AustLit

Born in 1786 in Phuket, Southern Thailand, William Light spent most of his first six years in Penang, the port his father established on behalf of the British India Company. He died in 1839 on the outskirts of the town whose site he selected, and whose plan he had devised. Having lost his personal belongings and most of his papers in a fire the story of his life is fragmentary at best, but an idea of his final moments can be gleaned from his Last Diary. As he lies dying, William Light (the founder of Adelaide, the City of Light) is visited by the spirits of his past selves. He listens to his visitants through the accompaniment of his own troubled breathing - tinkling bells, crackling fire, twittering birds, the mosquito's whine; those poetic acoustic symptoms of TB. In the silence of his end exhalations can be heard the healing sound of Earth's gentle breathing. According to the linear logic of western reason there is no connection between the man and his name; but in the cross cultural discourse of colonialism it is different. Sounds, gestures, words, grown ambiguous, have to re-invent themselves: apart from his name, who was Light? And what was this light the colonists brought with them, flecked with blood, casting deadly shadows and burning the ground? (ABC Classic FM website)