Elizabeth satellite city crowns dominant role of South Australian Housing Trust in era of premier Tom Playford
The satellite city of Elizabeth starts taking shape on northern Adelaide plains, according the South Australian Housing Trust plan in 1950s/60s.
Image courtesy City of Playford history service
The South Australian Housing Trust’s dominating role in the era of South Australian premier Tom Playford was expressed in planning and building the city of Elizabeth, in Adelaide's north, from the 1950s.
The housing trust was a prime instrument in enabling the Playord’s postwar industrialisation push. By the 1960s, the trust had taken South Australia to the highest level of public housing ownership in Australia.
The trust backed the industry strategy, with affordable homes built at Port Augusta for workers at the new Commonwealth Railwaya workshops and Electricity Trust of South Australia in the early 1950s, for Whyalla’s expansion with the steelworks and shipyards, and Mount Gambier’s forestry enterprises.
Run by influential public servant Alex Ramsay from the modest Paringa Building in Hindley Street, Adelaide city, for nearly 20 years, the housing trust built Elizabeth on the British neighbourhood concept anticipating mostly English migrants for its 25,000 people on 1,620 hectares of the northern Adelaide plains.
Elizabeth was unique among postwar suburban projects for its wide open spaces, thousands of planted trees, sewerage from the start and underground power lines. It became a model for public housing and comprehensive town planning. Its town centre was followed by Adelaide’s later regional shopping centres with its department store, supermarket and shopping mall surrounded by large off-street parking.
The first neighbourhood of Elizabeth South and its Goodman Road shops were opened in 1955.
The first factory (Pinnock Manufacturing), also built by the housing trust, opened in 1957, at Elizabeth South. Other employment already was available at the nearby Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) but the main industry would the General Motors-Holden’s car plant, with the housing trust providing infrastructure for the site.
