The city of Adelaide existed extensively in writing before one house had been built, before one street had been surveyed, before the place had been named or its site determined. It was built on acts of writing, and it had existed in writing, a city built of paper and parchment, for years before it became a physical fact. The city itself, with its geometric streets and quarried stone, seemed to be somehow absent from all the documents surrounding its establishment, as though it were the hole in the middle of a large discursive doughnut.

That might be understandable, given that the focus was on establishing the laws and limits of the colony, rather than on the city itself. But throughout the history of South Australian writing there seems to be surprisingly little emphasis on, or representation of, the city of Adelaide itself. South Australia has writers associated with Mt Gambier, Auburn, Penola and Eudunda; it has writers who write about China and Russia; it even has writers who write space operas. But by comparison with Brisbane or Perth or Hobart, much less with Melbourne and Sydney, there is relatively little writing grounded in the city of Adelaide, at least not in a way that brings it to life after the fashion of Patrick White's Sydney or Helen Garner's Melbourne or David Malouf's Brisbane.

In the many historical accounts, certain key documents are repeatedly mentioned as crucial points in the establishment of the colony of South Australia and the city of Adelaide.