Light, Finniss and Co. as private survey firm makes good start in 1838 until William Light's health fails

Early work for the new Light, Finniss and Company included a plan for the new town of Glenelg (inset) and a survey of the Port River. The main image above is 1839 watercolour on paper by William Light: Distant view of the landing place and iron stores at Port Adelaide with the South Australian Company's storeship Sir Charles McCarthy at anchor
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia

Light, Finniss and Company, land agents and surveyors, opened in a rented office in Hindley Street, Adelaide city, in 1838.

The firm comprised former South Australian surveyor general William Light, his assistant Boyle Travers Finniss and other former colonial survey team members William Jacob, Henry Nixon and George Thomas who had all resigned in protest at the instructions from the South Australian colonial commissioners board, brought back by George Strickland Kingston, that year. Their resignation had brought surveying  in the colony to a standstill.

South Australian resident commissioner James Hurtle Fisher met the complaints of the few dissatisfied preliminary landholders by opening up about 1,000 square miles of country to the south of the city and allowed dispersion to the north. This created a demand for surveys that Light, Finniss and Company was available to meet.

At first, Light, Finniss and Company business prospered with many small jobs on offer. Settlers banded behind them and and engaged the company to survey the Glenelg district. After that, the Harbour Survey Company, set up in September 1838, commissioned Light to survey the Port River at a rate of £3/3s a day.

But, by September 1838, Light’s health was failing. He was unable to attend a dinner to honour Charles Start who had arrived overland with a mob of cattle from New South Wales. In the next months, Light did less and less work.

Light's ilness meant most surveying was was left to Finniss but he devoted his time to caring for Light and rebutting charges about the poor quality work the surveyors had done on the Adelaide Plains.

By the spring of 1838, George Stevenson, editor of the South Australian Gazaette and Colonial Register , was publishing anonymous letters aimed at discrediting the original survey party. He alleged that the men had made many elementary mistakes when marking out the land, and that most of their work was hurried, careless and inaccurate.

Finniss vigorously denounced these accusations. He replied to a Stevenson anonymous letter in the Register, by writing to by writing to The Southern Australian: 

"Someone signing himself ‘An Observer’ wishes the public to infer that certain sections [were] incorrectly measured off by the late surveyors. . Section 88and 136 contain the proper quantity, if the lines are correctly measured on the ground… Section 152 does not exceed the quantity by two acres … and anyone who sees the position of 205 will admit that 10 or 20 acres of unavailable sandhills between the section and the sea are not a very valuable gift.”

Again, "An Expectant Landholder at Victor Harbor" complained in the Register that the map of the area surveyed by Finniss and Nixon was missing and, until it was found,there was no possibility of any person taking up land in the area. Finniss replied that all the papers were in his safekeeping and would be produced at the appropriatemtime when "the state of the survey department will, I presume, be made the subject of careful enquiry by proper authorities.”.

The survey department was now being run by Finniss’s arch rival Kingston, seeking to replace Light as surveyor general.

• Information from “The life of Boyle Travers Finniss (1807-1893)”  by Cleve Charles Manhood BA (Hons) Dip Ed, presented as thesis for degree of master of arts, history department, University of Adelaide, 1966.