William Light, also known as Colonel Light, was a British-Malayan naval and army officer. He was the first Surveyor-General of the new British Province of South Australia, known for choosing the site of the colony's capital, Adelaide, and for designing the layout of its streets, six city squares, gardens and the figure-eight Adelaide Park Lands, in a plan later sometimes referred to as Light's Vision.
Colonel William Light: Self Portrait, c.1815
William Light, Founder of Adelaide, SA, by George Jones RA, National Portrait Gallery, London.
Light's Vision at Montefiore Hill in North Adelaide
Original Light Memorial at Light Square
History of South Australia
The history of South Australia includes the history of the Australian state of South Australia since Federation in 1901, and the area's preceding Indigenous and British colonial societies. Aboriginal Australians of various nations or tribes have lived in South Australia for at least thirty thousand years, while British colonists arrived in the 19th century to establish a free colony. The South Australia Act, 1834 created the Province of South Australia, built according to the principles of systematic colonisation, with no convict settlers.
Aboriginal Family Travelling by W.A. Cawthorne.
Encounter Bay, 1847
Charles Sturt
An 1835 advertisement for the sale of land in South Australia