Adelaide is unusually good value for a city break, and a large part of that is down to a decision made in the 1830’s. The city was laid out with a ring of parkland around it that cannot be built on, and the two big cultural institutions on North Terrace do not charge admission. Put those together and you have a full day in the city centre that costs you nothing – unless you opt to get a coffee!
One piece of local legend to get out of the way… Somebody, at some point in your trip, will tell you that the Park Lands are exactly one cannon shot wide, sized so the young colony could defend itself against attack. It is a lovely story, but it is unfortunately not true. The belt is only around 600 meters across in most places, and field artillery of the period could already throw a ball well over a mile, so as a defensive buffer it would have been hopeless.
The tale seems to trace back to an anonymous letter in an Adelaide newspaper in 1838, and the geographer Charles Fenner took it apart as long ago as 1931. The local lore however, refuses to die. What Colonel Light (city planner) was actually doing was following the town planning thinking of his day – wide streets, public squares, and open green space for health and recreation, which happily for you, is precisely why so much of the city is free.
The South Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia sit next door to each other on North Terrace and both have free general space. Add the Adelaide Park Lands, the Botanic Garden and a walk through Rundle Mall, and you have a comfortable day without paying for a thing.
I came to Adelaide, at the start of my solo adventure across South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, so I was thinking about my budget almost every day – trying to seek out ‘free things to do’. Throughout my entire travels, Adelaide was definitely one of the better cities for free activities. There are two city functions that work in Adelaide’s favour, which do not seem to appear in Perth, Melbourne or even Hobart.
The first is the layout; Adelaide’s centre is a compact grid wrapped in a continuous belt of parkland, and the parkland is protected from development. You are never far from green space, and you are never far from anything else either. Almost everything in this article is within a walk of everything else.
The second, is that the city’s two major cultural institutions have free general entry. That is not universal in Australia and it makes a real difference to how days here can be structured. You can wander in, spend forty minutes, and wander back out again without the sunk-cost feeling that comes with an expensive ticket.
You can plan loosely. If the weather turns or gets too hot, you can duck indoors. If you get lost in the history of the Adelaide Plains, you can stay. Nothing has been prepaid, and nothing is wasted.
If you decide you want to spend a little, the short guided city walking tour, the Adelaide Oval Stadium Tour, and Adelaide Zoo all sit nicely alongside a free day. Full details and booking links are in my Things To Do In Adelaide: One Week Itinerary.
Adelaide’s two major cultural institutions sit directly next door to each other, and both have free general entry. Between them they are the backbone of a free day in the city.
Being a history lover, albeit British history, learning about the Australian point-of-view, made The South Australian Museum the highlight of my day.
The section that stayed with me was the Aboriginal cultures gallery, which covers the history of the Adelaide Plains, the traditional country of the Kaurna people, alongside a much wider collection. It is substantial, it is well presented and it is the part of the museum, I would advise you to prioritise it if you have half an hour.
Upstairs there is a room dating from the 1800s holding Polynesian and Pacific material, gathered from across the region during the colonial era. It is worth the climb, and it covers ground most visitors will not have seen anywhere else.
The museum is smaller than you would expect, but I see it as a feature rather than a fault. You can do it properly rather than doing a third of it badly, which is the usual museum experience.
There is a cafe with an outdoor area if you want to sit down for a bit, which I did.
The gallery is a minute walk from The South Australian Museum, and is also free.
Because they are neighbours, you can move between them without any planning at all. If the museum has taken less time than you expected, you simply walk next door. There are only a few galleries here, but still some very intriguing art pieces and installations.
North Terrace is the cultural boulevard of the city, and walking it is free in itself. The museum, the gallery and the university all sit along the same stretch, and going from one end to the other and back is a pleasant way to spend an hour that gives you the shape of the city centre quickly.
I arrived on North Terrace before the gallery had opened. Rather than lose in the morning, I got a coffee and waited. There are plenty of places to sit down outside and watch the city slowly wake up. There are worse places to be stuck for half an hour!
Rundle Mall, a couple of streets south, is the main pedestrian shopping street and also costs nothing to wander down. Whether that appeals depends entirely on how you feel about shopping streets, but it is useful for orientation and refuelling, and it is where you will find somewhere to eat and drink between the free attractions. I had a very good coffee at Mitico, just off the mall, while waiting for the gallery to open – they had pastries too.
In my opinion, the ring of parkland around the city centre is the most underrated free thing in Adelaide.
The Park Lands were laid out by Colonel William Light, the colony’s Surveyor-General, part of his 1837 plan for Adelaide. He wrapped the city grid and North Adelaide in a continuous belt of open space, and that space has been defended from development ever since. It covers over 900 hectares, divided for management into 29 numbered parks plus the city squares, and Adelaide remains the only Australian capital completely enclosed by parkland.
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout were added to the National Heritage List in 2008, recognised as an outstanding surviving example of 19th Century colonial town planning and as one of the earliest planned public park systems anywhere.
As a visitor to Adelaide, the Park Lands provide you with sports fields, playgrounds, formal gardens, open lawns and stretches of woodland, all free, all within a few minutes walk of the city grid in any direction. Many of the parks carry dual names, English and Kaurna, reflecting the traditional owners of the land.
Rather than treating the Park as a destination, use them as the route between destinations. Walking from the city centre out towards the zoo, or from your accommodation into the grid, takes you through them anyway.
It was only in reflection, and when writing this post, that I realised the reason why Adelaide felt so relaxing for me…
I grew up in Yorkshire and spent a lot of my childhood in Harrogate, which has its own protected green loop wrapped around the town centre, known as The Stray. Nobody can build on it there either, and the effect is the same; you are never more than a few minutes from open grass, and the town has a shape to it that most places have long since lost.
Standing in the Adelaide parklands twelve thousand miles from home, I found myself thinking about Harrogate, which is not a sentence I expected to write about an Australian capital. It made a very unfamiliar city feel oddly like a home from home.
This is the corner of the Park Lands I would prioritise if you have a spare morning, and it is the one I did not get to on this trip.
The Adelaide Botanic Garden sits in the north east corner of the city, covering around fifty hectares. It has free daytime entry and is a distinct institution rather than simply another patch of Park Lands. It is run by the state’s Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium, while most of the wider Park Lands are managed by the city council.
The Palm House: A Victorian glasshouse now planted with species from Madagascar.
The Bicentennial Conservatory: A vast curved glasshouse holding lowland rainforest species, and the largest single-span glasshouse of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
The Museum of Economic Botany: A restored 19th Century museum of plants and their uses, and one of very few of its kind left anywhere.
The Amazon Waterlily Pavilion: Home to the giant waterlilies, and a favourite with children.
The Rose Garden and the Australian native collection: Along with a range of themed plantings across the site.
Directly north, sits Botanic Park, also known by its Kaurna name Tainmuntilla, which is a separate 30-odd hectares of open parkland between the garden and Adelaide Zoo. It is free, open all day, and worth walking for its century-old Moreton Bay figs and long avenues of plane trees.
There is also a resident flying fox colony, which will either be a highlight or a reason to pick a different picnic spot depending on your feelings about bats. The park hosts events throughout the year, including outdoor cinema and a well known world music festival.
Although the garden and park are free, Adelaide Zoo next door is not. They are within an easy walk of each other and are often visited on the same day, but they are separate entities.
Adelaide’s nickname is the City of Churches, and most of these churches will be open, and free to explore for the public.
The major cathedrals and central churches are open to visitors outside service times, for private prayer, quiet reflection or simply to look at the building. There is no admission charge, although donations are always welcome, as these buildings are expensive to keep standing and the money goes towards maintenance.
The ones most worth your time:
St Peter’s Cathedral: The landmark of North Adelaide, and the one most photographed from across the parklands. Free to enter, and free guided tours are run by volunteers on a regular weekday slot if you would rather have the building explained to you.
St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral: In the city centre, open to visitors on most days, free to enter.
Holy Trinity Church: On North Terrace, and the oldest of the lot, which makes it a good stop if you are also visiting the museum & gallery.
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