About Historical Adelaide Tours
Hi, my name is Bob Elliott, and I am the creator of Historical Adelaide Tours. I found history boring until May 2014, when I looked at a book in the Sunday Mail newspaper detailing all of the events during History Month in Adelaide. I was on holidays and decided to visit a number of events advertised in the book including tours of the city, the old Adelaide Gaol and Z ward at the Parkside lunatic asylum.
A spark was ignited and for the next 5 years I attended many events, not only during history month each year, but at other times throughout the year. I signed on as a volunteer at Adelaide Goal informing people of the working of the goal and about the hangings which took place and the crimes these men and one woman committed before ending up at the gallows.
People appeared fascinated with these stories and as a result I started to research murders and other deaths within South Australia. My research took me to State Records situated at Gepps Cross, where hundreds of thousands archived records are kept. I was interested in the many murders and coronial records on file.
I discovered many of the murders took place within the square mile of Adelaide, and as a result I developed a number of tours throughout the square mile of Adelaide and along the banks of the Torrens River, talking about some of these murders, suicides, tragic and preventable deaths which have occurred since South Australia was Proclaimed on the 28 December 1836.
All of the stories I have researched are at least 50 years old and are nestled amongst the many murder and coronial files on record at State Records. These records are available for any member of the community to access. Some of the murders remain unsolved today.
Death is final. Some of these deaths were preventable. Others should never have occurred. I believe some of these stories need to be told, to not only inform the listener of our past, but to prevent further tragedies in the future.
