Urban myths in Adelaide... now there’s an eye-catching opener.

Within your two decades or more of being a South Australian inhabitant, you’ve surely heard some stories down the grapevine while indulging in a carafe on Rundle Street or from the people sitting in front of you on the bus. So which of the bits of gossip are true, and which are just fables and street fodder? Over several months we set out to answer these questions, laying down social experiments and irritating phone calls to the Famers Union helpline in our quest to reveal the secret underbelly of Adelaide’s urban myths.

1. The myth. Underground tunnels in Adelaide CBD

This one’s always a real winner for pub conversationalists – the ‘underground tunnels’ in Adelaide. No, that strange bearded man who has joined your table at the Exeter is not talking complete garbage, they actually exist. But I’m not so sure about the other rumours of a bloodsucking underground cult living in them.

According to SA Memory, the tunnels were built around 1836, and there are three confirmed within the CBD. One of them is underneath Victoria Square, one underneath the Festival Theatre, one underneath one of the major banks on King William Road and a fourth underneath Aldgate. The “Cave Clan” is an Adelaide based group devoted to exploring tunnels and drains, and apparently has at least explored the underground Aldgate route. They call it the ‘Mushroom Tunnel’ – draw your own conclusion as to what goes on down there from its name.

 You can check out http://www.geocities.com/dr_f1l_good/locations/ for more information.

The result. True!

In practise, we set to debunk this Iced Coffee myth by drinking a shitload of the stuff. So with a quick trip to the IGA we assembled our setup, and the results? 

First of all, the barcodes were not different. Our initial hypothesis was immediately made void, though needless to say we did enjoy the three days of Iced Coffee consumption afterwards. What was different, however, was a teeny tiny printed number on the tip of the carton. A few of our Iced Coffees were SV2 V53 whereas the rest were SV1 V55. We decided it was time to enlist a professional opinion, so we called up the Farmer’s Union Helpline.

FU: “Welcome to National Foods.” For sales and delivery enquiries press 1, if you have a sale enquiry press 2, for 
all other enquiries press 3”
M:  (presses 3)
M: “Hi there, I was wondering if you knew anything about Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee.”
FU: “Ah, I’ll just put you through to enquiries.”
M: (on hold)
M: (presses 2)
M: “Hi there, I was wondering if you knew anything about Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee and their different strengths according to barcodes.”
FU: “Ah yes, no it’s not true. We do make different strengths but that’s only the Farmers Union ‘Light’, ‘Strong’ and regular products. Barcodes are just for storage use. If there’s ever a different number of the carton it’s just the filler line that it was produced on, where and when it was manufactured.”
M: “Aw...”

So did they taste any different? Not a drop.

The result. False.

Shudder. Surely you’ve all heard this hideous record breaker claim at some point in time. You’ll be thankful to know it’s not 
true... entirely.

Let’s get the facts straight before you take another discriminatory jest about SA from your Melbournian friends. Adelaide is not the murder capital of the world, but it is the murder capital of Australia. Phew. Well, that’s the lesser of two evils, at least. And you can all blame two things for this unsavoury reputation - Snowtown and skewed graph results. The Australian Institute of Criminology figures show that Adelaide actually has a lower rate of homicide than the national average, but anomalies like Snowtown have brought us to the top of the chart in previous years as the city with “more serial killers per capita”.  Damn you, barrels!

The result Sorta true!

Anyone who’s driven up Cross Road has seen those Men in Black cut outs in the upstairs windows of that one house. They’ve been there for years, but who lives there? Is it empty?

Well, it’s not. The house was owned by resident Ken Wang until he sold last year. Mr. Wang had left the cut outs in the window for a staggering 10 years, due to a yearly influx of fan mail from people driving up Cross Road. The house is now in the hands of new owners, but they’re still there! If you drive past it today, you can still see Will Smith’s bespectacled scowl leering down at your car like a cardboard guardian angel. For further information, you can join the Facebook group ‘I dig the “Men In Black’ cardboard cut-outs in the window on cross road”. It has nearly 5,000 members! http://is-is.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8237576212

The result. Sorta true!

You can go fishing in the Torrens, but after the plug-pulling mishap earlier in the year we can’t guarantee you’ll catch anything more than blue-green algae or a swan corpse. Back in the day if you walked along the Festival Centre on a Friday night you’d usually be able see fisherman along the banks with their rods out. Oh come now, get those dirty thoughts out of your head. We chatted to Erin Gleeson, 20, who used to go out for a reel along the Torrens a few years back. “There would probably be fish in there still but there is nothing that you actually want. It’s all filthy carp that you wouldn’t even think of eating and you can’t throw them back in because they are so diseased. You’d catch about four of five.”

The result. True!

It’s scary as inhuman hell but it’s true – perhaps now you can see why Adelaide has an ominous murder reputation. The house has since been demolished, but a few years ago you might remember a kooky, angular white house just on the intersection of Fullarton Road and Greenhill Road. That house was home to an infamous Adelaide homicide almost 30 years ago, in which prominent lawyer Derrance Stevenson was shot in the head, cut up, put into two garbage bags and stored in his freezer with the door glued shut. Tasty! The man convicted of the murder was David Szach, Stevenson’s then 18-year-old gay lover – though to this day he maintains he is innocent.

The result. True!

So there you have it, some of the most common urban legends of Adelaide debunked and proved. Though we were going to investigate the ‘Best pot in the Southern Hemisphere’ rumour, deadlines didn’t permit. Do you know any other myths around the SA circuit? Let us know on our forum!