As can be seen in this map, Adelaide is located in the state of South Australia, in central southern Australia. The interesting thing about Australia is its vastly unique scale. Australia's continent is about the size of the contiguous United States, but there are fewer people in all of Australia than there are in California alone. When attempting to understand Australian cities, this discrepancy in scale must be kept in mind.

This map shows the neighboring countries and location of Australia in the world, with Papua New Guinea and Indonesia to the north and New Zealand to the southeast. Although for many years, Australians have thought of themselves as Europeans, and often thought of England as "home," there is a growing realization that Australia is essentially an Asian country:

As a colonial city, Adelaide's site was very deliberately chosen. The following maps show Adelaide's site on a more regional scale. Adelaide lies between the Gulf of St Vincent in the Southern Ocean on the west, and the Mount Lofty ranges on the east. This relatively flat area where the city is located is known as the Adelaide Plain, is about 6 miles wide, and has relatively fertile soil. Adelaide is also located on the Torrens River. Many of these features can be seen here; the photo on the right shows the relief of the area (click either photo to see an enlarged version of both).

While Adelaide was deliberately chosen on one hand, on the other, its foundation was the result of some basic misunderstandings about the local ecology. When explorers were scouting out the colony, they saw the large eucalyptus trees and assumed that meant there was fertile soil; they saw the old, worn valleys and hills and assumed that such topography meant streams and rivers; they saw fires along the coastline and assumed that meant the region was successfully inhabited by people. In fact, eucalyptus trees are simply large and flammable, and it turns out that Adelaide is now the driest city in the driest state in the driest inhabited continent in the world.

At about 34 degrees south, Adelaide enjoys a very warm climate; no colder than about 45 degrees F in the winter (and rarely enough does it get that "cold" that very few buildings have central heating) and in the summer (January, especially) it is not unusual to be over 100 degrees and sunny for weeks on end. Perhaps the best way to illustrate the climate is that an acceptable weather term in Australia is "fine," as in "it will be fine all day with increasing cloudiness, and fine and sunny tomorrow."

Adelaide, like many other colonial cities, is a port city. In fact, all the Australian capitals are ports, and most also have a river running through them: serving the functions of a colonial extraction port as well as providing the colonists with fresh water for drinking.

However, the land near Port Adelaide is rather sandy and swampy and generally unsuitable for building a city, so the city center is actually some distance from its port. By 1856, the city and its port were linked by railroad. The Adelaide plain turned out to be quite fertile and easily developed, as are the rolling foothills of the Mount Lofty ranges.

Since Adelaide's primary function at founding was to be a profitable venture for the British, its situation within Australia is important. Adelaide's hinterland is gigantic, since it is relatively distance from the other capital cities and its hinterland is relatively unproductive, since it includes most of the Outback and Red Centre regions of Australia. In looking at the following map, remember what I said about scale: this is like saying St Paul's hinterland extends all the way to Texas (click map to enlarge).