This festival is widely recognised as one of the great international arts festivals, while its accompanying Writers’ Week is the largest literary event of its kind.

The apron was worn by Joan Mallen when she worked at the Cheer Up Hut on the banks of the Torrens, near the present Festival Theatre, during the Second World War. 

The first significant wave of Belarusians arrived in South Australia as Displaced Persons (DPs) when Belarus anti-communist fighters, members of Belarusian Youth Union, military Belarusian (anti-Russian) units, pro-German Belarusian government organizations and others were in conflict with the Soviet Red Army.

Bottle of herbal lotion sold by Mahomet Allum. 

Hand-drawn Christmas card with the message 'Buon Natale'.

Elder Family of Scots merchants and ship owners saw the infant South Australia as an opportunity to expand their business interests. Alexander Lang Elder (1815–1885), the pioneer, arrived in 1839 and established a trading business. 

In October 1896, within one year of the Lumière brothers’ first public screening of film in Paris, the first public film screening in South Australia occurred at the Theatre Royal in Hindley Street

Paradoxically, the only parts of South Australia to experience occasional serious disruption of by flooding are the far distant sparsely populated deserts around Lake Eyre

Every year between 1938 and 1975 Adelaidians showed pride in their city by beautifying it with mass displays of flowers on National Flower Day.

In 1910 thousands of people lined the Torrens to see the carnival of lavishly decorated boats in the first Henley-on-Torrens Regatta

Violence and election irregularities marred the process when, in 1855, South Australians got their first chance to elect politicians drawn from, and responsible to, the people.

The first known Indian immigrants arrived in South Australia in the late 1830s

Labour settlements were created during the 1890s to trial collective ownership, new farming technology and the high unemployment created by the Depression.

The evolving profession in South Australia retained some centuries-old practices.

Radicalism has been inherent in South Australian history from its founding as a free settlement.  Based upon the English radical liberal thought of its founders, the State's reputation grew as a progressive colony and the first to entirely separate church from state.

South Australia gained a radical, and democratic, Constitution on 24 October 1856.

Serbians migrated to South Australia from the 1940s - 1990s to escape various forms of prosecution and have since established a wide community. 

The first Slovenians arrived in South Australia in 1946. They emigrated as Displaced Persons from camps in Italy, Austria and Germany after Marshal Tito established a communist government in Yugoslavia in 1945.

Smoking cap owned and worn by John McDouall Stuart.

Crowds gathered on 22 April 1857 to watch Governor Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell open South Australia’s first fully elected parliament.

This major international conflict officially began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 3 September 1939. It lasted for six years, gradually increasing in scope and intensity as it blazed through Europe into Africa and Asia and on into Pacific Asia and the Americas.

The Torrens title system for land ownership was inaugurated in South Australia  has led the world in the computerisation of real property title information.

The South Australian Tourism Commission, established in 1993, focuses on marketing South Australia as a tourist destination to interstate and overseas markets.