William Light

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Colonel William Light (1786 - 1839) was born in Kuala Kedah, Malaya in 1786, an illegitimate son of Captain Francis Light, the Governor of Penang, and Martina Rozells, the so-called "Princess of Kedah" of mixed Siamese-Portuguese descent.

When he was thirteen he volunteered for the Royal Navy and served for two years. He then travelled through Europe and India before joining the British Army in 1808. After courageous service against Napoleon's forces from 1809 to 1814 in the Spanish Peninsular War, he went on to serve in various parts of Britain as a Captain. He married in 1821. In 1823 he returned to Spain to fight in the Spanish Revolutionary Army as a lieutenant colonel. He was badly wounded and spent the next six years travelling Europe and the Mediterranean, accompanied by his second wife Mary (due to a lack of information his first wife is presumed dead).

Between 1830 and 1835 he helped Mohammed Ali, founder of Egypt, to establish a Navy. One of the captains in the navy, John Hindmarsh later become Governor of South Australia, and through Hindmarsh, Light was offered a post as surveyor-general. He sailed for South Australia with his mistress Maria Gandy (his second wife having left him for another man), and some of his staff on the Rapid.

In 1835, Light was appointed Surveyor-General to the new colony of South Australia, where he laid out the street plan of the city of Adelaide which persists to this day. His role in founding and designing the South Australian capital is remembered as "Light's Vision", and commemorated with a statue on Montefiore Hill pointing to the City of Adelaide below. Legend has it that this was the spot from which the Colonel chose the site for the city. Light's design for Adelaide is noted as one of the last great planned metropolises; the city's grid layout, interspaced by public squares, has made it an ideal modern city, able to cope with traffic, and the Adelaide Parklands that surround, provide a "city in a park" feel.

Light resigned from his position in 1838 after refusing to use less accurate surveying methods for country surveys and formed a private company. In January 1839 the Land and Survey Office and his adjoining hut burned down, taking some of the colony's early records and many of Light's diaries, papers and sketches with it. He died later that year on 6 October, finally succumbing to the effects of tuberculosis.

Light spoke several languages and was an artist, many of his sketches were published in London in 1823 and 1828.

He was buried and immortalised in one of the five squares of the City of Adelaide: Light Square, Adelaide, and a memorial was erected in 1843 (replaced in 1905). There a monumental obelisk, topped with a surveyors theodolite, signals his resting place.

[edit] References

• "Light, William", Angus & Robertson concise Australian encyclopaedia (1983), ISBN 0-207-14820-1
• Elizabeth Kwan Living in South Australia: A Social History Volume 1:From Before 1836 to 1914 (1987)