South Australia at the time of the arrival of the Harris family in South Australia the colony was only some 42 years old.

The story of the free colony of South Australia, and its capital of Adelaide, began in Newgate Prison in London, England, in 1827 when a Edward Gibbon Wakefield was placed behind bars for the abduction of a school girl heiress, Ellen Turner.

Imprisonment over the Turner affair did not rob him completely of his talents or ambitions surrounded by impoverished convicts, many of whom were to end their days in the penal colonies of Australia, he became interested in the theory of colonisation and studied all available literature on the subject.

His study was a topical one, particularly in the overcrowded poverty stricken larger cities of England where some affluent interests, critical of the convict system of colonisation and the handing out of large tracts of land to capitalists, were searching for a way to make "arable land available to free honest labourers." (1)

From these ideas, following his release from prison, the South Australian Land Company was formed, and with some difficulty this subsequently led to the colonisation of South Australia in 1836.

By the early 1870s the colony had developed to the extent of having some 40,000 people , one of the most prosperous communities at that time of the British Empire.

Adelaide, the main settlement of the colony, was by then the centre of the telegraphic system of the continent and had a well organised postal service, newspapers, sealed streets, with regular horse transport being introduced in 1878. Gas lights lit up the streets, theatre was flourishing and horse racing and cricket were popular pursuits.

South Australia was well served by mail steamers and fast sailing ships. In order to allow fast turn around of the ships the captains did not negotiate the Port River but instead anchored off shore at Glenelg, Semaphore or Largs. The slow turnaround is illustrated with the Harrris family arrival in the Scottish Lassie where it took nine days to get from Semaphore to Port Adelaide.

Passengers, mail and light cargo were offloaded into small boats and taken to the piers which jutted out into the sea from the sandy beaches, and then transported to Adelaide or adjoining areas. With the Harris family their destination was the closeby Port Adelaide, no doubt chosen because of the previous association of the family with the sea, boats and ports.

By the time of arrival of the Harris family in the late 1870s the population had grown, largely through immigration from England and other places to almost 150,000, and the colony had reached a stage of being a well functioning settlement, much larger than the island of Guernsey.

Life in the large Island of Australia was different however from that of the Channel Islands, members of the family moved to different locations, some went to other States, some to the United States of America, and others back to the mother land of England. Contact was lost and the family relationships slowly broke down.