Fires in Early Adelaide

January of 1839 was the blackest month. When a spark lodged in the thatched roof of the Land Office, the fire ran like magic before the wind. In ten minutes the office was an inferno, which leapt at the Survey Office and, in half an hour, not a wall, or a post, was standing. An iron safe set in solid masonry preserved, except for charring, most of the important documents in the Land Office, while draftsmen saved original maps of town acres from the Survey Office, but Hurtle Fisher and Colonel Light lost everything, including the journal the latter had kept diligently for 30 years.

Scarcely had the flames died down before an alarm was raised again, this time at Government House. Its reed roof and wooden partitions burned like tinder and, in an hour, with its store of valuable documents, it was a heap of ashes and smouldering beams. Before the year was out the home of John Brown, Emigration Agent, was similarly destroyed, again with papers and documents.

It is thought that the minutes of the Street Naming Committee were destroyed in one of the former two fires.