Adelaide. Montefiore Hill. Colonel William Light's statue overlooking the city he laid out in 1837 and the site he selected for it. .

Introduction.

William Julian Light has to be considered as one of the main founders of our city and state although he lived here for only three years until his death in October 1839. His vision, planning and surveying has left an indelible mark across the state. Sadly his time here was fraught with conflict, disrespect by many and ill health. He clearly knew that he was dying of tuberculosis for some time but he could not return to England so he died at his house in Thebarton. The South Australian newspaper in 1839 reported in mid September that “this highly esteemed colonist still continues in a very precarious state” and that there was little hope of recovery. When he died the government arranged a state funeral with the body carried from his home at Thebarton to Trinity Church where the service was conducted by the Colonial Chaplain Rev C Howard. Shops and banks closed for the day. The government offered £100 before the funeral to start a public memorial fund. The funeral was the largest congregation of people in the colony to that time. 423 gentlemen and state officials took part in the funeral procession and around 3,000 colonists followed. The body was appropriately interred in Light Square. Left is a

1904 painting of William Light owned by the Royal Geographical Society of SA.

 

Colonel William Light – his family heritage.

Francis Light, the father of William, was in the British navy and began the British settlement of Malaysia when he leased the Island of Penang from 1786. Francis Light founded the town of Georgetown and British Penang for the East India Company. Francis took a princess of Thai (Siamese) and Portuguese heritage from neighbouring Kedah as his bride whom he married in a local ceremony not recognised by the British. He had four daughters and two sons with Marina Rozells including William Light. Francis died in 1794 in Penang. Young William was born in 1786 in Penang and sent back to England for his schooling in 1792 to Theberton in Suffolk where he stayed in Theberton Hall owned by the aristocratic Doughty family. Francis Light’s Penang had a street grid pattern around a swamp, drains and a couple of hills. Church and mosque were allocated a zone with a cemetery further away etc and open ground was left around the fort and the public buildings. Undoubtedly Colonel William Light was very aware of his father’s design of Penang.

William Light joined the navy early and then the British Army from 1808-1814 when he served in Spain and elsewhere in the Napoleonic Wars under the Duke of Wellington. He was a brave leader and highly respected. When he left the Army in 1821 he married 19 year old E Perois in Northern Ireland. Her parents were probably Caesar and Mary Perois who are buried in the Londonderry Protestant Cathedral. She probably died a short time afterwards but nothing is known about her demise. He remarried in 1824 to nineteen year old Mary Bennet the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Richmond. At that time Light was 38 years old. Light and Mary moved in literary and artistic circles. Light and his wealthy bride bought a yacht and sailed the Mediterranean for several years. They finally explored Egypt. Light painted, wrote and published his work. When he returned to England on business his wife took up a new lover and the Light marriage ended in 1832. She later had three children with the surname of Light but they were fathered by two other men. William Light in 1832 began an affair with Maria Gandy who was 21 years old when Light was 45 years old. William Light returned to Egypt in 1834 to captain the steamer the Nile and it was at this time that he met John Hindmarsh and John Morphett. In fact it was in Egypt that Hindmarsh heard that Light was going to be offered the post of governor of the new colony. Hindmarsh returned to England with a letter of introduction to Sir Charles Napier, a friend of Light, who was going to be involved in the decision about the governorship and Hindmarsh put himself forward- successfully. Light was then offered the position of Surveyor-General. Maria voyaged out to South Australia in 1836 on the Rapid with Colonel Light and others as his housekeeper. Her two brothers Edward and William were on the Rapid. Another brother George who arrived in 1838 named his child William Light Gandy in 1840. Maria stayed with Light until his death in Adelaide when she inherited his estate. Her brothers stayed in Thebarton with William being the Hindmarsh pound keeper. Edward went to California and then the Victorian gold fields and was quite successful. He bought two hotels which he managed for the rest of his life. He was mourned when he died as an 1836 pioneer of SA. In 1840 a few months after Light’s death Maria Gandy married Dr George Mayo. She had four children with Dr Mayo before her own death of tuberculosis, probably caught from Colonel Light, in 1847. It was the Mayo family who inherited William Light’s land portfolio, his papers and paintings etc and they benefited from the sale and development of Lights section 1. A granddaughter of Dr Mayo and Maria Gandy was the well-known South Australia Dr Helen Mayo. Dr George Mayo became the chief surgeon at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for most of his life. He remarried in 1853.

 

Light – the man and his personal life.

William Light had an excellent balance of practical expertise, a good geographical eye, common sense and vision. He was a painter and writer. He kept meticulous diaries. He was known for his hard work, loyalty and commitment to his tasks in South Australia. He persisted against the wishes of Governor Hindmarsh who instigated a public meeting to have the site of Adelaide changed to Port Adelaide and the constant backstabbing and lies of his Deputy Surveyor General George Kingston and public criticism of his choice of the Adelaide site and the slow rate at which land was trigonometrically surveyed ready for sale. Unable to cope with the frustrations of his office and the lack of surveyors to speed up the work he resigned in June 1838 just before Governor Hindmarsh was recalled in July 1838. Colonel Light then established his own private surveying firm with Boyle Travers Finniss (who became in effect the first SA premier although that term was not used then). One of their major employees from the original survey team was Henry Nixon. When Governor Gawler arrived in October 1838 the survey department under the control of the incompetent Kingston was in disarray and Gawler appointed Captain Charles Sturt as Surveyor General. William Light was a religious man and along with Maria Gandy they were both among the original 32 subscriber donors to Trinity Church on North Terrace. Yet when Light was on his death bed Reverend Charles Howard of that church refused to visit Colonel Light. Colonel Light established Light Finniss and Co in July 1838 with their offices in Stephen’s Place. The new company received private commission to lay out several important SA towns namely Gawler which still has a Light Square and an Anglican Church in a central square (Orleana Square); and Glenelg which was a private town on the land of William Finke. Light’s company laid out Glenelg by 30 March 1839 with a central square (Torrens Square) for the Church of England (Anglican) as he had done in Gawler. Governor Gawler approved this town plan of Glenelg on 18 May 1839 and his wife proposed the name of St Peters for the church. Glenelg had earlier been set aside as a town reserve but it was thrown open to selection by ballot in February 1839 when Finke and others won the ballot. Light Finniss and Co also laid out the village of Marion along the banks of the Sturt River. Colonel Light died in October 1839 and Boyle Finniss returned to the public service as Deputy Surveyor General also in late 1839 under direction of Edward Charles Frome who was Surveyor General from October 1839 to February 1849. Frome reported his early work was redoing the sections around Adelaide which had been inaccurately surveyed by George Kingston.

 

Light - Surveying, Mapping, Military Skills and Planning.

Colonel Light between September and December examined at least six possible sites for the siting of Adelaide. He chose the Adelaide Plains after his explorations of the harbour at Port Adelaide area at the end of September 1836 but not the actual location of the city as the River Torrens had not been discovered at that time. Kingston and John Morphett and others discovered the River Torrens in November as Holdfast Bay had also been discovered. Light then favoured the current Adelaide site but the final decision was not made until December 1836. Light’s assistant surveyor was George Kingston who lied about being a surveyor and had no skills at surveying. The areas of the city which Kingston surveyed were redone by Light because of the numerous errors. Surveying of Adelaide began on 11 January 1837 covering areas north and south of the River Torrens and covering 1,042 town acres surrounded by 2,300 acres of figure eight parklands exclusive of 32 acres for the cemetery and a further 38 acres for public squares. The city lands were sold in March 1837. The areas surrounding the city area were also surveyed in 1837 and put up for public sale. All these surveys were done by trigonometrical surveying which is the most accurate and Colonel Light’s theodolite is pictured left. All started from trig point one on the corner of North and West Terraces. This was also the location of Resident Commissioner James Hurtle Fisher’s cottage and the Surveying Office occupied by Light and Light’s cottage. Both these cottages were destroyed by fire in January 1839 when Light lost most of his papers and drawings. January 1839 was also the time when Light moved into his new house on his Thebarton lands. Most of the Adelaide metropolitan area was surveyed in 1837 creating 137 sections of land each of 134 acres. Those who bought land orders in England before colonisation at the reduced price of 12 shillings per acre could then purchase 134 acres instead of the advertised 80 acre sections which were to apply elsewhere. On 18 May 1838, just over a year since the sale of Adelaide town lots, Light declared that 150,000 acres of land was ready for settlement, or almost so. They were:

69,000 acres around Adelaide; 27,000 acres at Rapid Bay; 5,400 acres at Yankalilla; 20,000 acres on Kangaroo Island; and 28,000 acres in the Onkaparinga Valley. But a month later Colonel Light resigned as Surveyor General.

 

Light and Adelaide.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield who had played a role in promoting the concept of the colony and had had help from the Duke of Wellington to get the SA Act passed in the British parliament hoped the capital of the new colony would be named Wellington. But King William IV was asked if he wanted the capital named after himself. He declined and asked for it to be named after his wife Adelaide. Not to be deterred when Edward Gibbon Wakefield established his New Zealand Company in 1839 his first settlement was named Wellington. It later became the capital of New Zealand. Colonel William Light was given the task of selecting the site for the new capital in line with set criteria and his own expertise. The capital had to have a nearby port, a river for a water supply and a hinterland of good arable land for farmers etc. Light discounted other sites including Rapid Bay, Port Lincoln and Encounter Bay because they did not meet all of these criteria and he chose the current site. It was a few miles from a safe port at Port Adelaide, had extensive fertile lands to the north and south, and as he had spent years in the Mediterranean he knew the orthographic effect would increase the rainfall of the Mount Lofty Ranges to provide adequate water in the River Torrens and other streams. Ground water was also available from wells and bores under the proposed city. He chose a spot safe from flooding which was a problem below the city site and also one with a zone of higher rainfall between it and the foothills. Although the site was criticised by some led by Governor Hindmarsh, hindsight has shown that Light could not have chosen a better location. He sited the cemetery below the residential areas on West Terrace and he selected North Adelaide for grander residences away from the commercial areas.

 

But it was his actual plan for the city which earned him a great place in urban history. He knew from his days in the British Army that grid patterns worked well. But he introduced numerous squares and an encircling belt of parklands or green space. Colonel light was a well-read educated man and undoubtedly drew on the work of previous town planners. Perhaps he drew inspiration from the planners of beautiful Georgian Bath in the late 1700s with its grand boulevards, parks, terrace houses and arcs and curves. Or perhaps he was influenced by General James Oglethorpe, the designer of Savannah, Georgia which was done in 1733. Savannah has a grid plan, with each block divided by a narrow street and with 18 town squares. The wide main street of Savannah crosses five of the town squares, whereas in Light’s plan for Adelaide the wide main street (King William Street) only crosses Victoria Square. Savannah is not surrounded by a parkland belt. Colonel light was a world leader with this brilliant idea. At the end of the 19th century Light’s ideas were used in the garden city movement in Britain and America. Serendipitously these ideas were used by Charles Reade in the planning of Colonel Light Gardens.

 

Done