[South Australia]

Tourist Guide. ABC Tourist Bureau. The Centre for Service ... Service Car Time-Tables. Vol. 2, No. 2, December, 1936 [cover title]

Adelaide, ABC Tourist Bureau, 1936.

Quarto, 176 pages with numerous illustrations (from photographs), many of them within advertisements.

Gilt-pictorial red card covers; a fine copy.

The cover subtitle ('Service Car Time-Tables') doesn't begin to tell the whole story. For each destination (some interstate, for example Portland, Hamilton, Lorne, and Sea Lake in Victoria, and Broken Hill, Mildura, and Wentworth in NSW), there is a potted history of the place, and advertisements from local, and almost invariably small, businesses. These often feature photographs of the business premises (mainly facades, but there are interior scenes too); 80 years later, it has become another worthy volume in the 'Lost Australia' series. Apparently there were three issues of this guide produced by the ABC (Austral Booking Company) Tourist Bureau: Volume 1, Number 1 in August 1935, this issue, and a Sydney Sesquicentenary issue in 1937.