Speeches
Monday, 14 September 2026
Proclamation Book Official Launch
Rod and I are delighted to join you today to officially launch Mr Hill’s History Painting, a book that invites us to look more deeply at one of South Australia’s significant historical images – Charles Hill’s The Proclamation of South Australia 1836, probably at least superficially known to us all.
Dr Marsden’s book takes us deeper.
We meet the artist Charles Hill, an engraver who emigrated to the colony in 1854. He taught art and played an instrumental part in Adelaide’s artistic life.
He was among other things, the first chairman of the South Australian Society of Arts which met in this Institute Building where we are today.
I am happy to say that Mr Hill’s painting is very familiar to me.
I pass it several times a day in the eastern entrance of Government House where it has hung since January 2024 thanks to the advocacy of three members of the public (Dayne Edwards, Felicity Edwards and Lisanne Edgar).
They were keen to see it come out of storage at the Art Gallery of South Australia and be displayed where it could readily be viewed. And I assure you it is popular with our visitors.
Thanks to the State Library, you can see here a large reproduction of the painting.
I also have the honour as Governor to read the Proclamation at the Old Gum Tree at Glenelg. As many of you will know, the Proclamation was read on 28 December 1836, not by Governor Hindmarsh, but by his Secretary George Stevenson, a fact Hill accurately depicted in his painting.
Hill’s painting is on a grand scale, befitting a moment in our state’s story where two histories intersected.
It was a pivotal moment, one that brought optimism and opportunity for many colonial settlers, while also marking the beginning of profound loss and dispossession for Aboriginal people.
Through her excellent book, Susan Marsden shows us how to read the painting as an historical document. With impressive scholarship she “connects the picture, the people, the proclamation and the place.”
The many illustrations provide us with a close connection with the text and add to the richness of the narrative.
I can highly recommend the footnotes too!
Like any historical artwork, Hill’s painting must be interpreted through the lens of the time, and its vision and values.
However, this approach is inevitably complicated by the fact that Hill didn’t come to Adelaide until 18 years after 1836 and then worked on the painting for 20 years, including interviewing and painting portraits of people who were present at the Proclamation.
As Dr Marsden reminds us, the painting is not a record of South Australia’s foundation: South Australia had already been established through a British Act of Parliament and the Letters Patent.
Hill was instead depicting the beginnings of government following Governor Hindmarsh’s arrival at Holdfast Bay.
The painting conveys the ideals and intent of this new, progressive, planned society.
In the painting, the main characters are placed centrally, ceremonially, and in an orderly fashion. Families are in the foreground, children happily playing.
There is some whimsy. Is the uniformed man at the end of the row who is looking directly at the viewer actually Hill following a long artistic tradition – or joke – by putting himself in the painting?
I had not noticed this figure until Dr Marsden referred to it in the book but am now convinced that it is.
The wives of the colony’s governing leaders are accorded prominence amongst those in the centre of the painting and amongst the families looking on.
As Dr Marsden points out the painting conveys Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s scheme of systematic colonisation in and I quote: “an almost perfect immigrant population in terms of age, family structure, occupational structure and gender balance”.
This act of colonisation is a unique event in Australian history.
While history may not be fully accurate, neither is Hill’s painting.
It depicts some people who weren’t actually present, such as Colonel William Light who was busy surveying, mindful that some settlers had already settled at Holdfast Bay and had been waiting for months to move from their tents and huts to the site of Adelaide, once surveyed.
Hill clearly saw Light as a pivotal figure in the establishment of this new, progressive society and, as such, a person whose presence was justified in the record he was creating.
Doubtless the most poignant, painful even, insight to be gleaned from the painting is the positioning of the small group of Kaurna people on the edges of the scene.
A small family group is calmly watching a scene that must have felt entirely alien to them.
They probably recognised that some form of special event was taking place, but could not have known that, as Marsden points out, the Letters Patent, and indeed the Proclamation itself, afforded Aboriginal people the same legal rights as settlers, including the stipulation that land should be acquired on fair terms.
In my annual Proclamation Day speech at the Old Gum Tree, or Patha Yukuna, I have reaffirmed my commitment to reconciliation, one of my six priorities as Governor, and have spoken of the many positive examples of reconciliation in practice I have seen in my travels across the state.
If I think back over the five Proclamation Day commemorations of my term, the moment I will always remember is in 2024 sitting in the pouring rain next to Auntie Lynette Crocker, both of us huddled under the same umbrella, each holding the handle. Very different symbolism from 1836.
History is not set in stone, it is a continuum linking the past, the present and the future.
That is also one of the messages in Dr Marsden’s book, especially in the last chapter which brings the story up to the present.
In that context, we may ask what this scene would look like if painted today?
Aboriginal people would now be integral to the ceremony, the result of much work from Aboriginal leaders and the City of Holdfast Bay.
The Governor would be a woman rather than a military man.
The wide, open plains with a view to the hills would be filled by the buildings and parklands of modern Adelaide.
The children would be seated, awaiting the presentation of their Governor’s Civics Awards in recognition of the role that young people play in strengthening our democracy.
The descendants of the pioneers and representatives of the military would provide a bridge to the past.
Multicultural faces would speak to migration’s role in building our nation.
As to where the ceremony might take place, Dr Marsden’s book also outlines opinions that the original Proclamation might not have taken place at the Old Gum Tree, but nearby.
Without seeking to resolve that issue, the MacFarlane Street reserve provides us with a place to reflect on and reaffirm the ideals of what was a remarkable socio-economic experiment, built on opportunity and freedom.
Imagining what Hill’s painting might look like now is not just an idle thought experiment.
Our State’s Bicentenary is only ten years away and the publication of Dr Marsden’s book marks an important way point.
Her work encourages us to look beyond the surface of the painting and consider what it reveals about the aspirations and contradictions of its era.
It encourages us to reflect on how far we have come, how far we have to go and what Hill’s painting would look like in 2036.
As the book concludes: “The Proclamation was an exhortation to settlers to conduct themselves in good order and live up to the great colony. That is also the message of Charles Hill’s Proclamation painting.”
I hope that through the book, more people will come to understand the significance of our state’s foundation and actively contribute to its realising its ideals.
It gives me great pleasure to officially launch Mr Hill’s Painting: Unpacking the Histories in Charles Hill’s The Proclamation of South Australia 1836.