British colonisation of South Australia describes the planning and establishment of the colony of South Australia by the British government, covering the period from 1829, when the idea was raised by the then-imprisoned Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to 1842, when the South Australia Act 1842 changed the form of government to a Crown colony.
Ideas espoused and promulgated by Wakefield since 1829 led to the formation of the South Australian Land Company in 1831, but this first attempt failed to achieve its goals, and the company folded.
The South Australian Association was formed in 1833 by Wakefield, Robert Gouger and other supporters, which put forward a proposal less radical than previous ones, which was finally supported and a Bill proposed in Parliament.
The British Province of South Australia was established by the South Australia Act 1834 in August 1834, and the South Australian Company formed on 9 October 1835 to fulfil the purposes of the Act by forming a new colony financed by land sales. The first settlers arrived on Kangaroo Island in July 1836, with all of the ships later sailing north soon afterwards to anchor in Holdfast Bay on the advice of Surveyor-General, Colonel William Light. The foundation of South Australia is usually considered to be the proclamation of the new Province by Governor Hindmarsh at Glenelg on 28 December 1836.
However, after the government under the Colonisation Commission set up by the 1834 Act failed to achieve financial self-sufficiency, the South Australia Act 1842 repealed the earlier Act, made South Australia a Crown colony, provided for the formation of an appointed Legislative Assembly and passed greater powers to the Governor of South Australia (then Sir George Grey).
There were moves towards representative self-government in the mid-nineteenth century, and South Australia became a self-governing colony in October 1856.
Background
The French Nicolas Baudin and the British Matthew Flinders had both done exploratory voyages around the central southern coastline, an area previously ignored by Captain Cook and others. The two explorers met at what is now Encounter Bay in South Australia on 8 April 1802, and each gave names to various places around Kangaroo Island and the two gulfs (Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf). The British Government, not wanting to be pre-empted by the French, sent out new expeditions to Port Phillip and northern Tasmania, and set up the first free settlement, the Swan River Colony, in 1829.
Historian Geoffrey Dutton suggests three clear phases in the foundation of the colony: first, the practical men, with their discoveries; second, the theorists, in particular Wakefield and Gouger (who had not seen Australia); and lastly the settlers, who had to marry fact with ideals.
1829–1831
Wakefield
Influenced by prison reformer Elizabeth Fry serving a term in prison for abducting a minor, Wakefield turned his mind to social problems caused by over-population. In 1829, he wrote a series of anonymous "Letters from Sydney" to a London newspaper, The Morning Chronicle, in which he purported to write about his own experiences as a gentleman settler in New South Wales (completely fictitious), outlining his various ideas as a new theory of colonisation. He proposed an "Emigration Fund" payable by landlords' taxes and land sales, which would fund labour for the colonies. Gouger, an enthusiastic supporter, edited the letters and published them as a book, helping to distribute Wakefield's document.
Wakefield saw the colonies as "extensions of an old society"; all classes would be represented among the settlers. In addition, the colonies would be more or less self-governing. His ideas were not original, but Wakefield was the one who synthesised a number of theories into one plan of systematic colonisation, and who spread the ideas among the British public and urged the Colonial Office to push forward with such a plan. After his release from prison in 1830, he funded the National Colonization Society, with Gouger as secretary and a large number of enthusiastic members. Wakefield's ideas caused much debate in Parliament.
After Charles Sturt discovered the River Murray in 1830, more interest in Wakefield's scheme followed. One key component of the Wakefield Scheme was that the land price should be set high enough to prevent land speculation. In 1831 a "Proposal to His Majesty's Government for founding a colony on the Southern Coast of Australia" was prepared under the auspices of Gouger, Anthony Bacon, Jeremy Bentham and Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, but its ideas were considered too radical, and it was unable to attract the required investment.