Our friends at Adelaide Mail have marked the most significant anniversary in South Australian transport history and possibly all of human civilisation.
It was April 2, 2025. The kind of unremarkable Adelaide Tuesday where the weather couldn’t decide what it was doing and someone, somewhere, was complaining about parking at Kent Town Bunnings.
On that day, perhaps accidentally, perhaps through sheer communal willpower, perhaps because the last person who’d tried it was still filling out the paperwork, no car drove on the O-Bahn tracks. And then, remarkably, neither did on the next day. Or the day after that. Or, as of today, for an entire year.
Three hundred and sixty-five days. A full lap of the sun. The longest streak in recorded O-Bahn history (at least since Adelaide Mail started counting, which admittedly wasn’t that long ago but felt important enough to formalise in a counter on their website, adelaidemail.com/obahncounter).
Prior to this current streak, the record was a comparatively modest 228 days. Before that, it was 158. Then 133. Then 108. There were stretches in there of just 28 days, which, for context, is roughly how long it takes to get served at the Port Elliot Bakery over Easter weekend.
“Forget the 40th anniversary,” said Adelaide Mail co-founder Dan Schmidt, pausing to let the magnitude of his statement sink in, which took a while. “This is the real celebration!”
Co-founder Trent Bartlett agreed. “Forget the 40th anniversary. This is the real celebration!” (They had workshopped this quote together and were both committed to it).
Dan and Trent celebrating the milestone
Just yesterday, to mark the eve of the occasion, Adelaide Mail improved an unused police road sign to read “POLICE NOW TARGETING CARS DRIVING ON THE O-BAHN” which was (for legal reasons) an April Fools’ Day prank. (see image at top)
This is, of course, not the first time Adelaide Mail has deployed the O-Bahn for “comedic” purposes, nor the first time the consequences came knocking. In 2018, Adelaide Mail posted a Facebook event for what they called a “Come and Try” O-Bahn Day , inviting members of the public to bring their cars down and have a crack at the tracks in what they presented as an officially sanctioned community event. The post went locally viral. The subsequent knock on the door from SAPOL also went locally viral, at least within the Adelaide Mail office/Ridgehaven Hungry Jack’s.
Adelaide Mail was founded in 2018 on the bold premise that South Australia deserved its own fake news source, and has since grown from a group of friends who were too polite to say it wasn’t funny into a genuine fixture of the local media landscape. Now with well over a dozen Instagram followers, hosting South Australia least listened to weekly podcast, and an official designation as “South Australia’s Other Fake News Source” (but if the courts ask, it’s satire).
You can find them at adelaidemail.com, or on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube — all @adelaidemail.
Keep an eye on Adelaide Mail’s socials for more content, updates, and the inevitable moment someone drives a car on the O-Bahn and resets the whole thing. When that happens (and it will happen) the counter will tick back to zero, and we’ll all quietly agree to never speak of this golden year again.
Until then: Well done, Adelaide. You did it. You absolute legends. You kept your Camrys off the concrete.
