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SA Ambulance Service

state ambulance service in South Australia, Australia

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ7388884
Source-derived summary

SA Ambulance Service (SAAS) is a State Government agency under SA Health, that provides emergency ambulance transport, clinical care and non emergency patient transport services to over 1.5 million people, distributed across an area of 1,043,514 square kilometres in South Australia, Australia.

The service employs approximately 1600 people, and utilizes 1200 volunteers, working out of 105 locations, operating 385 ambulance vehicles to provide emergency, non-emergency, aeromedical, rescue and retrieval services across the entire state.

History

In 1949 the metropolitan area was served by:

SA Ambulance Transport Inc. (originally Hindmarsh Volunteer Ambulance formed in 1921), seven vehicles based at Hindmarsh, Unley (from March 1931 on behalf of Unley City Council) and Port Adelaide (started in July 1922 as Port Adelaide Citizen's Ambulance)

Civil Ambulance (Police Department) two vehicles based at Angas St, Adelaide

Northern Suburbs Ambulance Association, one vehicle based at Prospect since 1 January 1947

Joe Myren's Private Ambulance, one vehicle based at Glen Osmond Road, Parkside since June 1927

In a ceremony at the St. John Ambulance Brigade annual review on Sunday 21 September 1952 metropolitan ambulance services in Adelaide (and later the country services) were formally merged to run by the St. John Council for South Australia Inc. which was part of St John Ambulance until 1993. Joe Myren's Private Ambulance was not merged immediately and continued to run independently until 1955 when the business and vehicle were sold to St. John for £500.

Through to the 1980s, the ambulance service in metropolitan Adelaide was staffed by volunteers at nights and weekends.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “SA Ambulance Service” as state ambulance service in South Australia, Australia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1600, 1200, 1949, 1921—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Ambulance, Service and state can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as state ambulance service in South Australia, Australia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7388884. VIAF identifies the subject as 152954058. The Library of Congress control number is n2013180044. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1600, 1200, 1949 and 1921.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “SA Ambulance Service”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow SA Ambulance Service primary sources, SA Ambulance Service archive and Ambulance research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “SA Ambulance Service”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from SA Ambulance Service” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.