George Fife Angas in South Australia from 1851 after low point in business in England but still promoting colony
The Lindsay Park mansion and estate, near Angaston, where George Fife Anas lived from 1851. Designed, and originally intended for, his son in law Harry Evans, the home became part of South Australian state heritage.
George Fife Angas’s arrival in Adelaide in 1851 brought his recovery from his lowest business point in England – without diminishing his devotion to promoting South Australia.
During South Australia’s economic depression in the early 1840s, Angas stepped up promoting the colony to intense lobbying. He gave evidence to the British parliament’s select committee on South Australian affairs in 1841. Despite his passionate faith in self help, he became convinced the colony would founder without aid from the British government.
His interviews with the colonial office, his lecture tours and his widely distributed literature on South Australia helped to ensure a financial grant was passed by parliament. It saved the colony's credit and gave the Australian colonies a uniform minimum price for land.
But Angas own fortunes waned and his family dispersed. In 1843, his three daughters married, and his sons George French and John Howard left for South Australiawith his father's personal agent. Angas and his wife moved from their “beautiful and convenient” London home at Paddington to a “humble retreat” near Gravesend. In 1844, Angas had to sell his copperas works and mahogany trade at Newcastle and began to dispose of other assets.
After a narrow escape in a shipping collision on the River Thames and news of his ships being wrecked, Angas's health declined. He revived when son George French Angas returned in 1846 to exhibit his paintings and win patronage from the prince consort but gloom soon returned. In November, Angas closed his counting house and, while solicitors wound up his affairs, he travelled for five months, under medical orders, taking daily exercise on horseback.
In 1848, Angas decided to go to South Australia. The German religious refugees he’d financially assisted to get to South Australia were at last paying their rents on his land in the Barossa Valley and the South Australian Company was again paying a dividend. Angas resigned as the company’s chairman and director and, with new vigour, planned many colonial ventures, from exporting tallow to drain pipes made by machine.
He lectured, wrote and lobbied, this time for the Australian colonies' government bill that advanced self government in South Australia. When it passed in August 1850 and all his English property was sold, Angas sailed with his wife and youngest son in the Ascendant and arrived in Adelaide in January 1851.
Angas was greeted by his children and old friends, and praised at a public dinner for years of energetically promoting the colony's welfare in London. His spacious home at Lindsay Park near Angaston was designed, and originally intended for, his son-in-law Henry Evans. Built from marble and sandstone all quarried on the property, with English oak panelling brought out as ships’ ballast, it was completed in the late 1840s. Angas improved the property and built a chapel, roads and bridges.
As his health recovered, Angas travelled through the settled areas, attending many public events and often preaching. Later he bought Prospect Hall as his town house. The town of Angaston, first known as German Pass, was laid out by Angas in 1857. He was elected unopposed as member for Barossa in the Legislative Council and served until 1866.
Angas remained protective of South Australia’s reputation. When Robert Harrison’s 1862 Colonial Sketches included unkind comments about Adelaide's climate, Angas allegedly bought up all available copies and had them destroyed.
Angas was very interested in educating the young. He was a firm believer in Sunday schools and organised a school society for South Australia. He was closely involved with setting up free schools in the outer districts of South Australia. In 1865, one school was opened at Bowden and another at Norwood. He brought up his own children with regular morning and evening family worship.