William Light skippers 'Rapid', taking some of survey team (and house keeper Maria Gandy) to seek Adelaide's site

William Light's sketch of the 162-ton brig Rapid he commanded for the journey to South Australia in 1836.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

William Light returned to London In January 1836 from Egypt and was appointed surveyor general, on a salary of  £400 a year, for the colonising of South Australia

John Hindmarsh, who had been appointed governor of South Australia (although Light had been recommended for that position by first choice as governor, colonel Charles Napier), put forward Light as surveyor general.

Most of his surveying staff and equipment had been selected before Light was appointed. The survey staff included deputy George Strickland Kingston and assistant surveyors Boyle Travers Finniss, William Jacob and W.H. Neale. Light asked for two more assistants but told the colonial commissioners that his survey team was “sufficiently strong” for slecting a capital site – not for the much larger task of country surveys.

Light fitted out the Rapid and, after a delay because of illness (dysentery, along with his tuberculosis), sailed in command of the ship with some of his staff in May 1836. Also on board were  William and Edward Gandy and their sister Maria. Maria became publicly regarded as his housekeeper and privately as his mistress, leading to him being ostracised by some sections South Australian society. Light had separated from his second wife Mary Bennet.

Also aboard was doctor John Woodforde who met Light when he worked for the pasha of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, in the early 1830s.

The main survey party, including deputy surveyor George Strickland Kingston, had left for South Australia earlier on the Cygnet. Woodforde, who was Light's doctor in England, was employed by the South Australian colonisation commissioners after being recommedned by Light. W.J.S. Pullen was one of Light's officers on the Rapid. Pullen had been employed on ship from Malta to England when Light was a passenger. He heard of the South Australia project from Light and decided to join him.

Arriving in South Australian waters in August 1836, Light rejected Encounter Bay’s unsafe harbour as a possible site for a capital city before going to Kangaroo Island where he found poor land and some South Australian Company employees and settlers from other ships on South Australia's first fleet who'd been there for a month – but no Cygnet.

Before the Cygnet arrived on September 22, Light started examining the mainland South Australian coast. Rapid Bay, near the foot of Gulf St Vincent, impressed him but he sailed north to what became known as the Adelaide plains to seek the harbour reported by the explorer captain Collett Barker and the whaling captain John Jones. Settlers had begun to arrive two weeks at Holdfast Bay on the Adelaide plains coast before Light found the entrance to the Port Adelaide river on November 21.

Light's Mediterranean travels gave Light confidence in Port Adelaide's small but safe harbour and its inland fertile plains, with the Lofty Ranges for water, as the site for his settlement. In accord with instructions, he visited Port Lincoln before finally deciding. He had returned to Gulf St Vincent and decided on the Adelaide plains as the the city site – rejecting Kangaroo Island, Port Lincoln and Holdfast Bay (later Glenelg) – before first governor John Hindmarsh arrived with other settlers on HMS Buffalo on December 28, 1836.