1950: Forging an Industrial State

The Second World War quickened the pace of industrial development and had a profound effect on the economy and landscape of South Australia than the First World War. As in other capital cities, Adelaide factories turned to war production. However, the State received a disproportionate share of Australia's new war industries. The Commonwealth government erected two factory complexes in the suburbs of Hendon and Finsbury Park to produce munitions, and established a third plant, to produce explosives, on a 15 square kilometre site near the town of Salisbury. At Whyalla, on the edge of the saltbush, the Broken Hill Pty Co Ltd's blast furnace came on stream in 1941. It had been planned in 1937 as a condition of the grant to the company of long-term leases on its iron ore deposits. The blast furnace was the first component in the steel-making and shipbuilding complex which established Whyalla as the second-ranking urban centre in South Australia by 1966.

Under the pressure of war, several public works, long contemplated, were quickly realised with the assistance of Commonwealth funding. These included duplication of the Overland Telegraph Line to Darwin in 1942, the construction of the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs and Darwin, and the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline, completed in 1944. South Australia's dependence on imported coal from New South Wales had long been a handicap to cheap power generation and a curb on industrial growth. Exploitation of the Leigh Creek sub-bituminous coalfield by open-cut methods began in 1942, the first coal being used to generate electricity at Port Adelaide in 1944. Its effective utilisation, however, had to await the construction of the Port August 'A' powerhouse in 1954, which was closer to the coalfield and specially designed to use Leigh Creek coal with its high moisture content.

In 1950, shortages of labour and some materials were still severe. However, rationing of petrol, tea and butter ended in 1950 and symbolised the change from a wartime economy to an economy of industrial and agricultural expansion and population growth.

Several factors contributed to the post-war boom in which South Australia developed as an industrial State. First, there was a pent-up demand for housing and consumer goods which had been suppressed by the long years of the Depression and war. Second, there was Australia's protective tariff on imported industrial goods which encouraged overseas manufacturers to set up plants within Australia. Third, there was the substantial growth in population arising from both the high level of immigration from Britain and Europe and the increased local birth-rate.

Between the censuses of 1947 and 1954, South Australia's population rose from 646,000 to 797,000, an increase of 23%, or 3% per annum. The total Australian annual growth rate was 2.4%. The rate of growth in South Australia was the fastest since the 4.25% per annum achieved between 1871 and 1881.

Presiding over the transformation of a rural economy into a predominantly industrial economy was genial and financially shrewd Thomas Playford, Premier from 1938 until 1965. A persistent and persuasive bargainer with Commonwealth prime ministers and industrialists, Playford put into practice the policy of industrial development which had been conceived in broad outline by J.W. Wainwright, E.W. Holden and others in the 1930s. Growing world-wide prosperity in the 1950s meant that Australian politicians simply had to ride the wave of inflowing capital and population. Playford's success was in capturing, for a period, a disproportionate share of Australia's industrial growth and overseas immigration. He could point to the advantages in South Australia of lower wage levels, cheaper land and housing prices, and some lower State taxes than in New South Wales and Victoria, and also, the State's record of good industrial relations.

Playford used three public utilities - the Housing Trust, the Electricity Trust, and the Engineering and Water Supply Department - as the key development agencies of the State to provide support, at modest cost, for industrial growth. Social services, such as schools, hospitals and cultural facilities, took second place in government spending until the economic bases for wealth creation were firmly in place.

In 1950-51, of the 6800 new houses completed in the State the Housing Trust built 3000, a record for the Trust since it was formed in 1937. In an effort to cope with the inflow of people to South Australia, construction methods were adopted which were then considered unorthodox. Such as the use of brick veneer and prefabricated timber construction. By 1951, some 3800 prefabricated houses had been ordered from Britain and Germany for erection mainly by migrant tradesmen.

The development aims of the Playford Government required its control over the generation and distribution of electric power. The Electricity Trust was formed in 1946 to take over the assets of the Adelaide Electric Supply Company, and in 1948 it was assigned control of the Leigh Creek coalfield. The Trust undertook a vigorous programme of transmission line construction in rural areas, replacing many small schemes based on diesel plants in country towns. By the late 1950s, South Australian consumers were enjoying the lowest priced electricity in the Commonwealth.

The completion of the Morgan-Whyalla pipelines in 1944 and its extension to the Woomera Rocket Range in 1948 marked a new trend in the use of South Australian resources when it treated the River Murray as the State's principal reservoir. This pipeline was the essential component in the growth of the three industrial towns of the Iron Triangle at the head of Spencer Gulf - Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Pirie. Since industrial expansion in Adelaide was threatened by the uncertain flow of water from the local hills catchments in drought years, funds were allocated to bring River Murray water to Adelaide via a pipeline from Mannum. The pipeline, commenced in 1951 and completed in 1954, relieved metropolitan users from the threat of summer water restrictions.

After 1945, the wartime munitions factories at Finsbury and Hendon served as bases for new industries, especially those making household appliances. Philips Electrical Industries moved from Sydney to take over the Hendon facility in 1947, the same year that the American Chrysler Corporation acquired the car assembly plant of Richards Industries. General Motors -Holdens Ltd greatly expanded its South Australian activities at Woodville.

By 1950, rural South Australia was recovering from the effects of the severe droughts in the mid 1940s. With the return of good seasons, most farming districts underwent a quiet revolution in farm practices, helped along by an unprecedented increase in wool prices. Tractors quickly replaced horse teams as the source of farm power, thereby releasing land previously devoted to feeding horses. Legume pasture plants - subterranean clover in the higher rainfall areas and medics on the drier margins - were incorporated into rotations of temporary pastures and grain crops. Barley assumed much greater importance, and in 1957 exceeded the area planted with wheat. The frequency of bare fallowing and cultivation prior to seeding was drastically reduced. The construction of contour banks lessened the risk of sheet wash and gully erosion, while many of the drifting sand-dunes were established with grass cover.

The legume pastures supported increased livestock numbers and also, by building up soil nitrogen, restored fertility and structure to the worn out wheatlands. As a result, grain yields increased substantially, and the South Australian sheep flock grew by two-thirds between 1950 and 1959, its fastest rate of growth since the early 1860s.

Another rural revolution began soon after the Second World War on the ironstone and sandy soils in the higher rainfall areas which had previously been considered too infertile for farming. Research since the early 1930s had demonstrated that large areas of mallee scrub and heath in the upper South-East, Fleurieu Peninsula, Southern Eyre Peninsula and western Kangaroo Island could be made into productive pastures with the addition of trace elements such as copper, zinc, molybdenum and potassium. Most of the war service land settlement schemes were located in these areas with the government acting as land developer rather than merely as allocator, as in the soldier settlement schemes after the First World War.