Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/619

 TheReguter ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 593 ICS36, and the latter had the distinouished honor of pubhcly reading the interesting document to the 200 odd people assembled about the bent and ragged old gum tree at Glenelg. Mrs. Thomas wrote an entertaining account of the celebration. The Rci^ister is thus six months older than the Province. The first actual work carried out in the Register Office in South Australia was the printing of the document jiroclaiming the Province. One of the presses and the type were transported to the reed hut on a truck, and there, after much difficulty, copies were produced. This was the beginning of local printing. For many tedious weeks most of the people waited at Holdfast Bay until it had been determined whether the capital should be on the Torrens River or at Port Adelaide; and after this point had been setded, until the city had been surveyed, so as to allow of the taking up of allotments. The enforced idleness was galling to the spirits of the partners, and it was as embarrassing as it was annoying ; the fact being that such important matters should have been decided before the pioneers arrived. Discord was abroad, and parties, holding diverse views, were formed. In March, 1837, selections of city acres were made by lot. and the pioneers removed to Adelaide. Owing to the scarcity of conveyances, Mr. Thomas found it e.xtremely difficult to get his printing plant to the city ; but it was after it had been taken thither that his more acute troubles began. Part of the plant had been carried by mistake to Tasmania ; and an experienced printer named Osborne, upon whose aid the proprietors had very largely depended, perished in the bush while trying to cross Kangaroo Island on foot. It was almost impossible to procure hands to print the paper, and there was no reporter. But Mr. Thomas and Mr. Stevenson, with the aid of members of the former's family, did the best they could. The plant was erected in a pise hut in Hindley Street, and on June 3, 1837, the second number of the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register was issued. It must have given pioneer residents peculiar pleasure to have this old-world convenience produced in their midst. There is no record of the number of papers issued, but, judging from the enormous difficulties of printing, it may be imagined that it was very limited. The old demy Stanhope press is still preserved in the offices of the Register, and constitutes a very interesting relic. This pioneer number is perhaps the most valuable historical record existing in South Australia. The first page contains all the proclamations made by the Governor up to May — such as the proclamation of the Province ; appointment of Civil officers ; notices of the passing of a law to establish Courts of General or Quarter and Petty Sessions in South Australia (January 2, 1837), and of (jther ordinances; appointment of first Justices of the Peace; and official report of meeting on May 23 of the Civil officers and most prominent landowners to determine the street, terrace, and scjuare nomenclature of Adelaide. The second, with part of the third page, contained the names of the first purchasers of city acres in the Province. Then followed the editorial, noteworthy for the e.xpressed determination of the paper to be free of party strife or of leaning to any one side. There were no Ouixotic profe.ssions ; an effort was to be made to serve the Province as a whole, and, adds the editor, "every step in its progress will be hailed and recorded with exultation ; the interests, worldly and spiritual, of the hundreds, civilised and barbarous, involved therein, will meet with zealous advocates in us, so far as our powers can be available to them." This was the