A vintage not to be repeated

In South Australia, the longevity of the Queen’s life and reign is best told by the fact that she outlasted the local car industry.

The Queen visits the General Motors-Holden plant in Elizabeth, South Australia, in 1963.

In South Australia, the longevity of the Queen’s life and reign is best told by the fact that she outlasted the local car industry.

As South Australians remembered the Queen on Friday, many recalled her 1963 visit where she formally opened the new northern satellite suburb bearing her name, Elizabeth, which was also the home of General Motors Holden.

On that same visit, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh visited the newly expanded Holden factory, where then premier Thomas Playford led them on a tour of the centre that stopped operating in 2020.

Newsreel footage from the visit shows the Queen and duke inspecting the best-selling car of the day, the EJ Holden sedan, one of which had been broken down into its 17,000 component parts and put on display for the royals.

“The Queen shows a keen interest in the display and is provided with some of the facts and figures relating to the production of some 600 Holdens each working day,” the narrator says.

“A model of the completed plant at Elizabeth helps her majesty gain an impression of the magnitude of the establishment.”

From the Queen’s 16 visits to Australia, seven of those trips took her to South Australia, the biggest of which was her first in 1954 when she and the duke were welcomed by 300,000 people — about 80 per cent of the state’s population.

That first visit included a special meeting with 98,000 schoolchildren at the Royal Showgrounds in Wayville, where in an act of continuity with the Royal Show currently under way, a minute’s silence was set to be held in the main arena on Friday night.

Governor Frances Adamson and Premier Peter Malinauskas led a special South Australian tribute to the Queen on Friday with the placement of what’s known as “the hatchard” outside Government House.

The hatchard is a black timber coat of arms bearing the state’s floral emblem, the Sturt Desert Pea, its animal emblem, the piping shrike, and the name of the late monarch.

It was first displayed at Government House in 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria.

“It is specific to SA,” Mr Malinauskas said. “There is a ­humility to it and a reverence as well. It was a privilege to see it being hung there at 7am on an ­appropriately drizzly morning.”