'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 would fall to about 4 per cent.
Adelaide suffers from mall malaise. The giant suburban shopping plazas and their category killer retail shops have driven a nail into the heart of CBD shopping. The high number of closed or 'for rent' stores is like something out of the movie High Noon — and Gary Cooper is nowhere in sight.
The collapse of the State Bank in 1992 created a $4 billion debt that broke the state's entrepreneurial spirit. People expect the State Government to fund all manner of projects yet they scream when the same Government raises taxes.
Adelaide survives by winning defence contacts and mining. More than 50 per cent of the state's GDP is earned from these sectors. It's a classic case of too many eggs in too few baskets. The economy urgently needs to diversify.
On the upside, SA's universities are powering ahead with strong international enrolments and research grants. The introduction of highly ranked global universities such as Carnegie Mellon and University College London have raised the bar, yet most people haven't heard of them even though they are ranked 32 and four in the world.
Adelaide's media is a story unto itself. When I left in the late 1980s, the metropolitan daily, The Advertiser, was a parochial tabloid fixated with rape and murder stories. It's still a parochial tabloid but the recruitment of young female reporters who are writing hard news, has given the paper some badly needed credence.
Even so, there is a long way to go for some sections of the electronic media who think interviews are a Punch and Judy show. Only Channels Seven and Two are reporting news. The line between PR and journalism has blurred as some reporters work both sides of the fence, working for PR companies and for newspapers.
The combination of an ageing population, falling tourist numbers and the fact that young people are leaving Adelaide for greener pastures in the eastern states, is economic death by a thousand cuts.
Yet for all of this, you can still see private-school girls with just the right degree of wrinkle in their socks, outside Sportsgirl in Rundle Mall. The frog cakes still sit on their paper doilies in Balfours which, like Woodies lemonade and Coopers beer, are Adelaide institutions.
For those born in Adelaide, there is something endearing about the place. It's like living in a country town where Big Ears, Ratty or Mole could be spotted. But the penchant for nostalgia and for by-gone days is exactly the wrong impulse now for the City of Churches.
Malcolm King is an Adelaide writer.