Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
A city in its Park Lands.
An introduction to the Park Lands, the River Torrens and the landmarks you can pick out from the roof of Adelaide Oval.
On this page
Read the city
Colonel William Light’s plan of 1837 surrounded the city centre and North Adelaide with a figure-eight of parkland on both banks of the River Torrens. Adelaide Oval lies in the northern part of one of these parks, and Elder Park faces it across the river.
A guide can give context without turning a city into a backdrop. From the roof, notice how the river divides the two halves of the city, how the parklands ring the streets and how the stadium sits among the trees.
A cathedral beside the oval
St Peter’s Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral of Adelaide, stands at the corner of Pennington Terrace and King William Road in North Adelaide. Its foundation stone was laid in 1869, and its towers and spires were dedicated in 1902.
Begin with a detail and ask who built it, who looks after it and how it has changed. A photograph alone cannot tell you that.
A stadium chapter
Adelaide Oval shows one side of the city: a cricket ground of the 1870s rebuilt as a stadium for cricket and football, with a footbridge to the railway station.
Look at the meeting of the two: the hand-worked scoreboard of 1911 and the white roofs above the new stands.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with the oval’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents the people who run them.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
