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sketcher, surveyor and explorer, was born on 15 December 1841 in Gawler, South Australia, only son of the 11 children of the pioneer squatters Stephen King and Martha, née Robinson. Stephen King junior attended school at Gawler and Adelaide, spent two years at Young’s Adelaide Academy in 1857-59, then worked on several of his father’s properties. Determined to follow the footsteps of explorers like Captain Sturt , he was one of the first to volunteer to accompany John McDouall Stuart on his final epic journey, which left Adelaide in October 1861 and successfully crossed Australia from south to north and back again.

The lively, naive expedition drawings in King’s sketchbook (Mortlock Library) include views of the injured Stuart travelling by horse ambulance at the beginning of the journey, the packbags lined up at Central Mt Stuart, Aboriginal visitors to the camp at Howell Ponds, and the ceremony of planting the Union Jack (made by Esther Chambers of Adelaide) at Chambers Bay. The last shows 10 explorers and the survivors from the original 71 horses gathered in front of a hill which was partly cleared to allow a view of the Indian Ocean between the dense mangroves. It presumably was the basis of the background in Stacy 's photograph of Stuart, despite a contemporary attribution of the sketch to Stuart himself (who is not known to have sketched, the only other recorded artist on the expedition being Josef Herrgott ). {King’s pen and wash sketch of the party at Van Diemen’s Gulf in 1862 is one of several in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia, SA State Library Building; ill. Community History 8/1 (1997), p.9. In 1863 he drew a 'Rough sketch’ of Stuart on horseback, which he annotated: 'May be of use to the Caledonian Society in designing the proposed statue’ to the 'great South Australian Explorer’.

In December 1877 King married Louisa Barnes, 15 years his junior. They spent the next 10 years travelling around South Australia on field surveys. Some of their nine children were born in a tent, others in their house in Kensington Gardens, Adelaide, called Calta Wurlie (believed to be the Aboriginal name of Kingsford, his childhood home). In 1893 King retired from the field to the position of senior surveyor in the Lands and Survey Department, Adelaide. On 25 July 1912 he was presented with a gold medal by the government on the jubilee 'of that historic day when Stuart and his band of heroes … had hoisted the Union Jack on the top of the highest tree in close proximity to the Indian Ocean’. King retired that year, aged 70. He died three years later, on 7 October 1915, the last survivor of the 11 men in Stuart’s party. His wife died in 1951.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011