Colours of the 10th Battalion and 27th Battalion RSAR and hat colour patch
The Royal South Australia Regiment is a reserve regiment of the Australian Army consisting of a single battalion, the 10th/27th Battalion, part of the 9th Brigade. It was raised on 1 July 1960, as The South Australia Regiment.
History
The Regiment traces much of its history to early volunteer and citizen militia units from pre-federation Australia. The history of the units that formed the current Regiment are dealt with individually on those pages.
1960 – present
On 1 July 1960 the South Australia Regiment was formed by the amalgamation of three infantry battalions in South Australia:
These three battalions were formed into 5 Companies:
A Company (The South East Company) (from the SA Scottish Regt)
B Company (The River Company) (from the SA Scottish Regt)
C Company (The Mid North Company) (from the Hindmarsh Regt)
D Company (The Adelaide Company) (from the Adelaide Rifles)
E Company (The Port Adelaide Company) (from the Adelaide Rifles)
Later in 1960, The Regiment was renamed 1st Battalion Royal South Australia Regiment, bringing it in line with the other State and National regiments. On 1 July 1965, the Regiment was reformed as 2 battalions, taking their names from the battalions that formed the regiment: The 10th and 27th. On 29 November 1987, the 10th and 27th battalions were amalgamated to form the 10/27 Battalion Royal South Australia Regiment, the Regiment's current title.
Other information
The Royal South Australia Regiment has been awarded the Freedoms of the following towns:
The organisation of military units in Australia has been a complex and shifting affair since colonisation. The following is an attempt to list the preceding units of the RSAR in chronological order. Units were raised, disbanded and perpetuated in a variety of forms that is not easy to show in a simple list. Often units, depending on their status as volunteer, militia, or regular, were similarly numbered and named, for example the 43rd Infantry Battalion and 2/43 Battalion, AIF in World War II, and often units were split, amalgamated, resplit and reformed, making it almost impossible to create a straight family tree as is often seen for the British Army.
A broad statement is that the Royal South Australia Regiment is preceded by units often known as the 10th (or 78th or Adelaide Rifles), 27th (or SA Scottish or Boothby), 43rd (or 76th or SA Infantry or Hindmarsh), and 48th (or Torrens), and units bearing these designations are now perpetuated in RSAR.
As part of the Plan Beersheba Reforms, the 81 mm mortar-equipped 6th/13th Light Battery (formed through an amalgamation of the 16th and 48th Field Batteries) and 3rd Field Squadron were absorbed in the Battalion in 2013 and 2014 respectively in order to provide the Battalion with organic offensive support coordination and indirect firepower, and light engineering support. 6th/13th Light Battery was later amalgamated with other Light Batteries in the 2nd Division to form the 9th Regiment, RAA.
