Early Adelaide colonists relying on carting from the Torrens – often just holes and billabongs – or wells for their water

Water being carted from the River Torrens in early days of Adelaide's European settlement. This lithograph showing government house in the background was based on an 1837 sketch by Mary Hindmarsh, a daughter of governor John Hindmarsh and later married to George Milner Stephen. 
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia 

When Adelaide’s first European immigrant group arrived in summer 1836, the River Torrens had dried out to water holes or billabongs. While early residents living temporarily on the parklands could fetch and carry water as needed, when they took up their Adelaide city land allotments, they could dig a well or pay water carters.

The infant city corporation had early control of water supplies by issuing licences to the water carters until 1842 and again from 1849 through the city commission and the reformed Adelaide Council in 1852-60. In 1848, 36 carts were earning an average ₤3 per week for delivering three gallons a day per person.

Some early subdivisions, such as Chichester Gardens in North Adelaide, and hotels had a well. The former Treasury building, now Adina Apartments Hotel in Victoria Square, Adelaide, still has a well from the 1840s.

As the River Torrens was used for watering stock, bathing, disposing rubbish and effluent, health fears grew. John Stephens, editor of the South Australian Register called a public meeting at the New Queen's Theatre in 1849 to discuss sanitary reform. While 60 people attended, no immediate action resulted.

Nothing positive was done about a better water supply until South Australian governor Henry Young arrived in 1849 and the city commission replaced the first city council. Institutional jealousies between the governor, the Legislative Council and Adelaide council meant that schemes and ideas led nowhere until 1855-6, when a gravitational water supply system using the River Torrens was planned.