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The Discovery and Settlement of the Fleurieu Peninsula and the Angas/Bremer Region 1802–1861 Rob Linn Introduction This article sets out to uncover some of the themes in the mid-nineteenth century settlement of South Australia by British immigrants. In order to do this I have taken the Fleurieu Peninsula, and the adjacent areas surrounding the Angas and Bremer rivers, as a ‘test’ region and have broken the study into two periods of time ending in 1836 and 1861. The settlement themes which emerged – exploration, discovery, settlement, ordering the environment, the progress of civilisation – highlighted the characteristics of British culture which sought to expand an Empire; an Empire which the settlers believed God had founded. The task of settlers in emigrating was, as Lord Portman, a Dorset grandee, noted, ‘the appointed means of peopling what remains unpeopled in this earth’. The taking and physical transformation of South Australian soil was not, therefore, mere greed for land – although the lust for it was unbounded – but also part of a cultural belief which stressed the Biblical motivation for Man’s role on Earth. This motivation, most clearly espoused in the Old Testament, gave British settlers – whose culture was ingrained with Biblical phrases and terminology – the belief that they were as the ancient Israelites, ‘To be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land. When ye go, ye shall come unto – a large land – a place where there is no want of anything that is in the earth.’ It is not surprising that many settlers referred to South Australia as the promised land. The ‘Land’ becomes the centre of all the themes for this study of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The two sections of this study pursue intertwined arguments. The first section suggests that once discovered the land was marked for settlement because of British notions of Empire. The second section maintains that much of South Australia’s settlement followed a pattern pre-ordained by the capitali