Adelaide History Tour - Colonel Light Survey Marker Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
By ParisLaura on 22-May-18. Waypoint GA12294

A city survey marker

If you haven't already been to this location, it is also the location of the first waypoint for earthcache GC7CN32.

I am not trying to piggy back on GC locations but I think this survey marker is an important historical monument for my Adelaide History Tour.  Therefore you can go ahead and check out the granite for the earthcache, but please make note of the information on the plaque and the nearby survey marker for the history lesson.

The History

This monument out the front of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, marks the location where Colonel William Light began his survey for the City of Adelaide in 1837.  The first public offices were also built at this location, as were the huts of Light and Resident Commissioner James Hurtle Fisher

Surveyor-General Colonel William Light commenced surveying the site on which the City of Adelaide was to be situated on 11 January 1837. The survey of 1042 ‘town acres’ was completed in just two months, despite the vegetation and a shortage of staff and resources. He was instructed to lay the city out with streets of ‘ample width’ arranged for the convenience of residents and ‘the beauty and healthfulness of the town’, and he was also required to provide for reserves ‘for squares and public walks’ (Advertiser, 17 July 1929, p10). These instructions were famously met in Light’s Plan, which set out Light’s design for the city. His grids of streets, the six squares and the surrounding parklands determine the layout of Adelaide today: it is a ‘city in a park’.

In March 1837 town acres were allocated by lot to people who had bought land before leaving England. The acres remaining were then sold by auction. No treaty was entered into with the Kaurna people, who had lived on the Adelaide Plains for generations, nor was the land purchased from them or any compensation paid to them for the loss of their land and livelihood. Revenue generated went into the colony’s coffers.

Offices of the Lands Department, headed by Resident Commissioner James Hurtle Fisher, and the Survey Department headed by Light, were also constructed on this site.  Adjoining these temporary wooden structures were the primitive huts of Fisher and Light.  All of these buildings were destroyed by fire in the afternoon of 22 January 1839.  Tragically, Light and Fisher lost most of their papers and worldly possessions.

The Memorial

The Royal Geographical Society on North Terrace, the committee recommended placing memorials across the state, including one ‘memorialising the place where the survey of Adelaide had begun’. The Adelaide City Council agreed and the work was commissioned.

The memorial took the form of an obelisk and base of pink granite from around Palmer in the Mount Lofty Ranges. It was erected on the parklands opposite the Newmarket Hotel on the corner of North Terrace and West Terrace.

In October 2011, the memorial survey marker was moved into storage while a new Royal Adelaide Hospital was being built on the site.  Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood said, 'The monument is to be restored before being placed among the new hospital landscape, bringing an important part of Adelaide's history into its future.

http://sahistoryhub.com.au/things/colonel-light-survey-marker

Logging this Cache

Like the rest of my history tour, I want you check out the plaque and have a read and gain an appreciation of the wonderful work that Colonel Light did when planning the city of Adelaide in such a short time.  When logging this cache, please include a unique photo with yourself included near the plaque.  While you are there dont forget to take note of first stage for the GC earthcache!

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