SA-licon Valley: Inside the Tonsley Innovation District, where local innovators making global waves

The old Mitsubishi logo is easy to make out in the middle of the floor. It’s a little faded and the concrete around it a little cracked, but it’s unmistakeable all the same.

These days there aren’t too many other obvious signs to remember that this was once the epicentre of automobile manufacturing in southern Adelaide.

Now, rather than the buzz of machinery, there’s the hum of quiet conversations from the nearby cafes, where a group of students, workers and tradies line up for the morning coffee.

About 100m down, beneath the high ceilings and concrete floors that once housed production lines of car workers producing state-of-the-art Mitsubishis, TAFE students train on cranes and scissor lifts. A short stroll nearby finds a small group sitting around the indoor garden for what appears to be an impromptu meeting.

It’s a calm and relaxed environment on this very brisk winter morning. But it’s inside the walls of the nearby open plan glass and modern steel buildings, which border the wide open courtyards, where the real action is taking place.

A short stroll to a modern, glass-faced office nearby and you enter a business that’s making mobile X-ray units being used on the frontline of conflict in Ukraine.

The same crew is making cameras that can spot bombs through suitcases, has a contract to put mobile CT scanners in ambulances to help stroke victims, and has airport check-in technology so advanced that it has been picked up by the US Department of Homeland Security and will be installed in at least one US airport.