1
Motor cars and freeways:
measures of a South Australian love affair
Peter Donovan
South Australians, like their interstate relatives, fell in love with motor vehicles, and
car ownership became a common dream during the first half of the 20th century.
This love affair helped to transform many traditional social practices and attitudes,
along with the physical nature of South Australia's towns and cities. It even
affected the architecture of the family home, the ownership of which was the other
great dream of Australians. The love affair with motor cars began long before Tom
Playford’s premiership, but it reached its most hedonistic peak during the latter years
of this period. Motor vehicles became more affordable and vast amounts of money
were spent to make it easier for South Australians to travel further, faster and in
more comfort than before.
South Australians saw their first motor vehicle in the late 19th century. However, for
many decades automobiles remained the playthings of the rich and successful who
could afford to import cars from overseas. The League of South Australian
Wheelmen, formed in September 1903, was the forerunner of the Royal
Automobile Association. 1 These were exciting days when adventurous
motorists captured the attention of the nation with major feats of endurance, or
going where men in motor vehicles had never gone before, only to be followed
immediately by others trying to better each new record. In 1903, Ben Thomson
pioneered a route from Adelaide to Melbourne via the Coorong, taking almost four
days for the journey. Richard Duncan soon lowered the time to less than three
days, and then Murray Aunger and Albert Barr Smith claimed the record for the
journey in 22½ hours in February 1909. The year before that Aunger, with Harry
Dutton, had become the first to drive from Adelaide to Darwin, after abandoning an
attempt in 1907. The adventurer Francis Birtles, together with Sidney Ferguson,
became the first motorists to drive from Perth to Sydney in 1912; once they left
the cities these pioneers had to blaze their own trails or follow the tracks cut by
horse-drawn wagons.
The increased popularity of the car had far reaching effects which were evident in
the planning and appearance of the new subdivisions about Adelaide in the
1920s. There was no longer a need to provide stables for horses, but rather private
garages for cars and neighbourhood garages with kerbside petrol bowsers. The motor
car also began to change work habits. The travelling salesmen of the pharmaceutical
company F.H. Faulding & Co. began making their country visits by motor vehicle
rather than by train, while members of the South Australian Pastoral Board
made their inspections of far flung pastoral stations by car rather than horse and
trap.
Despite these developments, in the 1930s, the private use, indeed the possession, of a
car by middle and working class South Australians remained a luxury. The number of
motor vehicles had increased steadily after the First World War but levelled off in
1929 and fell away during 1930 ‘as a result of the general depression and the
unfavorable seasons in several parts of the State’.2 New car registrations slumped
2
from 9,946 in 1927 to 2,401 in 1930 and only 544 the following year before rising
again to 5,406 in 1938.3 Soon after the worst effects of the Great Depression had
begun to ease during the late 1930s, South Australians were again at war, and many of
those who possessed motor vehicles had to put them on blocks until they returned from
the conflict or until petrol rationing was lifted.
Boom years
The situation changed soon after the Second World War. The immediate
post-war years were the boom days of the Playford government, reflected in part in
the number of motor vehicle registrations in the state. The number of motor
vehicles on the road – including heavy transport vehicles — rose dramatically
after the war, particularly after the commonwealth government
discontinued the rationing of petrol in February 1950. Many ex-servicemen
who had acquired driving skills during the war bought surplus army vehicles at postwar disposal sales and set themselves up in business as road hauliers.
New motor vehicle registrations, 1944-65
Year
Motor
cars
Commercial
vehicles+
Motor cycles
Wagons* Total
1944
36
945
3
984
1945
33
526
57
616
1946
1,185
1,107
943
3,235
1947
3,092
2,233
1,859
7,184
1948
5,729
2,925
3,328
11,982
1949
9,161
4,004
4,515
17,680
1950
14,901
6,516
4,457
25,874
1951
12,806
6,359
4,962
24,137
1952
12,087
6,254
2,534
172
21,047
1953
11,184
5,766
1,699
62
18,711
1954
16,092
6,189
2,217
154
24,652
1955
18,801
6,590
2,089
233
27,713
1956
15,315
6,110
1,541
272
23,238
1957
15,334
5,481
1,436
618
22,869
1958
14,930
5,531
1,309
1,828
23,598
3
1959
15,018
6,106
1,286
3,264
25,674
1960
18,864
5,570
1,865
4,262
30,561
1961
12,410
4,639
1,516
3,295
21,860
1962
19,621
5,193
1,010
5,201
31,025
1963
23,603
6,292
921
6,982
37,798
1964
26,328
7,103
1,006
7,960
42,397
1965
27,567
6,966
1,090
6,601
42,224
+Includes trucks, buses, vans, panel-vans, utility trucks, ambulances, hearses and, until 1951, station
wagons. *Until 1951 these figures were included with commercial vehicles.
(Wray Vamplew et al., South Australian Historical Statistics, History Project, Sydney, n.d., p.309.)
Cars became more affordable in the post-war years as wages and salaries rose faster
than the cost of living. The award wage for clerks, which was £4 2s 6d in 1938,
increased to £6 13s a decade later and more than doubled in the following 10 years to
£14 9s 6d. The wages of storemen increased similarly, from £4 12s 6d to £6 5s and
£13 17s during the same period.4 Costs did not rise to the same extent: many items
considered to be essential, such as bread and milk, even petrol, were tightly
controlled by the government. Indeed, ‘between 1916 and 1956 the basic wage rose
392 per cent and the minimum award rate 502 per cent whereas prices increased 309
per cent’.5
The new circumstances were reflected in the development of ‘Australia’s
Own Car’, the Holden, which heralded a new era in motoring in Australia. The first
FX Holden rolled off the assembly line at the General Motors-Holden’s
Fishermen’s Bend factory in Victoria on 29 November 1948, the bodies
having been constructed at the company’ s plant at Woodville in South
Australia. The Holden went on display in Adelaide showrooms on 7 December
1948 with a price of £675 plus tax. 6 It was an instant success with the waiting
time for orders soon extending to three years; by 1951 the company had produced
50,000 units, but had orders for almost 100,000. 7 Even though Nancy Buttfield
was the daughter of Sir Edward Holden, the chairman of General MotorsHolden's Ltd who was grandson of the founder of the Holden saddlery and
leathergoods business after whom the car was named, she had no special privileges
and had to wait her turn.8
However, South Australians did not have to wait for a new Holden in order to
enjoy the freedom provided by motoring. Nor did they have to wait for one of the
new vehicles produced in South Australia after Chrysler Australia acquired
control of the vehicle builder, T.J. Richards & Sons of Keswick, in 1951. The
first motor vehicle of many, if not most, middle and working class families was
probably acquired second-hand. In 1948 the cost of a 1940 Vauxhall varied from
£350 to £450 from a second-hand car dealer; a 1935 Plymouth could be acquired for
£360, or a Morris sedan from £275.9 Ten years later a 1951 Austin A40 could be
acquired for £465 and a 1950 Holden sedan for £495.
The motor car gave South Australians freedom to move beyond the public
4
transport network or the distances which they could travel by bicycle. A new lifestyle
grew up dependent upon the private motor vehicle. South Australians were no
longer constrained to patronise local stores or have home deliveries by butchers,
bakers and greengrocers. Instead, it was to become the norm for them to make
weekly purchases at large shopping centres. One of the first and largest of the new
supermarkets was the Coles supermarket which opened at suburban Plympton,
west of Adelaide, on 30 November 1966 with parking spaces for 110 cars.
Entertainment, too, was greatly altered by the motor vehicle. The first blow to the
popularity of the neighbourhood cinema, which had been such an important social
centre in the inter-war period, was the advent of the drive-in theatre. The first in
South Australia was the Blueline, which opened on West Beach Road on 28 December
1954. The drive-in gave young couples more privacy than a love-seat in a cinema,
but it was also popular with families since children could be readied for bed before
they left the house and the younger ones could go to sleep at any time.
Many of the changes wrought by the popularity of the motor car were more subtle.
The car, together with greater affluence and increased leisure time, permitted South
Australians to participate in more leisure activities than had been the case in
earlier generations. This was reflected by the steady decline in attendance at
major football and cricket fixtures in the period from the 1950s: the decline was
even sharper when attendances were calculated as a proportion of the rapidly
increasing population.10 Motor sports grew in popularity. Enthusiasts formed the
Sporting Car Club of South Australia on 22 May 1934 and through it sponsored
major events, including the Australian Hillclimb Championship which was first run
at Collingrove in the Barossa Valley on 15 March 1952 and has been held
annually ever since. A motor racing circuit opened at Port Wakefield on 1 January
1953. On 19 August 1961 a new circuit was opened on what had been the wartime
aerodrome at Mallala; the Australian Grand Prix was run there on 7 October that
year.11
The mobility provided by the motor car weakened the sense of local identity. South
Australians were no longer required to live near their place of employment or their
friends and places of amusement. Grown children with families of their own
frequently made their homes in areas distant from those of their parents and thereby
often broke long family associations with a town or district. Even determinations
about which League football club supporters followed became less dependent on
place of residence.
The freedom provided by the car also prompted a decline in regular church
attendance and hastened the secularisation of Sunday. This secularisation
was most evident in those Protestant churches which emphasised Sunday
religious observance in afternoons and evenings 12 Anglicans found
attendances declining at Evensong in particular, and Methodists and others rescheduled Sunday school from afternoons to mornings in an effort to stem the
defections, but to little avail.
The role of Tom Playford
Tom Playford indirectly encouraged the use of motor vehicles in his role as premier. As
leader of a government bent upon industrial development, he lavished support and
resources on those government departments and agencies, such as the
Engineering and Water Supply Department, the Electricity Trust of South
5
Australia and the South Australian Housing Trust, which were charged with building
the physical infrastructure to underpin the revolution to attract industry to South
Australia. Historian Hugh Stretton observed of this policy:
state enterprises, hard-worked and low-paid and philistine but uncorrupted,
build roads and bridges, pump Murray water to industrial and farm towns all over
the state, and drain the nation’s best-sewered metropolis. Precious villages,
precious trees and precious old oligarchs are trampled impartially if they get in
the way of the lowest-cost routes.13
Another of these ‘philistine but uncorrupted’ departments and an agent of great
social change was the Highways Department, which had been responsible
for building better roads to accommodate the greater number of motor vehicles. As
well as rebuilding the road network with bituminous concrete to make it
suitable for modern vehicles — in accordance with a program initiated in
1923, but postponed by depression and war — the Highways Department was
also called upon to act in concert with other agencies to implement Playford's
policies. Thus, the department worked closely with the Housing Trust in the
development of Whyalla and the satellite city of Elizabeth.
Although important, the Highways Department was not one of the chief
engines of Playford's industrial policy and its commissioners were not among his
inner circle of advisers. But a story told of Playford indicates something of the
manner in which these agencies were accustomed to act at his direction. On
one occasion, during the course of a telephone conversation with Highways
Commissioner Frank Jackman, Playford pointed out that there were some dangerous
bends on the road to his Norton Summit property. A suggestion from the premier
was considered an order by some in the department, for very soon the minor work
on the bends became a full scale project, with plant and trucks being detailed off to
the site. Playford was soon on the telephone to the commissioner: ‘Frank, do you want
to get me hung. Pull all that gear out of that r o a d o r I ’ l l … ’ P l a y f o r d w a s
adamant that he should not appear to be using his position to have something
done for himself. 14 However, he was not so backward in using his position to
advance particular policies of his government.
With the support of Playford, the 1960s were perhaps the most optimistic and
dynamic decade in t he hi st or y o f t h e Hi gh wa ys Department when traffic
engineers could dream grandiose dreams with a fair expectation that they might be
realised. This was the era of freeway design and construction, when few dared
question the scale of the projects or the need to acquire property so that they might
be built. The editor of the News left little doubt about the necessity of freeways for
Adelaide:
The soundness of plans to build freeways to cope with the increasing traffic as
the metropolis of Adelaide expands is confirmed by the expert opinion of the
professor at the school of traffic engineering at the University of NSW, Prof.
W.R. Blunden.
After a study yesterday of morning peak traffic on Anzac Highway, Prof.
Blunden suggested a north-south traffic freeway, coming close to the city on its
west side, to carry great volumes of traffic now forced to use ordinary suburban
roads ...
The basic concept is there, and its general soundness is unquestionable. In
6
heavily motorised America, the freeway has proved an indispensable part of
modem living.
The urgent need now is to put the planning into effect, to site the freeways,
acquire the land, build them and use them before the city growth outpaces the
planners. The longer the delay, the more difficult and more expensive the job
will become.15
Most readers of the daily press, many of whom were motorists, did not
challenge the wisdom of the experts and community leaders. On 11 October 1960
the Minister for Roads, Norman Jude, introduced into the Legislative Council a Bill
to enable the government to build freeways and to proclaim them controlled
access roads. It proved a welcome initiative.16
The 1962 Metropolitan Plan drawn up by the Town Planning Committee
reflected much of the freeway debate to that time. In addressing the future of
metropolitan Adelaide's road network the committee reported that:
Road widening, the improvement of intersections, more stringent control
measures and the prohibition of kerbside parking at peak periods will be
necessary to ensure a smooth traffic flow. These measures will give only
temporary relief, and within a period of 10 years traffic congestion may become
serious and the time, distance and cost of travel may increase to such an extent
that a new type of highway, called a freeway, will become necessary to enable
large volumes of traffic to run swiftly and safely.17
The committee’s 1962 report identified the need to construct 56 km of
freeways and 225 km of duplicated road and envisaged that the major road
system of metropolitan Adelaide would
include the construction of 98 miles [157 km] of new freeways, 53 miles [85 km]
of new arterial roads, the widening from 66 ft to 80 ft [20 m to 24 m] of 171 miles
[274 km] of existing roads under the Metropolitan Road Widening Scheme, and
the improvement of some 450 miles [720 km] of existing roads.18
This direction and philosophy formed the basis for the department's planning strategy
for the following decade.
Ultimately, a freeway to the south-east of Adelaide, for which planning was
already well advanced, was the only one constructed during this period. Somewhat
ironically, the implementation of this project encouraged the first questioning of the
philosophy which brought it about.
The South-Eastern Main Road was one of the most important of Adelaide’s
arterial roads, yet the one with the most difficult alignment. Throughout the
1950s the department had implemented initiatives to relieve congestion on the road,
particularly on that part between Glen Osmond and Crafers, but these were little more
than temporary solutions. During the early 1960s arguments were advanced for the
construction of a freeway of the type that had revolutionised traffic movement
in major American cities. Departmental officers, many of whom had studied
American practice at firsthand, had kept an eye on developments elsewhere and were
convinced of the benefits of freeway construction.19
On 5 February 1962 Playford’s cabinet agreed to engage the services of an
7
American consultant to advise on a proposed first section of a freeway to continue
from the widened Mount Barker Road. Once the preferred alignment was
determined, the department commenced acquiring the necessary property
and carrying out the detailed surveying for the project. The first section of
freeway was only about 4 km long, but it included major interchanges at Crafers and
Stirling and required the department to acquire all or portions of 80 properties and
25 houses.
Land acquisition proved tricky, but was not permitted to stand in the way of such
an apparently necessary project. As one commentator noted: ‘A highway through his
park scandalized one commonwealth cabinet minister out of his country seat and
all the way to England without stopping’. 20 The battle for Arbury Park, the
home of federal Minister for Immigration, Alexander Downer, became a
celebrated affair, although this was only one of the properties affected by the
alignment of the freeway immediately beyond Stirling. The department went out of its
way to avoid antagonising property owners unnecessarily and considered several
alternative routes, but the most economical one passed through Downer’s 93hectare property and within 200 m of the front door of his two-storey Georgian style
home.
News of the department’s plans was published on 2 May 1962, although surveying
of the route had already been underway for some time. Several people were
outraged and criticised the route proposed for the freeway, among them the noted
architect E. Kenneth Milne, who had designed Arbury Park and considered the
government’s intentions ‘a complete tragedy’. 21 Downer stoutly opposed the plan
and instructed his lawyers to negotiate an alternative route, even offering land at the
rear of the house for the freeway. Paradoxically, the more Downer opposed the
route the more difficult it became for the department and the government to
compromise lest they be accused of pandering to wealth and influence and
further disadvantaging others with whom the department was also negotiating.
The furore was so great that Playford became involved personally. He telephoned
Frank Jackman and asked for a briefing on the alignment of the freeway, saying: ‘If
you can show me that this is the only way that you can go, I'll back you’. 22 Jackman
convinced him that there was no other viable route and thereafter Playford, who
was never a close personal friend of Downer, would brook no compromise that
would create extra expense or imply a political deal. He instructed Norman
Jude, the Minister for Roads and Transport and an Adelaide Club colleague of
Downer, to resolve the issue.
Downer ceased further opposition soon afterwards, and in December 1963 the
federal government appointed him as successor to Sir Eric Harrison, the retiring
Australian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom. On 28 April 1964 Downer
revealed that he had reached an agreement with the state government for the
acquisition of property. He and his family left Adelaide the following day to take up
his appointment in London. Fortunately for the department, no other acquisition
proved as complicated or as drawn out as that of Arbury Park.
Preliminary work began on the Crafers to Stirling section of the freeway in
December 1965, although difficulties with some acquisitions meant that the
actual earthworks for the undertaking were delayed until February 1966. The first
part of the South-Eastern Freeway, the northern carriageway, was opened to
traffic on 1 February 1967, but was not officially opened until 28 February
8
1969. Even then this section was not finally completed until the Crafers
interchange became fully operative on 28 May 1969.
Postscript
Although construction of the South-Eastern Freeway continued after the defeat
of Playford’s government, the end of the Playford era coincided with the end of
the heady days for those responsible for designing major engineering projects in
South Australia. The first part of the South-Eastern Freeway was completed as
designed, but the design of its continuation was far more modest. Perhaps more
importantly, many South Australians had become cynical about the benefits
of bigger and better roads and more conscious of the social and environmental
costs. No longer did many of them consider the removal of road-side trees and
buildings as a reasonable price for what was called progress. This became
evident in 1966 when the Campbelltown Council, with Highways
Department funding, proposed to widen Montacute Road and marked 130
gum trees for destruction. Controversy ensued, led largely by Dr John Coulter,
a research officer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation. The high point of the opposition to the tree-felling was a
demonstration in front of Parliament House. Eventually, about 40 trees were spared.
For a time, Highways Department engineers continued to plan grandiose
projects such as the system of metropolitan freeways outlined in the
Metropolitan Adelaide Transportation Study (MATS) which was
undertaken ‘to devise a workable, acceptable and adaptable plan to guide traffic
and transport development of Metropolitan Adelaide up to the year 1986 ’. MATS
was initially welcomed by the Advertiser, which considered it timely.23 However,
the ultimate rejection of the essential features of the study by influential South
Australians, largely because of the immense impact the freeway network would have
on the metropolitan area, especially to the west of the city, indicated that the
government, the planners and the press had misjudged the mood of South
Australians. Succeeding governments did nothing to implement the key
recommendations of MATS and, after the Australian Labor Party returned to
power on 2 June 1970, the plan was pared down and then scrapped.
Only Playford’s most ardent supporters mourned the defeat of his government
on 10 March 1965. ‘He had been there too long’, observed a journalist from the
Bulletin, ‘Even the Advertiser could barely disguise its yawns. It was a time for
change, for new faces, new ideas’.24 Playford may have left ‘a lean state
administrative apparatus which seemed particularly attuned to his own ideas
about personal integrity, budgetary frugality, economic growth and public
welfare parsimony’1, 25 yet neither Playford nor the administration seemed
closely attuned to the current mood of many South Australians, who rejected the
notion of freeways even though they had cause to welcome the conveniences that
freeways promised. South Australians had become ever more dependent upon motor
vehicles for work and recreation. The metropolitan area had been extended further
north and south and the government was hardpressed to service the extended
area with public transport. South Australians responded by buying more motor
cars. There were 27,567 new car registrations in 1965, up from 18,801 a decade
earlier. However, many South Australians had become concerned with qualityof-life issues. They remained in love w ith their motor vehicles for the
convenience that they offered, but were no longer prepared to have towns and
9
communities sacrificed simply to provide bigger and better roads.
1
Stuart Nicol, Bullock Tracks and Bitumen: South Australia’s motoring heritage, RAA SA, Adelaide,
1978pp. 12-16.
2
Annual Report of the Department of Highways and Local Government 1930-31.
3
Wray Vamplew et al., South Australian Historical Statistics, History Project, Sydney, n.d., p.309.)
4
See South Australian Government Gazette, 1937, p.894; 1938, p.624; 1947, p.96; 1948,
p.1063; 1957, pp.1015, 1133.
5
Wray Vamplew, ‘South Australians 1836-1986: a statistical sketch’, in South Australian Year
Book No. 21, Government Printer, Adelaide, 1986, p.66.
6
Advertiser 7.12.1948.
7
Shane Birney, Australia’s Own: the history of Holden, Golden Press, Sydney, 1985, p.80.
8
Nancy Buttfield assisted by June Donovan, Dame Nancy: the autobiography of Nancy
Buttfield, Nancy Buttfield, North Adelaide, 1992, p.72.
9
Advertiser 27.11.1948.
10
Vamplew, p.53.
11
Dennis Harrison, With Casual Efficiency: the story of the Sporting Car Club of South Australia,
Sporting Car Club of SA, Unley Park, 1994.
12
Vamplew et al., p.20.
13
Hugh Stretton, Ideas for Australian Cities, 2ed, Georgian House, Melbourne, 1975, p.152.
14
Interview with Jack Holton, former Assistant Chief Engineer of the Highways
Department, 24.4.1991.
15
News 11.8.1960.
16
Advertiser 13.10.1960.
17
Town Planning Committee, Report on the Metropolitan Area of Adelaide, Adelaide, 1962, p.282.
18
Annual Report of the Highways Department 1962-63; Advertiser 2.10.1963.
19
Advertiser 4.10.1958.
20
Stretton, p.152.
21
Advertiser 4.5.1962.
22
Interview with Holton.
23
Advertiser 23.12.1964.
24
Bulletin 6.8.1966.
25
Andrew Parkin, ‘Transition, Innovation, Consolidation, Readjustment: the political history of
South Australia since 1961’, in The Flinders History of South Australia: political history, ed.
Dean Jaensch, Wakefield, Adelaide, 1986, p.293.