Was Kingscote nearly called "Angas"?

This interesting question was posed by our Vice-President Neil Miller, who had seen reference to it on another website (http://www.kangaroo-island-au.com ). 

Having subsequently contacted the author of that website for the source of such a notion, he provided us with this excerpt from George Fife Angas, Father and Founder of South Australia, by Edwin Hoddee, 1891. (This link to this interesting old book is now added to our Useful Links page.)  Indeed, it seems that Kingscote nearly was named "Angas".

... a letter written by him [George Fife Angas] to Governor Gawler :   In the early settlement of the colony, and in the first maps of  it, my name appeared in the Inlet at the port, and also to a part of  the district around it. The one was called 'Angas Inlet,' and the  other was named 'Fife-Angas,' both of which I am pleased to see  have been removed and others substituted. For this I feel a great  obligation to the individual who has done me this real service.   When the town at Nepean Bay was first named, our Directors  called it 'Angas,' and the Bank notes were sent to be engraved  with that heading, but I so disliked it that I took upon me to order  'Kingscote' to be put in its place, and the Bank notes were thus  presented to the Board of Directors, and of course approved. . . .  Allow me, therefore, to beg of you, as a particular favour, that the  foolish plan adopted at the Barossa Kange by Menge,* of applying  the name 'Angas' to the parks and valleys of that district may be  set aside, and some title more appropriate adopted. ...

What's in a name? Queenscliffe - Laid out on part section 3, Hundred of Menzies, by E.D. Chapman in 1883 and on 19 September 1940 it became ‘Kingscote’. In support of its creation it was said that ‘owing to the almost total failure of crops in the great bulk of the northern areas through the defective rainfall’: The attention of South Australia is being more and more directed to Kangaroo Island in which a rainfall of over 20 inches can be relied on every year in addition to heavy dews… It has been quite common for many years past to reap crops of 30 bushels of wheat and 50 to 60 bushels of barley to the acre… In 1884, a correspondent said that there was one lodging house in Queenscliffe: The proprietor of which has been granted a hotel licence, which, however, has not yet come into force, but does not speak in very high terms of the accommodation provided… [It] exists largely on paper, but it possesses a post and telegraph office, a butcher’s shop, an empty store, the lodging house aforementioned, besides two or three private houses. It is to have a police station and a church (curious that these should arrive  simultaneously) and the residents assert that there is to be a jetty. I had to hear the rival claims of Brownlow and Queenscliffe to this last structure. The amount of jealousy which these two baby communities have managed to develop on the question is surprising… The Queenscliffe School opened in 1885 and became ‘Kingscote’ in 1904. (See Brownlow) 

Change of Name

On 26th October 1903, letters were received from the Attorney-General's Department and the Minister for External Affairs, representing the P.M.G., approving of the change of name for the town from Queenscliffe to Kingscote. The original settlement at what is now known as Reeves Point was called Kingscote and the new company town on higher ground Queenscliffe.

This change arose from a decision of Council, proposed by Cr. Daw and seconded by Cr. Snelling on 27th July asking that the name of the town revert to its original name.