Purchase of Adelaide city park lands in 1839 by colonisation commission gives them special, blurred status
An engraving by A. C. Cooke, published in 1876 by the Frearson Brothers, showing an aerial view, looking east, of the City of Adelaide, the River Torrens and part of North Adelaide at left, with William Light's vision for the Adelaide Park around the city still largely intact.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The Adelaide Park, as designated by first surveyor general William Light in his plan for it to surround the city centre, was saved crucially by being purchased by the South Australian colonisation commissioners in London for £1 an acre.
This purchase was important in preserving the park lands while green areas in other English and Australia cities, despite a 19th Century movement to create them, fell victim to private interests.
Adelaide Park Lands faced that fate when wealthy pastoralist and barrister Arthur Hardy informed South Australia’s second governor George Gawler in April 1839 that a group of the province’s settlers wanted to claim them for private purposes. This prompted Gawler (who’d taken over the extra role of resident commissioner previously held by James Hurtle Fisher) to act on previous instructions in 1838 from the South Australian colonisation commissioners to purchase the park lands.
The purchase was necessary as the concept of crown lands didn’t apply to South Australia. The province’s founding concept was that all land, except for a limited amount set aside for government to purchase, should be sold to fund an emigration fund.
On April 16, 1839, Adelaide's Park, the land set apart by Light for park lands was protected by being purchased by the colonisation commissioners at the price of £1 per acre. Five bills of exchange were drawn upon the colonisation commissioners’ account on September 13, 1839, “amounting in the aggregate to £2,300, for the purchase of the Park Lands, which bills were duly accepted, and paid at maturity”.
The whole £2,300 was directed to be paid to the credit of the South Australian emigration fund, as Gawler notified the commissioners on September 26, 1839:
“On the 13th instant, I drew the following bills. • No.s 86, 87, 88, 89 for £500 and No. 91 [sic] for £300 and have directed the whole sum of £2,300
to be paid into the bank of South Australia, to the credit of the Emigration Fund, for the purchase of so many acres of Park Lands around the city of
Adelaide, at £1 per acre, as authorised by your despatch dated September 1st 1838”.
On December 12, 1839, during Gawler's absence from Adelaide, the South Australian colonial secretary Robert Gouger tendered the colonial treasurer Osmond Gilles's receipt for £2,300, “in addition to £32 transferred from the Reserve Fund to the Land Fund on the 16th April, 1839”. That £32 was to buy the 32 acres of the Adelaide Park as a public cemetery – West Terrace Cemetery.
With the “Claim admitted” and published in the Government Gazette, the purchase of the Adelaide Park was completed with the South Australian colonisation commissioners accepting the arrival of the bills of exchange in London in 1840, being paid at 60 days sight in England.
The purchase of the Park Lands and West Terrace cemetery was recorded in the “Monthly Statement of Sales of Public Lands in South Australia”. and the commissioners acknowledged their payment of the bills for the purchase of the park lands:
"With regard to … lands in the vicinity of Adelaide, reserved for purposes of public health and recreation, as Park Lands; the Resident Commissioner
(previously James Hurtle Fisher) was authorised, on the 1st September, 1838, to purchase these lands out of the public revenue. The sum to be laid out
was not stated: but we have lately paid bills on this account to the amount of £2,300.”
Their puchase in 1838 by the South Australian colonisation commissioners gave the Adelaide park lands a special status – but a status unresolved because of the complications of the province's settlement.
The colonistisation commission was set up under the founding South Australia Act of the British parlament to be the fund raiser for the start of the province by selling land in the province. This meant South Australia was settled without an inch of its land being crown (government) land. The British government took no responsibility for the expense of setting up the province but retained control through the role of the governor.
In 1838, the colonisation commissioners began disallowing governor Gawler's bills of exchange due to his spending on the province's infrastructure vastly exceeding his authorised budget. To defray his expenses, Gawler was borrowing from the commissioners' land fund where the money from the purxhase of the park lands was deposited. The receipt recording Gawler's irregular loan or debt caused a great deal of confusion and dubious allegations over the purchase of the Adelaide Park..
As a result of Gawler's overspending, the British government took control of South Australia that became a British colony for the first time. This meant the British parliament was passing laws directly affecting South Australia, including the 1842 Waste Lands Act that provided for reserving lands for public recreation. The South Australian colonial government administration sought to turn this to their advantage: to cancel its £3000 of debt to the colonisation commissioners land fund, in South Australia.
The South Australian colonial government's rationale was that, although the Adelaide park lands had been bought for public walks (passive recreation) in 1838, this was no longer requred as land could be reserved now under the 1842 Waste Lands Act. In effect, the South Australian colonial government retrospectively rescinded the Adelaide Park purchase to avoid repaying the government's debt to the land fund that had been built from other purchases made by the settlers and investors of land in South Australia.
Captain Charles Hervey Bagot, in the South Australian Legislative Council in 1849, highlighted this “bona fide purchase” of the Adelaide park lands by those settlers and investors that meant the park lands “stood in a very different position … They were actually purchased”.