s to extend the freeway from Crafers down to Glen Osmond, hence the designation ‘Option C’.
In typical Adelaide fashion, deciding to go with ‘Option C’ did not mean that work began straight away. On the contrary, over ten years passed before work on the tunnels commenced, and fifteen years passed before the work was completed.
And what were options ‘A’ and ‘B’? Sorry—I don#8217;t remember. [CL]
Southern Expressway
The mid 1960’s saw the development of the “MATS” plan, a design blueprint for 21st century transport in Adelaide put together by an American consultant.Being the 1960’s, and being conducted by an American, the plan, put simply, was the construction of freeways.
Lots of freeways.
The plan was scuttled by the Dunstan government in the early 1970’s, though some elements lived on in the form of the South Eastern freeway and the O-Bahn (which was, originally, slated to be a freeway along the Torrens).
One of the freeways that was called for was to link the Adelaide plains to the rapidly growing southern suburbs south of Darlington. South Road had been triplicated in the early 1960’s up to O’Halloran Hill then Reynella, and doubled beyond to improve flow but come the mid 1990’s it was not able to keep up.
Taking a leaf from the MATS plan, it was decided to build a freeway to link parts of the South to Darlington. To save costs, the road was only designed to be a one way road, reversible so that it took traffic into the city in the morning, while taking traffic out of the city in the evening. The cost savings may be questionable, as the reversible nature of the road requires additional infrastructure to be in place to handle the changeover, while the changeover window means that the expressway is closed to all traffic, twice a day, for one and a half hours each closure.
So much for “South Australia—Going All The Way?”. By my maths, the best that the expressway “goes” is 100%-((24 hours in a day-21 hours of usefulness)/24)*100%, or 87.5% of the way, and that’s assuming that no-one wants to go in the opposite direction.
But 87.5% is still better than nothing… [CL]
Stobie Pole
We can lay the blame squarely at the feet of Mr JC Stobie, the Adelaide Electricity Supply Company’s design engineer, for South Australia having the ugliest telegraph poles in the country, quite possibly the world. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time to make the poles with two long pieces of steel held together by a slab of concrete. ‘These’ll withstand anything!’ JC would have cackled to himself gleefully.
Numerous fights to the death between Stobie poles and cars full of drunken teenagers have proven him right. In fact, Stobie poles probably kill more South Australians than sharks, red-back spiders and tiger snakes combined. And while sharks at least have some lethal grace about them, Stobie poles are simply hideous.
Attempts at beautification have included growing geraniums up the poles, and, most notably in the Adelaide suburb of Prospect, painting works of art on them. Renowned artist Clifton Pugh contributed a stunning interpretation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but scandalously, he painted the couple without any clothes on.
Quite properly, Adelaide’s moral guardians insisted he go back and cover up the rude bits. [HV]
Radio 5SE
As you drive into Mount Gambier and you’re desperately trying to tune your car radio to receive a signal, anything, even a local channel, you’re more than likely to discover 5SE at 963AM, and the song you’re most likely to hear playing is Kenny Loggins’ classic tune ‘Footloose’.
Maybe you don’t believe me, but it’s true: Mount Gambier’s greatest and only local AM station deserves a world heritage listing. Some 5SE higher-up must have decided some time in 1983 that the whole new-fangled digital CD format was a gimmick at best and a disastrous money-sink at worst and that 5SE should stick by the seven-inch 45RPM vinyl format, as God had intended them to.
Mount Gambier continues to rock, thanks to 5SE, to the tunes of the seventies and early eighties, back when they really knew how to write songs. Gary Glitter gets equal play with DEVO. The Sweet’s ‘Ballroom Blitz’ is followed by the Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’. Listenening to 5SE you can imagine a magical world in which Hall and Oates never separated, in which Heart and Jefferson Starship live on, and Styx continue to doubly thank Mr Roboto. [CG]
O-Bahn
Adelaide boasts the fastest guided busway in the world: the unique O-Bahn. Think about this a moment. If the O-Bahn is so great, why is it unique? Back in the early ’80s, the SA government felt the need to improve transport from the north-eastern suburbs to the city centre. Instead of building a freeway, they inexplicably decided to invest in the O-Bahn, an experimental bus concept developed by Daimler-Benz in Germany. For $98 million they got 12 kilometres of track, plus buses with guidance wheels that travel at high speed along the track. How high speed? Up to…wait for it…100 kilometres per hour.
The rest of the world has been surprisingly slow to pick up on the O-Bahn, although apparently, a number of British cities have ‘mooted’ a similar system, and in Nagoya, Japan, they ‘seem keen’ to apply the Adelaide model. So did the O-Bahn improve transport from the north-eastern suburbs? According to a federal government study, it was only moderately successful—although people found the idea of the O-Bahn attractive, they continued commuting by car. Oh well.
The O-Bahn is now a tourist attraction, and if Adelaide received a significant number of tourists, that would probably mean something. [HV]
Mall’s Balls
Was the decision made to place two giant silver balls in Rundle Mall for reasons of euphony? ‘The Mall’s cubes? No. How about the Mall’s pyramids? No. I’ve got it! The Mall’s balls!’
The public sculpture, with one ball balanced on top of the other, quickly became the favoured meeting place in Adelaide’s central shopping precinct, probably because people enjoyed saying, ‘I’ll meet you at the Mall’s balls.’
Feeble jokes were spawned, along the lines of ‘What’s long and has two balls? Rundle Mall.’ The sculpture was also fondly known as ‘Donnie Dunstan’s balls,’ in honour of the premier responsible for the mall and much, much more. [HV]
Magic Mountain
Memorably described as ‘a giant dinosaur turd’, Magic Mountain stands on the foreshore at Glenelg as a monument to the need for councillors to put their glasses on before considering planning applications.
Adelaide’s aesthetes have been begging for it to be pulled down ever since it was erected. The fibreglass ‘mountain’ features waterslides and other amusements for those bored with the natural charms of one of the city’s finest beaches. [HV]
Light’s Vision
One of the things that puts Adelaide high up on the list of the world’s most pleasant cities is that it’s exceptionally well-planned. It didn’t spring up all higgledy-piggledy like London or any of those other messy old European capitals. Back in 1836, Adelaide was surveyed by Colonel William Light, who designed the city centre as a neat grid of wide streets surrounded by a belt of grassy parklands. The Parklands have become sacred turf—anyone who dares suggest encroaching on them must face the wrath of Adelaidians. In gratitude to Colonel Light, a statue of the great man standing with pointed finger was built on Montefiore Hill, overlooking the city. According to expert calculations, if you follow the line of his finger directly, you will find yourself at the women’s public toilets. [HV]Halls soft drinks
The Halls soft drink company of South Australia offers the usual assortment of generic soft drink flavours, none of which are particularly memorable or remarkable. The only reason they are mentioned here is because of their rather gorgeous logographic design. The word 'Halls' is written in a san-serif typeface, and above the title is placed a rainbow arc, the colours used in the rainbow being influenced by the flavour of the particular soft drink. The device is simple, striking and elegant, and the people at Halls have been clever enough to not tamper with this winning formula for at least twenty or so years. Whenever I visit South Australia, I buy cans of Halls soft drinks to give to friends when I get back. I don't expect them to drink them: invariably they put the cans on their shelves, as decorative objects. They use such lovely colours. [CG]
Unfortunately, the plug has been pulled on Halls soft drinks. Let me explain.
Many years ago now (the 1970s, I think), Halls was bought out by Coca Cola Amatil (CCA). They took the names and flavours and continued to produce them, relocating production from Hall's original factory on the Norwood Parade (now there's an entry for 'N') to the CCA plant on Port Road, just up from the West End brewery (which is no longer in the west end either).
Along the way, CCA also bought up some other drink companies around Australia, including Kirk's, which I believe was based in Queensland.
Then, at the beginning of 2002, CCA discontinued production of drinks under the Halls banner. It seems that cost savings were the order of the day, and they decided to abandon ‘Halls&8217; in favour of ‘Kirks’.
So now SA shelves are awash with Kirks soft drinks, the artwork for which is positively stick-figurish and childish. As an example, the trendy rainbow Halls logo is replaced by a bland "KIRKS" name emblazoned across each can, and where the old Stonie ginger beer can had class, the ‘Kirks Old Stoney’ shows some old geezer bending over a soft-drink wagon.
Oh well... [CL]
Frog cakes
South Australia’s culinary icons—pie floaters, fritz and frog cakes—share one distinguishing characteristic: no adult with any taste would want to eat them.
Frog cakes are described by Balfours as ‘delicious sponge cakes topped with a special butter cream and enrobed in colour fondant’. The grotesque little amphibian faces would leer at me every time I walked past Balfours in Rundle Mall, but neither I nor anyone I know was ever tempted to try one. [HV]
Farmers Union Iced Coffee
One of the products that survived the deregulation of Australian dairy industry is the justly famous Farmers Union Iced Coffee.
This stuff is pure liquid gold, albeit brown, and in South Australia it holds the number one place in the 600 ml drink lineup, much to the chagrin of Coca-Cola.
Supported by a witty advertsing campaing that sometimes borders on sexist (the product is, after all, targetted at blokes, and blokes on building sites or in scrap metal yards at that), National Foods continues to sell the stuff hand over fist under its original name.
Previous attempts by South Australia’s other major dairy interest to make a dent in the market share of Farmers Union Iced Coffee failed miserably, with their product going through multiple name changes (DV Iced Coffee, DV-MAX etc) before they ended up settling with the rather bland ‘Oak’ name. Why Oak? Well, that’s deregulation for you—it’s what they call it interstate, so when Dairy Vale was acquired, that’s what the milk lines were renamed. “Oak Iced Coffee” doesn’t really grab you now, does it?
Perhaps the loyalty of customers to the original Iced Coffee is best demonstrated by an anecdote told to me by a friend who used to work in a car parts plant in the south of Adelaide.
The plant canteen accepted a special deal whereby the fridges were stocked exclusively with Dairy Vale’s Iced Coffee product. The employees, however, avoided the stuff like the plague, and after a week not a single carton had been sold. So the canteen tried to sweeten the deal for the employees by giving away a free carton with each carton bought. Apparently one person did take them up on this offer, but at the end of the lunch break two cartons of iced coffee were left behind on a table. One carton was almost full, the other had not even been opened.
Farmers Union Iced Coffee made a quick return.
Then there’s the story of the SA couple who were getting married in California who arranged for a crate of the stuff to be shipped to the wedding reception. That story may be apocryphal but drink a carton of the stuff and you may understand the basis for it. [CL]
City of churches
‘Adelaide is known as the City of Churches,’tourist brochures often say. Surprisingly, this is never followed up by a listing of the many fine examples of church architecture. That’s because it would be quite short.
Adelaide really only has one nice church: St Peter’s Cathedral, the one cricket commentators are talking about when they mention the ‘cathedral end’of Adelaide Oval. All right, St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral is looking better now that it’s had the steeple added. But beyond that, Adelaide’s churches are nothing to write home about, either in quantity or quality.
A frequently quoted statistic is that Adelaide has twice as many pubs as churches (and thanks to the priests at Sevenhill Winery, the quality of alcohol supplied to the latter compares very favourably to that supplied to the former). So why was Adelaide crowned the City of Churches? Perhaps it was just a devious ruse to attract hordes of tourists. [HV]
Children’s TV
Once upon a time, Adelaide was the Australian Capital for Children’s TV.
The 1960’s saw the discovery of a rather rotund bear who didn’t wear any pants. His name was “B Bear”, but this was deemed to be a little bit impersonal, so a competition was held to find a new name with “Humphrey” being the winning entry.
Sometime afterwards, a rival TV station discovered a large marmalade coloured cat, that it named “Fat Cat”.
These two characters became idols for a generation of Adelaide children, who would sit there in the morning first thing (7 am, which was first thing in the 1970’s, as it was when TV used to start) to watch Fat Cat appear with his off-sider Jane Reilly. The older children would have to then leave for school, which for some reason was always within walking distance, while the younger children would stay at home, change the channel and tune in to watch “Here’s Humphrey”.
Children would come home from school at the end of the day to watch Dean Davis or Joanne Moore in “Crackerjack”or “The Channel Niners”, the after school program that seemed to waver between one station or another during the 1970’s. A bicycle wheel with a generator would be spun to give away some prizes to audience members, children with interesting hobbies would be paraded before the cameras, tickets would be made available to school groups to sit in the audience, someone would talk about their pets.
And for the older children, or those younger ones with a scientific bent, “The Curiosity Show”would come along and provide almost a full hour’s worth of physics, chemistry and natural science, presented by Rob Morrison and Dean Hutton.
Children’s TV in Adelaide was just good, clean fun. Parents could leave their children to watch it in the knowledge that they would enjoy it and maybe even learn something.
Then came the networking of Adelaide TV stations…
The locally produced after school programs disappeared to be replaced by formula based programs fed in from the eastern states, including the ultimate indignity—a cartoon program aimed at teenage males, hosted by a scantily clad female model.
In the words of a British newsroom comedy, “After all, today’s teenage masturbators are tomorrow’s corporate executives”.
The Curiosity Show shut up shop and went into re-runs, though I believe that Dean Hutton still travels the country explaining science to all and sundry. It’s just a pity that Dean’s most recent TV appearance has been in an advertisement for MSG, still, he has to eat too. Even the much loved Prof. Sumner-Miller ended up flogging chocolate.
Humphrey Bear hung in there and is still around today, though he’s no longer a “funny old fellow”, rather he’s “the bear who cares for me”. Perhaps “funny old fellow”was too much of a worry for parents, who used to read in the newspaper of “funny old fellows” who abducted children, the latter of which was something of an Adelaide pastime until the 1980’s.
Humphrey is such a survivor that he even has his own web site and can be seen in localised productions in the USA where his program is presented in English and Spanish, though that would not matter too much for Humphrey because he doesn’t talk anyway.
And what of Fat Cat? His “Fat Cat and Friends” program was banished from the airwaves by the Australian Broadcasting Authority. Why? They decreed that an oversized orange cat to be an uncertain role-model for children. Much ballyhooing was made of this, culminating with a mock funeral for Fat Cat, at which Humphrey Bear was a pall-bearer.
Still, if Fat Cat was an uncertain role model for children, what the hell does that make the Teletubbies? [CL]
Big Rocking Horse
Aficionados of Big Things will find the Biggest Rocking Horse in the World, at Gumeracha in the Adelaide Hills, somewhat of a disappointment. To be blunt, it’s quite tasteful.
The metal structure (which doesn’t rock) has viewing platforms on several levels, and after climbing it, you can buy well-made wooden toys from the toy factory nearby. Those looking for Big Things which embody the ideals of Big Thinginess (uglier, tackier, shabbier) would be well-advised to visit the Big Crayfish at Kingston in the South-East, the Big Galah at Kimba or the Big Orange at Berri. [HV]
Golden North
South Australia’s sole ice cream producer, and the only independently owned mainstream ice cream producer in Australia, Golden North has been in business at its mid-north headquarters of Laura for donkey’s years (that’s jargon for “I can’t find the exact date anywhere”).
They make a range of wonderful ice creams, including a “to die for” Honey ice cream and the famous Giant Twins: vanilla, vanilla-choc or vanilla-strawberry slabs of ice cream smothered in chocolate.
Until the mid 1970’s, Golden North ice products were only available north of Gawler. In fact, a friend of mine from Gawler recalled that you could only get the stuff north of the Gawler river, which runs through Gawler. They provided ice cream and milk products to the lower though mid and upper north of the state.
Golden North was then bought by National Foods and its exposure was increased drastically. Suddenly, people in Adelaide could buy Golden North products, and for those of us who were familiar with the range it was great not to have to drive north to get it.
In an interesting turn of events, National Foods divested itself of Golden North in 2001 and it became an entirely SA owned and operated company again, though now it had an in-place sales and marketing operation that allowed it to service the entire state.
If you are ever in Laura, pop in to the factory and say hello. If the factory isn’t open, visit the old Laura brewery, which conducts Ice Cream tastings at which you can get to sample some of Golden North’s finest. If you are lucky, you may get to try a one-off production special too. [CL]
Glenelg tram
Other cities have tram systems, Adelaide has a tram. Well, one tram line, from the seaside suburb of Glenelg to the city centre. The Glenelg tram has been Adelaide's one and only since the rest of the lines were closed in 1958. The carriages of the tram were originally built with a centre door, to separate the men's smoking section from the women's non-smoking section.
TransAdelaide would like to point out that smoking is now banned on all Adelaide trams, trains and buses. [HV]
Hindmarsh Island bridge
While the Sydney Harbour Bridge is famous for being stunning and the Westgate Bridge for collapsing, the Hindmarsh Island Bridge is famous for not being built.Hindmarsh Island is a drab scrap of land near Goolwa at the mouth of the Murray River. A ferry carries cars the few hundred metres to the island—a trip that becomes rapidly less quaint the longer the line-up of cars is. Developers struck up a deal with the Bannon government for a bridge to be built to the island, but construction was stalled by the Ngarrindjeri people saying the site had a sacred significance that would be damaged if the bridge were built.
The exact significance couldn’t be specified because it was ‘secret women’s business’—a phrase quickly snatched up by hungry headline and slogan writers nationwide. So what was this business? Was it genuine or a modern creation? Despite a year-long inquiry, the situation was no clearer than the waters of the Murray.
On asking a journalist who sat through the entire inquiry what the truth of the matter was, her response was, ‘I don't know’. [HV]
Touch of Elegance, A
This chat show hosted by the horrifyingly snobby socialite Jay Walton was a staple of Channel 7 Adelaide’s morning schedule in the 70s and 80s. A typical episode would include a feature on the latest electronic gadgets available from the kitchenware department of David Jones and an interview with a local identity or, very occasionally, a genuine celebrity.Unfortunately for Channel 7, the only people to whom the programme appealed were social-climbing housewives eager to outdo the woman next door. To everyone else it was known as ‘A Touch of Arrogance’ or ‘A Touch of Ignorance’ and was only to be tolerated as an antidote to extreme boredom. Sensing the general public’s dislike of ‘A Touch of Elegance’ it was axed in the late 80s, to be replaced by the similar, but more down-to-earth, ‘AM Adelaide’. [AB]