While located eight and a half miles from the city proper, Port Adelaide was destined to become Adelaide’s main shipping Port. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, this was all mangrove swamps and mud flats. But when Captain Henry Jones of the Royal Navy first explored the area in 1834, he felt that the 21 foot depth of the Port River made it quite navigatable. Two years later, Colonel William Light (founder of the Adelaide settlement) decided that this area was suitable for the city’s main Port (even with its distance from the settlement). Thus, on January 6, 1837, Port Adelaide was formally established (as the Port Creek Settlement) with Captain Thomas Lipson as its first harbormaster. Colonel Light had hoped to create a canal between the Port and the city in order to make it easier to deliver supplies to Adelaide. However, a lack of financial support for this project kept it from being built. In 1840, a 336 foot long wharf - named Maclaren’s Wharf - was built allowing ships up to 540 tons to dock. The period between 1841 and 1970 was considered the heyday of Port Adelaide. With the introduction of container shipping and regional shopping centers, Port Adelaide began to decline. In 2005, 73 square miles of the Port River inlet was established as the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary - the first “urban” dolphin sanctuary in the world.
As the main shipping center for Adelaide, supplies would arrive from all over the world. This Customs House made sure that all the correct papers were filed and taxes paid on those supplies.