Home โ€บ Collections โ€บ Surveying Collection

A collection of objects related to the surveying of South Australia and to the surveyors who worked here during the 19th century. Many of these objects form a sub-collection of theย Historical Relics collection.ย 

A number of the objects relate to South Australiaโ€™s first Surveyor General, Colonel William Light. These include surveyorsโ€™ chains and the first plan of Adelaide, drawn up to Lightโ€™s instructions. Another highlight of the collection is โ€˜Poeppelโ€™s postโ€™, the original marker used in 1880 by Augustus Poeppel to mark the intersection of the boundaries of South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Significance

The history of Adelaide as a โ€˜planned cityโ€™ and the broader history of South Australiaโ€™s British settlement under the Wakefield system make surveying of particular importance to South Australiaโ€™s history. This collection preserves some of the tools used by early surveyors and records the development of official boundaries, as well as the understanding of and changes to territory administered by the South Australian colonial government. This collection complements other History SA collections, in particular a large collection of surveying instruments held at the South Australian Maritime Museum.

Items

  • Survey Chain

    Survey Chain

    Survey chain used by Isaac Guleyย in surveying the City of Adelaide with Colonel Light.

  • Poeppel’s Corner Post

    Poeppel’s Corner Post

    Wooden post used to mark the point where the boundaries of South Australia the Northern Territory and Queensland meet.


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Janet Spillman
Janet Spillman
4 years ago

I am a Queensland historian, researching the work of Henry Charles Rawnsley, a surveyor who worked in South Australia between 1849 and 1851. His work on the Northern Survey in the Flinders Ranges has excited disparaging comment. Do you have any information on Rawnsley, please? I would pay for photocopies, digitised articles, etc.

Catherine Manning
Catherine Manning
4 years ago
Reply to  Janet Spillman

Hi Janet, this website is a project run by the History Trust of South Australia, we hold museum collections, and I’ve searched our catalogue for anything related to Rawnsley in those but come up blank. We rely on donations for the bulk of our collections so there are gaps we attempt to fill with information and supplementary material. Many or our sources come from State Records – https://archives.sa.gov.au/, the National Archives of Australia – https://www.naa.gov.au/ and the State Library of South Australia – https://www.catalog.slsa.sa.gov.au/