Colonel William Light (1786 – 1839) was born to Francis Light (an Englishman who established Penang) and a mixed-race mother named Martina. William believed his mother to be a Princess of Kedah from northern Malaysia.

William was educated in England but due to his mixed-race origins he was not allowed to join the East India Company.

Instead, Light joined the British army, rising to the rank of colonel. He fought under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War and is said to have been one of the Iron Duke’s favourite officers.

He was badly wounded at the Battle of Corunna, in Spain in 1809.

In 1823, Light returned to Spain to fight with the “Liberales” in their struggle against King Ferdinand VII. He initially volunteered as a private in a Spanish militia but rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Light was also an artist of some talent who hung out in artistic and literary circles. Much of his work was destroyed in a fire, but here is a self-portrait that showcases his talent.

This is one of his watercolours showing a view of the South Australian Company’s fishing station at Cape Rosetta, Encounter Bay (1837).

He was the first Surveyor-General of the new British Province of South Australia and is remembered for choosing the site of the colony’s capital, Adelaide. As its first surveyor, he designed the layout of its streets, squares, gardens, and the figure-eight Adelaide Park Lands.  According to the historian Jan Morris, he designed one of the most elegant colonial cities in the British Empire. 

Sadly, Morris adds, ‘poor Light … came to a sad end. He resigned his job after a series of differences with his superiors, and died in 1839, aged 54, penniless and tubercular, in a cottage of mud and reed near his city site, nursed by his English mistress Maria.’

Vergelegen today: In the year 1700, Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel went against company rules to grant himself a vast tract of land near modern-day Somerset West. Using company slaves, labour, materials and seed, he transformed Vergelegen into the biggest agricultural producer at the Cape. And then he sold the produce to the company he controlled at prices he determined!

No verified pictures of Willem Adriaan – or his more famous father, Simon van der Stel – have survived. The best we’ve got is this replica of a painting (destroyed in a fire in Dublin in 1962) which supposedly showed Willem Adriaan as a toddler (on the horse) – fittingly being “propped up” by his father.

Company rules forbade Willem Adriaan from owning ‘larger gardens or a greater number of cattle than [he] required for the use of [his] own household’. Instead, he hoodwinked his boss into signing off on a transfer deed which granted him the land currently occupied by Vergelegen, Morgenster, Lourensford and the town of Somerset West. He named it Vergelegen (‘distantly situated’), a reference to the 12 hours it took to reach from the Cape.

At Vergelegen, he used company resources to establish ‘country seat, large beyond measure, and of such broad dimensions, as if it were a whole town.’ But this wasn’t just a holiday home: it was the biggest money spinner in the colony. The local farmers, who were struggling to make ends meet due to the Governor’s monopoly, eventually plucked up the courage to smuggle a complaint onto a ship bound for Batavia. This image is taken from that document, known as the ‘Memorial.’

When Van der Stel caught wind of the complaint, he invited all the Cape’s menfolk to a soiree at the Castle. After plying them with free booze and tobacco, he strongarmed attendees into signing a ‘certificate of good conduct’ (pictured here), proclaiming him to be ‘a person of all honour and virtue in his whole conduct, government, intercourse, and treatment.’

Van der Stel lived out his days in Leyden in the Netherlands. This image – attempting to depict Vergelegen as a modest home surrounded by savages and wilderness – is taken from a 304-page propaganda rag he produced in an attempt to exonerate himself. The public weren’t having it, however, and he died wealthy but friendless in 1733.

VOC HQ: Despite the Governor’s strongarm tactics, the Dutch East India Company bosses in Amsterdam ruled in the farmers’ favour, dismissing Willem Adriaan as governor and selling Vergelegen off for the public benefit. Curiously, the proceeds of the sale of the Vergelegen manor house went to van der Stel – despite him not paying a cent to build it.