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Colonel George Gawler (21 July 1795 – 7 May 1869) was the second Governor of South Australia, at the same time serving as Resident Commissioner, from 17 October 1838 until 15 May 1841.
His first goal was to address delays over rural settlement and primary production. He persuaded Charles Sturt to come from New South Wales to work as surveyor-general, personally overseeing the surveys in the meantime, as Colonel William Light had resigned due to ailing health and the demands placed on him with insufficient staff. Gawler promptly increased and reorganised the fledgling police force, promoting its commander Henry Inman. Gawler appointed more colonial officials, took part in exploration, and improved the facilities at Port Adelaide during his tenure as governor. The first permanent Government House was built, which is now the East Wing of the present building.
The South Australian Company's greatest source of revenue, the sale of land, had largely dried up due to surveying delays in 1838. The rapid increase in population in 1839 and 1840 due to immigration greatly added to the unemployment problem. Droughts in other Australian colonies in 1840, before South Australia was self-sufficient in food, drove up the cost of living rapidly. Gawler increased public expenditure to stave off collapse, which resulted in bankruptcy and changes to the way the colony was run. Over £200,000 had been spent and the land fund in London had been exhausted. A£155,000 loan was approved by the British Parliament (later made a gift) and Captain George Grey was sent to replace Gawler, after Grey promised to "maintain the strictest economy"." Grey, Sir George (1812–1898) ", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Retrieved 30 September 2018. In his time in office Governor Grey helped make South Australia self-sufficient in terms of agriculture and restored public confidence, though the real salvation of the colony may have been the discovery of copper at Burra in 1845.
In 1845, Gawler wrote a memorandum, The Tranquillization of Syria and the East, in which he suggested that Jews be allowed to establish Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine as compensation for their suffering under Turkish rule. The Emancipation of the Jews followed in 1847, and in 1849 he toured Palestine with Moses Montefiore. In a further work, Syria and its Near Prospects, (1853) he made four arguments for the proposition that Jewish settlement was already under way.Abigail Green (2010), Moses Montefiore: Jewish liberator, imperial hero, Harvard University Press, pp.214-215,231.
In 1850 Gawler retired from the army. In the same year, he wrote Present State of Moral Principle in the Supreme Government of the British Colonial Empire, in which he petitioned the Queen seeking redress for the injustices done to him by successive secretaries of state. Accusing George Grey of dishonesty, he claimed that it had been through his efforts that South Australia was "the only cheap and brilliantly successful new colony in modern history".
Gawler spent his last years at Southsea, where he died of pneumonia on 7 May 1869. He was buried at Portsmouth.
The town of Gawler was named after him, as well as the adjoining river.
The Gawler Ranges at the north end of Eyre Peninsula are also named after him by the explorer Edward John Eyre in 1839.
Gawler's reputation was somewhat tarnished by his involvement in the Maria massacre in 1840.
Derby's Town and County Museum in the 1830s included Gawler in its list of principal benefactors. Gawler had contributed a collection of minerals and exotic stuffed birds which included an albatross from his time as governor. Also, Gawler's gardener in Australia, Joseph Whittaker, contributed hundreds of pressed flowers and plants to Derby Museum and to Kew Gardens.
A portrait of him hangs in Parliament House, Adelaide, and another in the City Council Chamber, Adelaide.
Legacy
Gawler's work was long misjudged, largely because his successor Grey, in his dispatches, made the worst of his predecessor's acts, without suggesting the difficulties under which he had worked. Gawler was a gallant and energetic officer who, when he found the settlers faced with disaster, saw at once what it was necessary to do, and saved the colony. Mills however, accepts the view that Gawler had been guilty of carelessness and extravagance and cannot be wholly acquitted of blame, though the extraordinary difficulties with which he was faced are acknowledged. Charles Sturt and other men at the time generally agreed that his administration had greatly benefited the settlement, and the select committee on South Australia reported that the critics of his expenditure were "unable to point out any specific item by which it could have been considerably reduced without great public inconvenience". Much of Gawler's expenditure was on works of both immediate and long-lasting benefit to the Colony and the State, such as the Great Eastern Road. Many modern historians put him among the founders of South Australia.
Family
Gawler married Maria Cox in September 1820. Their ten children included:
See also
Further reading
Categories: Governors Of South Australia, Governors Of The Colony Of South Australia, Graduates Of The Royal Military College, Great Marlow, 52nd Regiment Of Foot Officers, British Army Personnel Of The Napoleonic Wars, 1795 Births, 1869 Deaths, People Associated With Derby Museum And Art Gallery, People Of The Battle Of Waterloo, British Colonial Governors And Administrators In Oceania
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