Port Gawler, a plan of unbridled puffery.
By way of commemorating their most significant benefactor, the late Deane Miller, the Friends of the State Library of South Australia have funded the State Library’s acquisition of a large (1220 mm X 975 MM) and attractive hand-drawn, hand-coloured plan of ‘Port Gawler’.

The handiwork of surveyor Philip Lamothe Snell Chauncy, the plan was commissioned in 1840 by Captain William Allen and Captain John Ellis with a view to selling off allotments in a proposed township of squares, including a church square, Prince Albert Circus, and park lands a la Colonel Light, in spite of their land deal having been tainted by scandal.

The land in question had been sold to the two sea dogs by George Milner Stephen, the Colonial Secretary, who had acquired a special survey of 4,000 acres on the Gawler River in 1839. As a marketing ploy, Stephen had set about publicising his sales of sections and allotments in numbers and at prices which bore no relation to reality, making false claims of advantages offered by the proposed town. Accused of fraud, Stephen successfully sued the Southern Australian for libel, in turn beat a charge of ‘wilful and corrupt perjury’, but lost an action for libel against the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register. Thus exposed, Stephen resigned from all his public offices.

While an actual town of Port Gawler, long defunct, was declared downstream nearly 30 years later, the ‘Port Gawler’ of the Chauncy plan was entirely fanciful, the site on an unnavigable stretch of the Gawler River prone to heavy flooding.

Rare accounts of the Stephen scandal have also been acquired by the State Library and complement the Port Gawler plan. Illustrative of reckless colonial land speculation, the plan will be exhibited briefly following treatment by the State Library’s conservators.

Background information from Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers has been much appreciated.

Roger Andre