City of Adelaide Civic Collection

The Adelaide City Council’s Civic Collection is a museum-type mainly objects based collection of historic and more recent cultural materials that is managed by the City of Adelaide Archives. It consists of more than 5,000 artefacts, artworks and other items of historical, cultural or sentimental value to the City that have been collected by, presented to, or acquired by the Council since the mid-19th century. This includes the letters, diaries, memorabilia and watercolours of the City’s founder Colonel William Light (1796 – 1839) who was a British-Malayan army and naval officer who in 1836 was appointed first Surveyor- General of the newly settled province of South Australia and tasked with selecting and designing its new capital city.