William Light survey of Adelaide plains under severe pressure from arrival of settlers even before project started

The flagstaff erected by William Light and his survey team in 1837 on the beach, near the settlers camp, at Holdfast Bay, looking inland to the Adelaide plains where Light selected his capital city site. 
Image, possibly by John Michael Skipper, courtesy National Library of Australia

Surveyor general William Light was put under immediate pressure by settlers starting to arrive in South Australia in 1836 even before him and his survey team.

The influential South Australia Company, led by George Fife Angas, had persuaded the South Australian commission to allow the company’s ships to sail for South Australia and carry out settlers in 1836 three months before the survey team. At the same time, the commission was selling site-unseen land packages in the province even before a future capital city site had been selected by Light and surveys done to mark out the boundaries of the land packages.

Light sailed in the Rapid from London with a few of his survey team on May, 1836, and arrived at Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island, on August 20. His deputy George Strickland Kingston and others of his survey team, who had left Endgland before Light, finally arrived in the Cygnet on September 11. Light immediately sent Kingston to examine the water resources in south of the Mount Lofty Ranges while Boyle Travers Finniss did a trigonometric survey for a secondary town at Rapid Bay.

But George Ormsby, whose capabilities would have been valuable to run a second field survey team and enable Light to devote himself to planning the new settlement site that Light had selected on the Adelaide plains beyond Holdfast Bay. Light's settlement site inspection had only just begun when the barque Africaine anchored in Holdfast Bay on November 7 and put ashore the first 76 settlers.

Light had the added concern of providing food and housing for them as well as for his survey team that had been on salted provisions for seven months and desperately needed fresh meat and vegetables. Light sent the Africaine to Hobart and bring back provisions and livestock. A month later, the barque Tam o Shanter with another 74 passengers exacerbated his problems.

Frustrated by the conditions in the makeshift camp set up in the Holdfast Bay sandhills, the new arrivals kept pressuring Light to immediately select the first town’s site so that the city parcels could be set out and allocated. Light refused to compromise his precise approach to satisfy their immediate needs. Instead, he proceeded methodically with a preliminary survey of the plain from the foothills of the ranges to the coast and then north as far as the recently-discovered Port River.

Light paid particular attention to the flood plain of the River Torrens that cut through the Para Plateau, and flat land available on the escarpments to the north and south of the river. To set up 1,000 city parcels and its parks, he needed around five square miles of reasonably flat land. While the high sections of the Para Plateau on both sides of the River Torrens could accommodate this, the merchants who’d arrived with the first settlers were adamant that the town should be next to the sheltered landing point on the Port River.

The merchants applied intense pressure on Light to adopt their proposal but he wouldn’t give up his ideal inland location for a site covered by mangrove swamp and loose sand and lacking adequate fresh water. His refusal resulted in a campaign of severe personal criticism that endured for the rest of his time in the province.

In the preliminary plan that Light sent to the commissioners in London from his preliminary site survey he included a canal to be excavated between the landing point and a point on the River Torrens next to the proposed town site. Historians suggested that Light may have included this as a way to quell the merchants’ criticisms while having no intention of including it once his site had been approved.  

Light faced even more pressure when first governor John Hindmarsh arrived at Holdfast Bay on the HMS Buffalo on December 28. Former naval captain Hindmarsh was hellbent on having the capital city as a port.