Taking Possession

Light's plan for Adelaide as the capital city has been the most famous and widely admired aspect of the settlement of South Australia. The precise position of the city was fixed on the last day of 1836. The next ten days Light spent .'… in looking repeatedly over the ground, and devising in my own mind the best method of laying out the town according to the course of the river, and the nature of the ground'.

The survey and staking out of Sections for the 1,000 town acres began on 11 January 1837 and was completed on 10 March; the first allocation of purchased being on 23 March. This was a remarkable achievement compared with the survey of Melbourne in the same year, when with considerably larger resources, five months were required for laying out a town of only 240 acres. The rectangular grid with formal squares has been widely used, at least since Roman times, in laying out new towns in conquered or colonial territory. Light's own travels in India and Mediterranean countries would have acquainted him with many examples to imitate or avoid. What made Adelaide unique among the thousands of grid pattern towns founded in the nineteenth century was the sensitive adjustment of the street grids to variations in terrain, the wide streets, and the surrounding girdle of parkland.

Light's plan was in no sense a zoning map allocating further land uses, but he did suggest a cathedral for the centre of Victoria Square and a government house at the north end of King William Street. Neither building eventuated on Light's proposed sites. His North Terrace had the potential to become one of the world's truly elegant streets, a promise only partly fulfilled over the 150 years.

The instructions from the Colonisation Commissioners made no reference to a parkland belt, but the concept was well known to urban designers and social reforms. Partial 'town belts' and Government Reserves were incorporated in the surveys of Melbourne and in several New Zealand cities. Their purpose, among others, was to concentrate urban settlement and maintain relatively high land prices by restricting the supply of allotments initially open to purchase.

The distinctive features of the Adelaide parklands have been their size (850 hectares), their complete encirclement of the town, and their durability over time, even though one-third of the original area is now used for buildings, railways tracks and sporting activities. However, Light's map does not suggest that he envisaged all the parklands being reserved for pristine nature or for ornamental grounds. Within the parklands, he sketched sites for a cemetery, race-track, hospital, school, market and barracks.

Surveys of country lands on the Adelaide Plains commenced in April 1837. By November about 24,000 hectares had been completed, despite meagre resources of manpower and Light's increasing debility from tuberculosis.

The plan had a basic rectangular grid modified by diagonal routes to Port Adelaide and Glenelg and northeastwards on both banks of the River Torrens. These 'country' roads, one chain in width, became the basic structure of the future metropolitan road network. Port Road was surveyed at three times the standard width to provide a reserve for a future canal, possibly a concession for those who thought the city was placed too far from the port.

The first purchasers in England of Preliminary Land Orders were entitled to 134 acre Sections. These were surveyed in the prime locations adjoining the diagonal routes and on the best soils east to the foothills. The remainder of the Adelaide Plains were laid out, for the most part, in 80 acre Sections as originally proposed by the colonisation theorists.