British colonisation of South Australia describes the planning and establishment of the colony of South Australia by the British government, covering the period from 1829, when the idea was raised by the then imprisoned Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to 1842, when the South Australia Act 1842 changed the form of government to a Crown colony. Ideas espoused and promulgated by Wakefield since 1829 led to the formation of the South Australian Land Company in 1831, but this first attempt failed to achieve its goals and the company folded.