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 French Nicolas Baudin and the British Matthew Flinders had both made exploratory voyages along the central southern coastline.

The British Government, not wanting to be pre-empted by the French, sent out expeditions to Port Phillip and northern Tasmania, and set up the first[clarification needed] free settlement, the Swan River Colony, in 1829.

[1] 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.

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.

After his release from prison in 1830, he funded the National Colonization Society, with Gouger as secretary and a large number of enthusiastic members.

The company anticipated that the centre of government would be on Kangaroo Island or at Port Lincoln on the western side of Spencer Gulf, based on reports from Matthew Flinders.

[10][11] However, the scheme, which included free trade, self-government and the power to select the Governor, was not approved as these ideas were considered too radical and republican.

[12] The aim of the association was to bring to fruition the idea of "systematic colonisation", as proposed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, in the creation of a new colony in South Australia by the British government.

Thirdly, Persons who may take an active part in the preliminary proceedings of the Association, and may become, under the proposed Charter, Trustees for carrying its provisions into effect.

[16] The association organised a huge public meeting at Exeter Hall in London on the 30 June 1834, to spread awareness about the proposal for the new province and emigration scheme, chaired by Wolryche-Whitmore.

The meeting was attended by more than 2,500 people, including well-known philosophers and social reformers, and the speeches and discussions continued for seven hours.

[9] The Association lobbied the British government for years, taking part in numerous negotiations and submitting plans that underwent many modifications.

[16] The Act provided for the settlement as the Province of South Australia, for the sale of lands, for funding of the venture, and for governance.

Those first appointed, on 5 May 1835, were Colonel Robert Torrens (Chairman), Rowland Hill (Secretary), G. Barnes (Treasurer), George Fife Angas, Edward Barnard, William Hutt, J. G. Shaw-Lefevre, William Alexander Mackinnon M.P., Samuel Mills, Jacob Barrow Montefiore, Lt Col George Palmer, and John Wright, representing the Colonial Office.

[20] Robert Gouger was Colonial Secretary to the Commission,[17] John Hindmarsh was appointed Governor and William Light Surveyor-General.

It was left to the South Australian Company (formed on 15 October 1835, after talented businessman George Fife Angas resigned as Commissioner[1]) to purchase the remaining portion of the £35,000 worth of land that was required for settlement to proceed.

[28] Hindmarsh and Fisher quarrelled frequently and could not work together harmoniously, so in 1838 both were recalled to London and a new Governor (George Gawler) appointed, who would also act as Resident Commissioner.

They proposed a new code for emigrant ships carrying more than 100 passengers, which meant having a minimum deck height and including a medical practitioner on board.

He was required to find a site with a harbour, arable land, fresh water, ready internal and external communications, building materials and drainage.

Light rejected potential locations for the new main settlement, including Kangaroo Island, Port Lincoln and Encounter Bay.

[36] The River Torrens was discovered to the south and Light and his team set about determining the city's precise location and layout.

Light, despite slowly succumbing to tuberculosis,[36] managed to survey 605.7 square kilometres (233.9 sq mi) (or 150,000 acres (61,000 ha)) by June 1838.

In 1836 the South Australian Company imported pure merinos from the German region of Saxony, and cows and goats were also shipped over.

[43] However, the new corporation suffered financial woes, after several of its actions were unauthorised or reversed by the British government, leading to considerable debt and, so it wound up as insolvent in 1843.

[48] Engineering and architecture departments changed in structure and naming over the years, with the names including:[49] From 1867, the functions were split into separate entities: As it became evident that the colonial administration had brought the province of South Australia to near bankruptcy in 1840,[50] the South Australian Colonization Commission was stripped of its powers.

[51] Torrens wrote a report "intended to have been given to the Committee on the Affairs of South Australia, as part of his evidence" on 30 March 1841, outlining how the financial administration of the colony had been mishandled, and how it would not have happened had a proposed loan of £120,000 been raised in June 1840 to the emigration fund, and "a cautious stream of emigration been kept up", and by various means the "calamitous crisis" may have been averted.

The Australian Colonies Government Act 1850 was a landmark piece of legislation, granting representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state.

An innovative secret ballot was introduced in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia in 1856, in which the government supplied voting paper containing the names of candidates and voters could select in private.