Papers of Colonel William Light, first Surveyor-General of South Australia, comprising inward and outward correspondence, miscellaneous papers relating to Light's work and personal life, diary, notebooks and sketchbooks, watercolour and pencil sketches, maps and printed records. William Light was a soldier, surveyor, linguist, reporter and competent artist. The son of Captain Francis Light and Martinha Rozells, William was born 27 April 1786 in Malaya. In 1812 as a junior staff officer at Wellington's Headquarters he was employed in mapping, reconnaissance and liaison duties. He travelled widely in Europe from 1827 to 1836 and was appointed Surveyor-General of South Australia in 1836. This mammoth task was handicapped by pressures of time, dissention, and inadequate and poorly equipped staff. In 1838 Light's trigonometrical survey was replaced by a quicker method. Light resigned and attempts to reinstate him failed. He became the principal partner in Light, Finniss & Co. Rapidly deteriorating health forced him to live as an invalid.

In January 1836 William Light was appointed Surveyor General of South Australia, and he sailed from England in the Rapid in May 1836. After first surveying Encounter Bay and rejecting this as an unsatisfactory harbour, as he later rejected Port Lincoln, Light examined St Vincent's Gulf and found the entrance to the Port River. Impressed with the fertile plains and the likelihood that the Mt Lofty Ranges would attract rain, he selected the site for the new settlement.

Light had been given quite unreasonable instructions by the Colonization Commissioners to examine in detail some 1500 miles of coastline, select the best site, and survey the town site and the country sections - all with inadequate staff, equipment, and no transport other than hand carts. In 1839, he published his account of his surveys A brief journal of the proceedings of William Light (subsequently published as a facsimile in 1962, in the Preface of which he wrote:

The reasons that led me to fix Adelaide where it is I do not expect to be generally understood or calmly judged of at present. My enemies, however, by disputing their validity in every particular, have done me the good service of fixing the whole of the responsibility upon me. I am perfectly willing to bear it; and I leave it to posterity, and not to them, to decide whether I am entitled to praise or to blame.

A fire in his home destroyed many of Light's papers and sketchbooks in January 1839. We are fortunate that some were saved and have been handed down for posterity. William Light died of tuberculosis at his home at Thebarton on the River Torrens on 6 October 1839, and was buried in Light Square, Adelaide.

Details the harbour survey made in the Rapid commencing 30 August 1838, featuring rough sketches of Cape Jervis & SA Company Point, Kangaroo Island, are included in one of Light's notebooks. A second volume records expeditions to the Lyndoch district in December 1837 and January 1839. Calculations of distances and drawings are included in both books.

Light's papers include a bank book for his account held with the Bank of South Australia from 24 April 1838 to 2 July 1845. The account book has stiffened parchment covers, with a pocket and fastening clasp. A statement on a discounted bill dated 2 March 1842 is contained in the pocket. The banking department of the South Australian Company was transformed into the colony's first bank, the Bank of South Australia, in 1837.

• Dutton, Geoffrey. Colonel William Light: founder of a city. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1991
• Elder, David. Art of William Light. Adelaide: Corporation of the City of Adelaide in association with Wakefield Press, 1987
• Light, William. William Light's brief journal and Australian diaries with an introduction and notes by David Elder. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1984
• Mayo, M P. The life and letters of Col. William Light.Adelaide: FW Preece & Sons, 1937

• Adelaide City Council Archives: Civic Collection: The early life and travels of Colonel William Light
• Holdfast Bay database South Australia; Colonel William Light
• Past exhibitions: Light's sketchbooks