George Goyder

George Woodroffe Goyder (24 June 1826 – 2 November 1898) was a surveyor in South Australia during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Goyder was born in Liverpool, England to Sarah and David George Goyder, the latter a Swedenborgian minister and physician. He moved to Glasgow with his family where he worked with an engineering firm and studied surveying. In 1848, at the age of 22, Goyder followed his sister and brother-in-law, George Galbraith McLachlan, to Sydney. He spent time working with an auctioneering firm and moved to Adelaide in 1851, obtaining work as a civil service draftsman.

His rose rapidly in the civil service, becoming Assistant Surveyor-General by 1856 and Surveyor-General by 1861. He is remembered today for Goyder's Line of rainfall, a line used in South Australia to demarcate land climatically suitable for arable farming from that suitable only for light grazing. However, Goyder was an avid researcher into the lands of South Australia (including the present-day Northern Territory) and made recommendations to a great number of settlers in the newly developing colony, especially to those exploiting the newly discovered mineral resources of the state.

He married Frances Mary Smith on 10 December 1851 at Christ Church, North Adelaide, and had nine children with her. Frances died on 8 April 1870 and George married her sister Ellen Priscilla Smith, who had been looking after the children, on 20 November 1871. With Ellen, George had three children, a son and twin daughters. Goyder led an austere and disciplined life, and this was reflected in his strict treatment of subordinates – though he was always regarded as fair to those he advised in spite of many complaints by farmers and graziers. By the late 1880s, however, Goyder's health was declining and, with no improvement in sight, he resigned the post of Surveyor-General at the end of 1893. He died at his home "Warrakilla", at Mylor near Aldgate in the Adelaide Hills on 2 November 1898 and was buried in the Stirling District Cemetery.

In his period as Assistant Surveyor-General Goyder made many expeditions into the outback regions of South Australia, thinking that the water in lakes he saw at the time was fresh and permanent, rather than exceedingly erratic. He wrote many letters to newly established pastoralists who had moved into the arid regions for the state's north, and also surveyed the newly establishing mining industry in the Flinders Ranges.

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