Greetings from the City of Churches

[NakedApe]

... where there are more bars than churches. In fact some of our churches have been turned into bars! That's Adelaide, a great place to be an atheist.
I've been an atheist all my life. I (like everybody else) was born one, and I haven't seen or heard anything in the meantime to change my mind.
I'm looking forward to learning from and participating in the many interesting discussions and debates on these forums.

Cheers!

[davo]

great to meet you mate :) love the name, adelaide sounds like a ripper place for atheists too, heaps of them come out of there :)

[Protium]

Good to see you mate, Welcome to the forums

[youngmoigle]

Hello Naked Ape - I'm from Adelaide too.

If you don't mind, I'll use your post as an excuse to say something about the City of Churches...

When people hear Adelaide described as the City of Churches, they often assume that we are more than usually devout, but that's not really the case. Back in the early days, the Eastern States were populated by people who were mainly Catholic or Anglican and therefore, once those churches were built, not many others were needed.

South Australia, though, started as a private business venture with no convicts, so the operators had use a different method to rope in new settlers. Their gimmick was religious freedom. People suffering religious persecution in Europe were told that they could migrate to South Australia and build their own church with no interference from anyone. That was an attractive offer for many of the minority religions and they flocked to our shores.

As each new boatload arrived, they immediately built their own church.

The other States had only a few different religions, but South Australia had dozens of them.

South Australians weren't any more religious than people in other States. In other States the believers were packed into one or two of the mainstream churchs, but in South Australia, the same percentage of the population was thinly spread through a large number of churches.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell that story. Hope you enjoy youself on this forum. I certainly do...

[davo]

hey that was really interesting youngmoigle, I didn't know that regarding SA! thanks a lot for posting!

[Vonnie]

Welcome, Naked Ape.

Vonnie

[Alan]

I've noticed that Catholic church sites are always on high ground - presumably they like it that way - closer to god.

I guess somewhere in the Vatican there is an operations manual. "Take the high ground" it says.

[youngmoigle]

hey that was really interesting youngmoigle, I didn't know that regarding SA! thanks a lot for posting!

Here's another one: Every now and then you will see a story in the newspaper (or even a history book) where Colnel Light is depicted as a man of vision because he anticipated how big Adelaide would become, and designed extremely wide streets that were able to cope with modern traffic requirements. Sounds good, but it's not true. He wasn't thinking about traffic problems of the future, he was solving a problem that existed way back then in the early 19th century. He designed the streets to be wide enough for a bullock wagon to do a U-turn!

And another: The South Australian Company was set up by a convicted criminal and the plan for settlement was designed while he was serving time in prison. His crime: Abducting a 13 year old girl from her school, and high-tailing it off to France with her. His name was Edward Gibbon Wakefield. If you are ever in Adelaide, you can see a metal plaque on the front of Parliament House, proudly describing him as our "Founding Father."

[davo]

ROTFLMAO :) awesome stuff I love snippets of australiana like that :)

[youngmoigle]

OK...Here's some more

(Sorry NakedApe, to be taking over your post like this, but as long as we're talking about Adelaide I guess I can claim to be still on topic - and I promise to shut up after this...)


(1) The Old Lutherans were being persecuted in Prussia so they split from the parent church and emigrated to South Australia in two waves(1838 and 1841). Five years later the two groups started persecuting each other! They formed separate synods and remained apart for 120 years until falling church attendances forced a merger in 1966.


(2) Adelaide was the second place on the planet (after New Zealand) to give the vote to women - but it was the first to allow women to stand for Parliament. That sounds like we had a rather enlightened Government in those days, but, as usual, there's more to it than that.

In fact the Government was dead against the idea of giving women the vote, so two questions were put into the referendum: Should women be given the vote and should they be allowed to stand for Parliament? The politicians expected that no man in his right mind would answer "yes" to the last question; the referendum would not pass and the women would be forced back into the kitchen where they belonged.

Surprisingly (for time) the men voted "yes" and South Australia gained a place in world history - but the politicians were livid!

[NakedApe]

And another:

Colonel Light is often praised for his vision in establishing a ring of parklands around the City centre. However, I remember reading somewhere that because Light was a military surveyor his real motive in doing this was to provide a clear cannon shot to aide in the defence of the city should the Russians (or anyone else) try to invade. So Adelaide's beautiful parklands have more to do with blowing people to bits than pleasant Sunday strolls:D

[davo]

Yep, I'm sure way back when, in south Australia, one of the first things I would be worried about was those darn russkies ;) hehehe funny what has been done in the past, and the views they had!

[Seamus]

More trivia about Adelaide: (also the nation's bizarre murder capital)

The actual plan of the city,in a grid of precisely one mile square,is based on a C19th army garrison.

Port Road,leading from the Port of Adelaide to the city has a wide nature strip right down the centre ending at The River Torrens.This is because originally there were plans for a canal to that point..


South Australia is the only state in Australia founded as a free colony (1836).My dad's family arrived from County Clare in 1870,and wen to work in the Kapunda copper mines.


South Australia was one of the first places in the world to grant suffrage to women (1902)

[brendo]

ha ha S.A. Great huh, well us young ones have re-named Adelaide "the city of metal". south aus has soo many heavy/deathmetal bands these days. it has become a religeous practice every friday saturday night to head to the city of churches for metal concerts, such as "the Underground" no. 30 waymouth st. a church by day but hired out as a godless metal fest at night. you will see kids in shirts reading "religeon kills- world wide health warning", "I dont believe in god", "where were you when i needed you". or the producers bar on grenfell st. on a friday night at 2am in the morning, theres as many kids in and outside there than there is at church sunday morning.

there are approximately 10, ww2 fortified army bunkers dug in arond and practically under my house within 1km radius theres even more and a royal aus airforce base across the highway 5 min walk away, they were quite prepared?

also ive heard sa is the murder capital of australia? and home of some big serial killers? also heard it called the city of light?