Colony : strange origins of one of the earliest modern democracies

In 1856 the remote colony of South Australia had the secret ballot, votes for all adult men, and religious freedom, and in 1857 self-government by an elected parliament. The basic framework of a modern democracy was suddenly established. How did South Australia become so modern, so early? How were British institutions radically transformed by British colonists, and why did the Colonial Office allow it? Reg Hamilton answers these questions with an amusing history of the curious institutions of unreconstructed Dover before modern democracy, in the period 1780-1835, and of the spirited and occasionally shameful conduct of colonists far from home, but determined to make their fortune in the distant colony of South Australia.