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'Cadastral divisions of Australia' refers to the parts of Australia which are divided into the cadastral units of counties, parishes, hundreds, and other divisions for the purposes of land ownership. Many property titles in Australia are listed as being in the parish and county. The whole of the eastern states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania were divided into counties and parishes in the 19th century, although the Tasmanian counties were renamed land districts in the twentieth century. Parts of South Australia (south-east) and Western Australia (south-west) were similarly divided into counties, and there were also five counties in a small part of the Northern Territory. However South Australia has subdivisions of hundreds instead of parishes, along with the Northern Territory, which was part of South Australia when the hundreds were proclaimed. There have been at least 600 counties, 544 hundreds and at least 15,692 parishes in Australia, but there are none of these units for most of the sparsely inhabited central and western parts of the country. Counties in Australia have no administrative or political function, unlike those in England and the United States. Australia instead uses Local Government Areas, including shires, districts, councils and municipalities according to the state, as the second level subdivision. Some other states were also divided into Land divisions and land districts; in the nineteenth century land districts sometimes served as the region name the parts of the state where counties had not been proclaimed yet. Below these are groups of land parcels known as Deposited Plans, Registered Plans or Title Plans (depending on the state), and within these are individual land parcels such as lots; in total there are estimated to be about 10.2 million of these in Australia.^[1]

Contents

History

Usage

By state/territory

Australian Capital Territory

New South Wales

Northern Territory

Queensland

South Australia

Tasmania

Victoria

Western Australia

References

External Links

History

Counties were used since the earliest British settlement in Australia, with the County of Cumberland proclaimed by Captain Phillip on June 4, 1788. In 1804 Governor King divided Van Diemen's Land into two counties; Buckingham in the south and Cornwall in the north.^[2] The parishes date to the surveys conducted after 1825, with the instructions given to Governor Brisbane on 23 Jun 1825 to divide the colony into counties, hundreds and parishes. At this time there were five counties already proclaimed in New South Wales: Cumberland, Westmoreland, Camden, Argyle and Northumberland. ^[3] The Nineteen Counties in south eastern New South Wales were the limits of location of the colony in a period after 1829, with the area outside them originally divided into districts, and later also into counties and parishes. Counties were established soon after the foundation of other Australian colonies.
Many of the counties have English names, often the names of counties in England, such as Devon, Dorset, Cornwall and Kent Counties in Tasmania. Less frequently, some have Aboriginal names such as the County of Yungnulgra in New South Wales, and County of Croajingolong in Victoria.
The use of counties, hundreds and parishes was popular in Australia in the 19th century, with many maps of Australian colonies showing these divisions,^[4] and towns and cities often listed in their county. Legal cases referenced counties [1], and many genealogical records for Australia in the 19th century list the county and parish for location of birth, deaths and marriages [2] [3] [4]. The 1911 Britannica also describes Australian towns and cities as being in their respective county, including most of the capital cities:
Melbourne, County of Bourke [5]; Sydney, County of Cumberland [6];Brisbane, County of Stanley [7]; Adelaide, County of Adelaide; and Hobart, County of Buckingham [8]. However it is not mentioned that Perth is located in the County of Perth[9], as even by this time county names were infrequently used in Western Australia, where they did not cover all of the settled areas, unlike the other states. Instead the system of land divisions and land districts was used, with most of Perth located in the land districts of Swan, Canning and Cockburn Sound, all in the South West Division of Western Australia.
Counties and parishes are also still referenced in property law, and in industrial relations instruments, for example in a New South Wales award which excludes people from the County of Yancowinna. Similar award examples exist in the other states and territories that have been subdivided into counties. The County of Yancowinna is also the only part of New South Wales which is in a different time zone to the rest of the state, as mentioned in the Australian Standard Time Act of 1987[10]. Counties are also used on paperwork for mortgage securities in banks. Parishes and counties are also mentioned in definitions of electoral districts. ^[5]

Usage

Counties have since gone out of use in Australia, and are rarely used or even known by most of the population today. Part of the reason is that counties are based on the size of land, rather than population, so in a large country where most of the population live in cities on the coast while the countryside has a very low population density, they have little relevance. The counties which contain the capital cities have millions of people, while those in remote areas have a very small population. The County of Cumberland, which contains Sydney, for instance, has a larger population than all the other counties in New South Wales combined. Another reason is that many of the counties' borders follow rivers, having been proclaimed before settlements developed, which means that towns which typically grow up on rivers often find themself in more than one county. Wangaratta, for instance, is located at the junction of the Ovens and King rivers, and is thus in three counties; Moira, Delatite and Bogong.
Some of the county names live on by being the same name of present-day local government areas, general region names, towns or establishments in the area. For instance, the current Shire of Plantagenet and Shire of Victoria Plains in Western Australia are in the similar area to the County of Plantagenet and County of Victoria, respectively. The modern city of Devonport in Tasmania is located in the County of Devon. Some regions do promote the county name, such as Argyle County, while the County of Cadell (roughly in the Murray Shire area) is still the name for a vineyard and motor lodge in the same area.

By state/territory

Australian Capital Territory

The land which became the Australian Capital Territory was made from land in the New South Wales counties of Murray and Cowley. This includes four former parishes of Canberra, Yarrolumla, Narrabundah and Gigerline in Murray and 15 former parishes in Cowley, while land in parts of other parishes of these counties also became part of the ACT. Also, in 1915, part of the parish of Bherwerre in the county of St. Vincent was transferred to the federal government to become the Jervis Bay Territory, which was part of the ACT until self-government in 1989. Murray lies east of the Murrumbidgee River, with all of what is now Canberra within it, with Cowley to the west of the river. The ACT does not now have counties itself.

New South Wales

Main articles: Cadastral divisions of New South Wales

There are 141 counties and 7,459 parishes within New South Wales. The County of Cumberland, in which Sydney is located, has the largest population. The original Nineteen Counties were the limits of settlement in the early part of the 19th century.

Northern Territory

There were only five counties in the Northern Territory, which were divided into hundreds.

★ County of Disraeli

★ County of Malmesbury

★ County of Palmerston (containing Darwin)

★ County of Roseberry (containing Pine Creek)

★ County of Gladstone (separate from the others, in south-eastern Arnhem Land in the Roper River area)

Queensland

Main articles: Cadastral divisions of Queensland


There are currently 322 counties in Queensland, subdivided into 5,319 parishes.^[6] In the 19th century there were 109 counties, which were later divided into 319 in 1901. The counties which contain the largest population are those on the east coast with the County of Stanley containing Brisbane; the County of Ward containing the Gold Coast and the County of Canning containing Caboolture. Several of these were counties in New South Wales before Queensland became a separate colony in 1859.

South Australia

Main articles: Cadastral divisions of South Australia


There are forty-nine counties in South Australia, mostly in the south-east part of the state. The counties are divided into 526 hundreds. Adelaide is located in the County of Adelaide. All of the counties had been proclaimed by 1900, except for Le Hunte (proclaimed 1908), Bosanquet (proclaimed 1913), and Hore-Ruthven (proclaimed 1933).^[7]

Tasmania

Main articles: Cadastral divisions of Tasmania


Tasmania is divided into 20 land districts. These include the former 18 counties, which were renamed land districts and retained the same borders. In addition Flinders Island and King Island are now also districts. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Tasmania had 18 counties, as noted in the 1907 Nuttall Encyclopedia. There was another type of smaller county in Tasmania in the early 19th Century, with some early 19th Century maps, such as this 1852 map, showing 36 counties in Tasmania, lying in a strip of land between Hobart and Launceston, but not covering the entire island.

Victoria

Main articles: Counties of Victoria

The counties of Victoria were gazetted in stages between 1849 and 1890. There are 37 counties, roughly 40 x 40 miles in size, which are further divided into 2914[11] parishes. The parishes were further subdivided into sections of about 1x1 mile, or designated as a town and then divided into sections and these subdivided into crown allotments. However many parishes in Victoria do not follow the county borders, some being located in more than one county, unlike in New South Wales. The county with the largest population is the County of Bourke, which contains Melbourne.

Western Australia

Main articles: Cadastral divisions of Western Australia


At the start of the 20th century, Western Australia had six Land Divisions which cover the whole state, divided into 80 Land Districts. The land districts were further subdivided into locations and lots. Western Australia also had 26 counties, all located in the south-west corner of the state, around Perth. The counties were designated in 1829, the year of the foundation of the Swan River Colony, with Governor Stirling instructing that counties were to be approximately 40 miles square (1600 square miles).

References

★ National Library of Australia, Cadastral maps
1. Cadastral systems within Australia
2. Founding Documents, National Archives of Australia, Colonel Collins' Commission 14 January 1803
3. State Records NSW, Archives Investigator, Commissioners for Apportioning the Territory
4. [http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm1975 New country and rail road map of New South Wales [cartographic material] : showing rail roads, coach roads, cities, towns &c.
1887. MAP RM 1975.]
5. Burrinjuck Electoral District Profile
6. Queensland government, Cadastral mapping
7. The Hundreds of South Australia; shows the proclamation date of counties

External Links

★ MapInfo CadastralPlus, database of all land parcels

★ Cadastral Template, Australia country data