South Australia, Australia Genealogy

Guide to South Australia, Australia ancestry, family history and genealogy birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, and military records.

Historical Background

 * The land which now forms the state of South Australia was claimed for Britain in 1788 as part of the colony of New South Wales. Early settlements were all on the eastern coast and only a few intrepid explorers ventured this far west.
 * It took more than forty years before any serious proposal to establish settlements in the south-western portion of New South Wales were put forward.
 * On 15 August 1834, the British Parliament passed the South Australia Act 1834 (Foundation Act), which empowered His Majesty to erect and establish a province or provinces in southern Australia.
 * Survey was required before settlement of the province, and William Light, as the leader of the 'First Expedition', wastasked with examining 1500 miles of the South Australian coastline and selecting the best site for the capital, and with then planning and surveying the site of the city into one-acre Town Sections and its surrounds into 134-acre Country Sections.
 * The South Australian Company obtained permission to send Company ships to South Australia, in advance of the surveys and ahead of colonists. The company's settlement of seven vessels and 636 people was temporarily made at Kingscote on Kangaroo Island, until the official site of the capital was selected where the City of Adelaide is currently located. The first immigrants arrived at Holdfast Bay (near the present day Glenelg) in November 1836.
 * South Australia is the only Australian state to have never received British convicts. Although South Australia was constituted such that convicts could never be transported to the Province, some emancipated or escaped convicts or expirees made their own way there, both prior to 1836, or later, and may have constituted 1–2% of the early population.
 * The plan for the province was that it would be an experiment in reform, addressing the problems perceived in British society. There was to be religious freedom and no established religion. Sales of land to colonists created an Emigration Fund to pay the costs of transferring a poor young labouring population to South Australia.