ABSTRACT
South Australia was settled in 1836. Unlike other Australian colonies which had been penal settlements, South Australia was to be ‘a new Britannia in the antipodes’–a genuine facsimile of British society. Wakefield was critical of emigration schemes which sought to remove from Britain only those on relief or those convicted of crime. The journey out from Britain took five months and the memory of that often unpleasant, tiresome sea voyage probably deterred many from going ‘home’ later when they found pioneering difficult. In spite of concessions that had to be made initially to pioneer living in a very different environment, a colonial gentry was evident by the late 1850s and early 1860s. Hunting and horse-racing were the favoured leisure pursuits of the Adelaide ‘gentry’ as they were of the upper class in Britain.
