page_title: Port Adelaide
section_title: 1841 to 1970 – Port Adelaide's heyday
hierarchical_section_title: Port Adelaide / History / 1841 to 1970 – Port Adelaide's heyday
caption_attribution_description: English: The Port River and surrounds provide the setting for this busy wharf scene. Man and horse power are engaged in moving wagon loads of bags, casks and building materials whilst loading and unloading the vessels. In the foreground two steamers are moored at the wharf and the masts of many more can be seen in the distance. [On back of photograph] 'Queen's Wharf, Port Adelaide / Before 1927'
context_page_description: Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately 14 kilometres northwest of the Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is the main port for the city of Adelaide. Port Adelaide played an important role in the formative decades of Adelaide and South Australia, with the port being early Adelaide's main supply and information link to the rest of the world.
context_section_description: By the mid-1840s, with increasing trade, the wharves proved insufficient and some more private wharves were constructed. During the late 1850s the state of the dry and dusty plain, between Adelaide and Port Adelaide, led to the pejorative terms "Dustholia" and "Mudholia" in summer and winter.
  Gas street lighting was erected by the local council in 1881. The town received its first electric lighting in January 1889, lit with the colony's first town supply from a powerhouse in Nile Street. During the rest of the 1800s harbour facilities expanded and the town grew. It gained an impressive range of commercial and institutional buildings. Many have survived, resulting in Port Adelaide having one of the best concentrations of colonial buildings in South Australia. Their significance was recognised in May 1982, when a sizeable part of the town centre was declared a State Heritage Area.
  The construction of the Outer Harbor took place at the beginning of the 20th century, accommodating larger ships and reducing the time needed to sail up the Port River to the inner harbour. In the 1920s and 1930s the first wharf was removed or disappeared and the Port Adelaide wharves underwent a significant reconstruction programme, changing the face of the inner harbour's waterfront.
caption: Loading cargo onto ships at Queen's Wharf, circa 1927.
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