VPRS 14969 Locality Plans [and Lease Plans]

Full description

This series consists of Locality Plans created and maintained by the Mines Department (VA 612) to accurately record the locations of the mining leases. Individual lease plans were originally drawn up on Locality Plans, which were later divided into Dead Plans, Cut Plans, Roll Plans, and the still active Live Plans.

Dead Plans were Locality Plans that were no longer active. Each Dead Plan usually depicted several smaller Lease Plans.

Cut Plans were individual Lease Plans that were cut from the original Locality Plans and arranged in a storage box or pasted into a volume according to mining district and by lease number. The lease plans pasted into a volume were not located at the time of transfer (in 2007).

Roll Plans were larger Lease Plans that were cut from the Locality Plans, but were rolled for storage rather than boxed due to their size.

Live Plans were still in use within the Department.

Individual lease plans were arranged in a storage box or pasted into a volume according to mining district and by lease number. Lease numbers were allocated from various minings registers. The mining registers recorded the Locality Plan number (usually written as the LP number) upon which each lease plan was drawn.

The locality plans numbers were apparently allocated from a separate series of registers which were not located at the time of transfer (as at 2007).

Information on the Lease Plans included the location of the lease, the lease number, the area, directional bearing, and in some cases the water rights.

Information recorded on the plans could be from the creation of the first Department of Mines (VA 2719) in the 1860s to 1958 when the Mines Act 1958 (Act No. 6320) brought about a systems change, and the system of arrangement by mining district was abandoned. New lease plans based around Parish Plans were created at this time with a single numerical sequence. The Minerals Business Centre currently (2007) has these plans. To assist with retrieval of the Locality Plans in more recent times, a dual system was employed by which the Plans were identifiable by their location (Parish and County) as well as by their Mining District and Locality Plan number. This is reflected in the consignment details.

Over the period of use of the maps, several indexes were created each serving a different purpose. VPRS 14977 Name Index to Mining Leases provided a means of identifying the mining type (e.g., gold or mineral), the mining district, and the lease number. VPRS 14978 Locality Index to Mining Leases provides a means of identifying the Dead Plan number and Current Plan number for specific mining leases by parish name. VPRS 14979 Plan Index and Tracking guide provides a means of identifying whether a Locality Plan is a Dead Plan, Cut Plan, Roll Plan, missing, or live at the time of the index's creation.