Fred Nixon's 1838 bank building image in Adelaide fingered as possible insult in a tree to George Kingston
Two 1838 paintings of the Bank of South Australia building on North Terrace, Adelaide. Inset: Mary Hindmarsh's version. Main image: The painting by Fred Nixon, with a tree stump in the foreground at left as a possible message for George Kingston.
Fred Nixon’s 1838 painted image of a scene in Adelaide could be one of the most pointed insults from the city’s turbulent early era of traded barbs.
In June 1838, the South Australian colonisation commissioners’ brig Rapid arrived at Port Adelaide with fresh orders. The orders recalled South Australia’s first governor John Hindmarsh to England and surveyor-general Light was told to perform a fast “running survey” of the province’s country land instead of an accurate trigonometric one. Failing that, Light would be replaced by unpopular George Strickland Kingston.
Light refused to comply with the direction and resigned, as did nearly all his surveyors. Arriving in South Australia around the same time – probably also aboard the Rapid – to work with the survey department was Fred Nixon. Fred Nixon shared the same name as Henry Nixon, a surveyor with Colonel William Light’s team, but there is no evidence that they were related. They both resigned from the survey project. In Fred Nixon's case, he apparently resigned in writing to Kingston on July 19, 1838, partly because he’d been given a boring desk job.
Fred Nixon copied his resignation letter to the newspaper on July 25. The date was a coincidence identified by David Coombe, whose 2018 research uncovered the origins of Fred Nixon’s painting of what he identified as the Bank of South Australia, one of the few large structures in Adelaide in 1838.
Coombe points out that watercolour and miniaturist artist Mary Hindmarsh – a daughter of John Hindmarsh – also painted the same building on the hill in North Terrace on “25th July 1838”. Coombe speculates that on July 25, 1838, Fred Nixon, free from employment, went painting with Mary Hindmarsh, both single, both 21: “The freshly resigned surveyor-general Colonel William Light may well have accompanied them that day to paint his own version” of the bank building.
Coombe noted that the views by Nixon, Hindmarsh and Light of the bank building were all similar: “But there is a unique feature in Nixon’s. Prominent in the foreground is a highly unusual tree stump. In the context of Nixon’s resignation, this anthropomorphic stump could have been a cryptic message to George Kingston!”
Fred Nixon's possible message to Kingston would have been directed at others by members of William Light's survey team after their poor treatment. They were poorly paid and had that pay witheld for a time by South Australian treasuer Osmond Gilles. Governor John Hindmarsh added to their lack of essential provisions by denying ration entitlements such as tea. This led to ill health (opthalmia, scurvy) due to denial of tea that ensured using water boiled. Bad weather, factional harrassment, political scheming and sabotage would have added to their annoyance.
