Spencer's Gulf from Flinders Range, South of Mt Brown, South Australia

This is one of ten sepia watercolours by S.T. Gill which the Library purchased at auction through the generosity of the late Kerstin Lillemor Andersen. The sketches illustrate several scenes from the ill-fated Horrocks expedition of 1846, together with a range of other South Australian scenes from the same period. All but the first two watercolours are signed S T G. Gill's works are widely held by art galleries and libraries and often sell for substantial sums.

Samuel Thomas Gill arrived in South Australia in 1839 and set up a studio in Gawler Place, advertising for those 'desirous of obtaining correct likenesses of themselves, families or friends', animals, local scenery and residences, to contact him. He captured detailed scenes of colonial life in the streets of Adelaide and Melbourne, accurately depicting the Australian vegetation in the South Australian countryside and on the Victorian gold fields. One of his most famous scenes is a watercolour showing the Beehive Corner in 1849, also held by the Library. Many of his works were published as collections of lithographs, including The Australian sketchbook. He died in obscurity in Melbourne in 1880.

John Ainsworth Horrocks established the village of Penwortham and is believed to have planted the first vineyard in the Clare Valley. In 1846, bored with farming, Horrocks set out on a privately funded expedition to explore the country north east of Mount Arden, between Port Augusta and Lake Torrens. The party included S.T. Gill as an unpaid draftsman. One of Gill's sketches from the expedition features the first camel in Australia, Harry, which was famously bad-tempered and inclined to bite people and other animals. Sadly, the sketch of the camel was completed two hours before a shooting accident from which Horrocks died from his wounds three weeks later. He is buried at Penwortham.

There is an entry in the Australian dictionary of biography for Samuel Thomas Gill and John Hainsworth Horrocks.

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