PENANG STORY LECTURE
From Penang to Adelaide: Surveyor-General William Light

Francis Light founded Penang – but many people aren’t aware that his son, William Light, founded Adelaide in Australia.  A talk on 14 June 2014 at 3.00 pm at The Royale Bintang, 1 & 2 Weld Quay, organised by the Penang Hertiage Trust, explores these links.

Admission is RM10 and if you want to stay for High Tea, there is a special bookable package: at RM50.
Bookings: To book a place for the talk, please email to [email protected] or call 2642631 (Monday-Friday, 9.30am-5pm). Payment for high tea package must be made by Friday 13 June, 12pm.

William Light
William Light (1786 – 1839), son of Captain Francis Light, was born in Kedah and grew up in Penang. After a notable military career in Europe and Egypt, Colonel William Light became the first Surveyor-General of the Colony of South Australia.

In designing the City of Adelaide Colonel William Light reveals the effect the landscape had on him. The form of Light’s plan is largely due to the topography and his sensitive response to the place. Analysis of the physical site, its creator and the people who use it, suggests the plan has been enjoyed, revered, and stoutly defended for generations. Accumulated layers of meaning and misunderstanding and social and political practices and pressures have left their mark. Nevertheless the pervading sense of significance in Adelaide remains attributable to Light’s intuitive act of creative genius.