NRS-20761 | Crown Lands Tenure Cards – Regional Land Boards and Offices

Full description

This series consists of Crown Lands Tenure cards for regional Land Boards and the district Lands Offices.

In 1861 Crown lands management was reformed with the Crown Lands Occupation Act 1861 (25 Vic. No.2) which allowed for the leasing of Crown lands. The Act regulated the occupation and management and subsequent alienation of Crown lands.

The Crown Lands Act 1884 (48 Vic. No.18) introduced tenures which included grazing licences, homestead leases, conditional leases, pastoral leases and permits for wharfs and jetties. The Act also led to the division of land in NSW into the Eastern, Central and Western divisions. Local land boards were introduced in the three divisions in 1886, consisting of one or more land districts, effectively decentralising Crown land administration. (1) Details of Crown tenures were recorded in registers arranged by tenure type until 1917 when the card system was fully adopted. (2) Prior to this, Lands Offices progressively started using tenure cards.

These records consist of tenure cards from the following regional Land Boards: Armidale, Dubbo, Goulburn, Grafton, Griffith, Hay, Maitland, Moree, Nowra, Orange, Tamworth, Taree and Wagga Wagga and Metropolitan Sydney. There are three sizes of card, large, medium and small, with many arranged according to district name and type of tenure.

There are many types of tenures within this series, including: Homestead Selection; Improvement Purchase; Returned Soldiers Special Holding Purchase; Settlement Lease; Closer Settlement Lease; Permissive Occupancy; Annual Lease; Crown Lease; Conditional Purchase Lease; Settlement Purchase Lease; Conditional Lease; Special Purchase; Road Permits; Settlement Purchase; Homestead Farm; Suburban Holding; Special Lease and Conditional Purchase. There are also cards relating to Reserves and to lands held under Licence for purposes such as quarrying, boatsheds and jetties. Interspersed with the tenure cards are index cards related to the various tenures and associated dealings such as applications, sales and transfers. Examples are: Special Lease index cards, personal cards, correspondence cards and sales returns and analyses cards. Their arrangement varies. Some sales registrations are ordered alphabetically by parish name while others, such as applications to transfer, are bundled in chronological order.

The information recorded on the cards varies according to tenure type but the majority of the cards contain the following headings: Holding; Land District; Parish; County; Shire; Conversion/Subdivision of; Formerly; Date Applied for: Date Allowed/Approved/Confirmed; Portion; Allotment; Section; City/Town/Village; Locality; Plan; Nature of Transfer; Holder; Date of Transfer; Record; Area; Rent; Effective Date; Gazette or Authority. Cards relating to Reserves record the locality, registration number, the county and shire/municipality, the names of trustees, a diagram of the area and a definition of how the land would be used.

Crown land tenure was converted to the Real Property (Torrens) System prior to the introduction of the Crown Lands Act 1989 (Act No.6, 1989). The conversion of all live tenures in the Eastern and Central divisions of the State was completed prior to 1 January 1986, with the Western division following on and completed by 1 January 1987. Manual registrations ceased from 1987 (3), however annotations to the cards continued until much later. In this series, cards for some forms of holding, for example under Licence, were used as late as 2012.

This series is related to NRS 18096, Head Office Crown lands tenure cards. The Lands Offices created a set of cards and Head Office subsequently created a comprehensive duplicate set for all districts.

Endnotes
1.  Land & Property Information, Crown Land http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/land_titles/land_ownership/crown_land (accessed 03 November, 2015)
2.  Land & Property Information, A Brief History of the Records of the Registrar General, Crown land records, p.24 http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/150698/Brief_History_of_RG_Records.pdf (accessed 03 November, 2015)
3.  Land & Property Information, A Brief History of the Records of the Registrar General, Crown land records, p.24 http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/150698/Brief_History_of_RG_Records.pdf (accessed 03 November, 2015)