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Anna Kelsey-Sugg and Greg Appel for Earshot

Elizabeth is one of Australia's most disadvantaged suburbs but its community spirit is strong

The influence of the former Holden factory is everywhere in Elizabeth, including on this 40-metre mural at the local shopping centre. (Image: Eric Algra, from This Is Our Town)

Rock legend Jimmy Barnes put the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth in the spotlight when he wrote about his tough upbringing there, in his 2016 book Working Class Boy.

Barnes described the place as very rough in the 1960s and 70s: drugs, alcohol, gangs and fighting were all part of life.

Jimmy Barnes performs at the Thebarton Town Hall, Adelaide, in 1980. (Image: Eric Algra, from This Is Our Town)

But it wasn't the first time Elizabeth had made headlines.

"Elizabeth is a brand-new city with a bright future, a good place to grow," boasted the South Australian Housing Trust in 1960.

It was named after the Queen and she gave it the royal blessing on a visit in 1963.

"My husband and I are delighted to have been able to come and see Elizabeth," she told thousands of onlookers at the time.

"May this town, and its people, prosper and develop in the years to come."

Sir Thomas Playford, South Australia's then-premier, must have had a big smile on his face hearing that.

"He was a man with a vision," says Marilyn Baker, an Elizabeth resident since 1958 and its mayor for 12 years from 1995.

"He made that statement, 'You build General Motors Holdens, and I will bring the people'.

"And that's exactly what he did," she says.

Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive at the General Motors-Holden plant in 1963. (Image: City of Playford Library Service)

Playford enticed American multinational General Motors to build a Holden plant at Elizabeth in 1958, and thousands of locals were employed to power it.

It changed the suburb and, in many ways, improved it. But the journey of Elizabeth has been far from smooth sailing.

Listen to Greetings from Elizabeth

A 'dangerous' place

Despite the Queen's blessing, Elizabeth's history has been bumpy.

In 2020, the Adelaide Advertiser called Elizabeth "Adelaide's most dangerous suburb" because of its crime rates.

Photographer Eric Algra grew up in Elizabeth. He says the suburb has long had a reputation as a "welfare town" and a tough place to grow up.

Elizabeth was established by the SA government during the period of "populate or perish" national policies of the 1950s.

Manufacturers like General Motors-Holden were the "raison d'être for Elizabeth's existence", Algra says.

The impressive Holden plant was a huge source of pride for the suburb and its residents. (ABC News: Tony Hill)

Holden was to provide "employment and a new life in a new country for thousands of post-war migrants".

And while the car manufacturer did bring plenty of new jobs, unemployment remained high in Elizabeth, and with that came disadvantage.

Some describe it as a place they've always wanted to drive through fast, past the abattoirs, the servos and the pre-fabricated cement homes.

There's even a local street named Bogan Road, though no-one seems to know why.

The council wanted to change the name, Algra says; they considered it "kind of inappropriate".

"But the locals didn't want to change."

So Bogan Road stayed.

Bogan Road is a point of pride for residents who embrace the gritty quality of Elizabeth. (Image: Eric Algra, from This Is Our Town)

"There's a funny ownership of that shitty character," says Nick O'Connor, music educator at Northern Sound System, a youth-focused music organisation in the heart of Elizabeth.

"I think if you absorb the hate and wear it with pride, there's a strength there."

Little River Band, Cold Chisel, the Angels

Despite the rough edge – or perhaps because of it – creativity in Elizabeth has always boomed.

In its earlier decades, the suburb was "the centre of music in Australia", former mayor Baker says.

Marilyn Baker, former mayor of Elizabeth, has lived in the suburb since 1958. (Image: Greg Appel)

One of Australia's best-known musicians, Glenn Shorrock, first jumped on a stage in Elizabeth. He learnt his trade there growing up in the late 1950s and 60s.

"It was a momentous time," he says.

Shorrock was from the "working class side" of Main North Road, which divided his kind from the "snotty nosed people who live up in the Adelaide foothills", he says.

In his teens, he got up on stage at an Elizabeth youth club to mime along to Elvis' All Shook Up – until the record player broke, and he had to sing it alone.

"I found that I could do it. And people clapped at the end of it. And that was it," Shorrock says.

He went on to become a legend of the Australian music scene, fronting bands The Twilights and Little River Band.

Glenn Shorrock shot to fame as the lead singer of the Little River Band, performing here in the US in 1980. (Getty: Paul Natkin)

Shorrock was in good company. The Angels and Cold Chisel also have their roots in Elizabeth.

O'Connor says young music-makers in the suburb today don't necessarily recognise names like Shorrock or Barnes, but music still rages loudly and proudly among them.

"It's like these kids have cultural memories of the music of the area without actually knowing it," he says.

O'Connor recounts a "very illustrative" story about Jimmy Barnes' older brother John Swan, or Swanee, carrying a drum kit around in an old pram from rehearsal to rehearsal in the early Elizabeth days of Cold Chisel.

"Obviously, there was a lot of young, displaced people … making the most of the tools they had."

Music educator Nick O'Connor says there's a thriving community of young music makers in Elizabeth today. (Image: Greg Appel)

It's something he says plenty of young people in Elizabeth are still doing today.

'The jewel in the crown'

Stewart Underwood was just 16 years old when he started working in Holden's Elizabeth plant in 1969.

He invokes all the senses when he talks about his time there.

The roaring sound from the body assembly area, the pasty he'd sneak off for when work settled down for a bit at 8.30am, the heat of the final paint oven from which cars would emerge "absolutely gleaming, pristine".

Working there was exciting; you never knew what car model was coming next, he says.

"When the [1970] HG Monaro GTS 350 in lakeside green came out … I just melted. I just cried."

Stewart Underwood says there was a sense of excitement working at Holden, where he signed up at the age of 16. (Image: Greg Appel)

A sense of pride swelled around the Elizabeth plant.

"We were doing well. We were the jewel in the crown. The Yanks would come over and say, 'We are nowhere near what you guys are doing'," Underwood says.

By 1978, when Holden's first Commodore was released, photographer Algra says the plant was taking on thousands of workers to fill shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For a time, he was one of them. The job allowed Algra to save up enough money to buy his first camera.

But since the closure of the plant in 2017, the existing unemployment problem has only been exacerbated.

Cement prefabricated homes, many of which have been demolished, are a relic of Elizabeth's early days. (Image: Eric Algra, from This Is Our Town)

Two years after the closure, many former Holden workers had still not been able to find stable employment

In 2018, Playford, Elizabeth's city council area, was one of the most socially disadvantaged in Australia, with 59 per cent youth unemployment.

But these are figures that don't reflect the full picture of Elizabeth. 

Algra, who spoke with many Elizabeth residents in compiling his most recent photography collection, This Is Our Town, was struck by their pride in their suburb.

"There's good community spirit," he says.

There was celebration and sadness among the thousands who flocked to Elizabeth before Holden's 2017 closure. (Image: Eric Algra, from This Is Our Town)

Shorrock feels it too, and his connection to his home suburb hasn't diminished.

"I still love going back there," he says.

"My mother's 101 now and she's still there. My sister's there. I've still got a lot of old colleagues from the Twilights and various other musos [there].

"That was where I sowed my wild oats," he says.

"That's where it all happened, baby."

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