From pop star performances to a roller coaster five-storeys up, Rundle Mall has a history most Adelaideans have forgotten – or never knew.
Fifty years ago, then Premier of South Australia Don Dunstan (the man who famously wore hot pink short shorts on the steps of Parliament House in honour of democracy) banned cars from a stretch of Rundle Street, filled a fountain with champagne, and invited everyone to flock to the new mall and celebrate. 10,000 people turned up.
What happened in the years to come – the Mall’s Balls, the haunted dry cleaner, the figure-eight roller coaster on top of Myer, Boy George performing from the bridge – is a history as whacky as it is important.
This May, you can learn all about it when Adelaide-born tour guide and Flamboyance Tours owner Katina Vangopoulos walks the length of Rundle Mall for South Australia’s History Festival – and spills all its secrets.
A place to socialise and shop
Before 1976, Rundle Street was already one of Adelaide’s great social stages. “You would go in your Sunday finest, your best dress, and be seen,” Katina says. “It was where you went to meet, dine and socialise.”
Dunstan’s decision to pedestrianise it – inspired by European piazzas and designed at human scale – was an evolution of that.
When it opened on 1 September 1976, someone in the crowd used a motorbike helmet to scoop champagne from the Rundle Mall fountain while the SA Police Marching Band played The Night They Invented Champagne.
“It changed how people socialised as much as it did how they shop,” Katina says. “It [became] a lot more than just a place to go and buy some clothes.”
At 520 metres, it’s the longest outdoor mall in the southern hemisphere, and today welcomes around 54 million visitors a year across more than 1,000 retailers and 15 arcades.
The controversial arrival of the Mall’s Balls
The Mall’s Balls arrived a year later, but Adelaide wasn’t immediately sold.
Bert Flugelman’s two stacked steel Spheres were unlike anything the city had seen outside a gallery. “Most outdoor sculptures up to that point were classical – men on horses, modest figures on plinths,” Katina says. “You didn’t see something like two shiny balls stacked on top of each other in a public area.” Channel Seven filmed people calling them “hideous”.
Almost half a century later, they’re a beloved icon. “They’ve really endured as arguably the symbol of the city,” Katina says.
More public art followed. The girl on The Slide arrived the same year. The bronze pigs – Horatio, Truffles, Oliver and Augusta – followed in 1999. The big pigeon, widely criticised when it arrived in 2020, has followed the same arc as the Mall’s Balls – controversy first, affection later.
The Rundle Mall Bridge
In the 80s and 90s a pedestrian bridge linking the Richmond Hotel to the Renaissance Centre, complete with a glass elevator, ran over the Mall.
For many Adelaideans, the overpass – reached by a pair of escalators from the Mall – is best remembered for one moment in 1984. Culture Club were touring Australia, but Adelaide wasn’t on the itinerary. Fans petitioned, and the band turned up to wave from the bridge – before Boy George surprised everyone by launching into two songs, including Karma Chameleon, sung a cappella to 25,000 people below.
Shania Twain made a similar appearance from the same spot in 1998. The overpass came down around 2000, along with the escalators, but the stories aren’t going anywhere.
Adelaide Arcade’s resident ghost
Did you know Adelaide Arcade has a resident ghost? Francis Cluney was the arcade’s caretaker until 1887, when he went into the generator room and didn’t come out. Historians believe his clothing caught in the machinery.
When he was found, “skull fragments were strewn across the room,” Katina says. “Broken bones everywhere.”
The dry cleaner that now occupies the spot still has receipts coming out of the register without anyone touching a button, and has told Katina it’s the ghost who’s responsible.
Dazzeland
In the 1990s, the top floors of the Myer Centre were home to a two-storey indoor theme park, Dazzeland – roller coaster, dodgems, carousel and miniature train – with the screams from the roller coaster audible from every level. It closed in 1998, but a whole generation of Adelaideans grew up shopping underneath it.
“Everyone’s like, oh my god, we used to have a roller coaster in the Myer Centre,” Katina says.
Why our history matters
South Australians don’t so much undervalue their history as simply never get told it. “A lot of South Australians know tidbits,” Katina says. “But there’s always more to learn.”
Take the City of Churches line. Some east coast Australians use it as shorthand for conservative and dull. Katina flips it: “We got that tag early because of our tolerance to religion – Lutherans fleeing persecution in Germany came here because they could live alongside Anglicans and Catholics,” she says. “And they were all free to build their own churches”.
Did you know South Australia has led the country in:
- Women’s voting rights
- LGBTQI+ rights
- Indigenous recognition
“History is so much more than just a date or a building,” says Katina. “Seeing it through a local perspective gives you a better understanding of place.”
SA’s History Festival: Bringing the past to life
That’s exactly what’s on offer throughout May, during South Australia’s History Festival, run by the History Trust of South Australia. This year’s theme is Connections – something Katina sees play out on every tour. “Making connections with a place is really what a walking tour does,” she says.
This May, Katina is running four History Festival tours – including the premiere of her Rundle Mall tour – alongside more than 550 other events across 16 regions.
12 SA History Festival events not to miss in 2026
- Explore Adelaide’s underground magic club rooms
- Learn about SA’s parachuting cat and a “triple leap of death”
- Taste your way through SA’s most nostalgic snacks (Fruchocs included)
- Join a ghost crime tour inside Adelaide Gaol at night
- Discover the strange history behind Adelaide’s “hatpin panic”
- Dive into SA kitsch – the strange stuff that makes us great
- Watch cannon fire and musket drills at a colonial fort
- See a million-volt spark from a Tesla coil in action
- Explore a quarantine station complete with morgue and isolation ward
- Attend a live recording of Adelaide’s silliest (and funniest) history podcast
- Join Australia’s oldest cheese club – and taste some too
- Try Irish dancing set to live music (no experience required)
Check out the full SA History Festival program and grab tickets here.
