17/06/2026
Adelaide, the City of the Plain....poetry from 180 years ago -
🗞"Poetry, Original and Select.
THE CITY OF THE PLAIN.
There is a modern settlement on South Australia's shores,
Where the summer's dust is borne in clouds; and when the winter's rain
Descends, at length, with dreaded force, it down in torrents pours,
Threatening oft to flood or deluge this City of the Plain.
(I hope its lovely damsels, whether Martha, Jane or Kitty,
Will not regard this verse with an air of cold disdain:
That beholding all their graces, and their faces, fair and pretty,
I have ventured thus to name it, the City of the Plain.)
It is not, as its name infers, a lone deserted city.
For crowded are its buildings, each street, and every lane,
With the old, the young, the middle-aged, the crafty, sage, and witty;
And a medley mixture is there in the City of the Plain.
Various and many are the trades and mercatores--
And the gen'ral eagerness for wealth is not their only bane;
For 'tis only female influence that now "emollit mores Nec sinit esse feros"
in this City of the Plain.
In ev'ry nook and ev'ry place are surgeons and solicitors,
All busily employed in the one pursuit of gain;
But few, indeed, are the Sheriff's unwelcome morning visitors,
For prosperity prevails in the City of the Plain.
Those strange, yet kindly, beings, whose wits have been wool-gathering--
To find the "golden fleece," is the subject of whose brain--
Have so long omitted shaving, and eased their chins from lathering,
That like patriarchs, appear they in the City of the Plain.
Here the staunch and honest yeoman for his toils is rewarded
By a good and bounteous harvest of every kind of grain;
And fortunate is he to whom the prizes are awarded,
For his industry in tillage, in this City of the Plain.
'Ere the sun illumes the heavens, amidst the shadows dark,
The early riser oft discerns a heavy laden wain,
With pile on pile of gumwood, she-oak, and stringy-bark,
Slowly wending on its journey to the City of the Plain.
And of carts and drays of ev'ry kind, conveying mineral ore,
He meets, on each highway, a long continuous train:
For such riches, in no colony, have e'er been found before.
As in the country which surrounds the City of the Plain.
Those who reach the end of this short sketch will perchance recognise it--
And some, in its perusal, may find pleasure, some find pain;
But all alike, if this attempt with truth itself allies it,
Wish "prosperity to Adelaide, the City of the Plain."
E. D. A. March 25th, 1846."🗞
South Australian (Adelaide, SA : 1844 - 1851), Tuesday 16 June 1846, page 4
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71604959?searchTerm=South%20Australia #
📷"A drawing of the view of Adelaide Plains as seen from the site of the Wheal Gawler Lead Mine. The house on the right is "Gleeville" situated at what is now the corner of Dashwood and Sunnyside Roads, it was purchased in 1846 by Samuel Davenport." Circa 1846. SLSA.
