2 September 1846 S.T. Gill

Through the night of 1-2 September 1846 Sam Gill sat with his friend John Horrocks, who had been accidently shot, while the third member of the group hurried through 70 miles of scrub to the depot where the main exploration party was camped. Gill had accompanied Horrocks on the expedition to the northern parts of the colony as a draftsman to do sketches of the area.

He had arrived in South Australia with his family in 1839 and settled in Coromandel Valley where his father, a Baptist minister, established a school. On 7 March1840 Samuel placed an advertisement in the paper in which he offered to teach sketching and painting at rooms in Gawler Place. On his return from the ill-fated northern trip he held an exhibition of his work and continued to do sketches around Adelaide while he lived in Grenfell Street. But he was drinking rather heavily and in 1850 suffered a severe infection in his hand which prevented him from using it. Then in 1851 he was declared insolvent and soon after headed for the goldfields in Victoria. He was not a successful digger, but his sketches were published in a book in Melbourne in 1852. He stayed in Victoria and continued hi sketching; he died in Melbourne after a long illness on 27 October 1880. The worth of his work in sketching the early days in Adelaide and South Australia is invaluable.

Keith Macrae Bowden, S.T. Gill, 1971