DOI: 10.26190/unsworks/30092
title: Counties in the colony of New South Wales in 1850 (including the later states of Victoria and Queensland)

description: This dataset consists of the counties of the British colony of New South Wales (including portions that were later separated as Victoria and Queensland) as at the end of 1850. Counties were administrative regions largely used for purposes of land grants and sales, but also used for some colonial statistics, including five-yearly census returns. Counties could be either formally gazetted or informally defined for administrative purposes. Up to 1826 only seven counties had entered common use, of these only five had been formally gazetted. In 1829 the number of counties was increased to a total of nineteen - the so-called 'limits of location', beyond which land sales were (for a period) restricted. A small number of counties came into official use in the period following while remaining ungazetted. A further 31 counties were gazetted in 1848, while another 32 counties were authorised by the Surveyor General (but not gazetted) in 1850. No further changes to the number of counties were made until 1861. While counties in New South Wales remain in use, they have fallen out of usage in both Victoria and Queensland. There have also been some changes to boundaries within New South Wales since 1850. This dataset was created as part of the PhD research project, ‘Settlers and the city: the colonising entanglements of Sydney, its settlers, and their world, 1830-50’, undertaken by Nicholas Pitt and accepted April 2024. The data was created by combining multiple data sources (historical and contemporary) as described in the methodology. The fields consist of: Year: Earliest known year of the county name in use County: County name DateSource: Source of the earliest known year BoundarySource: Main source for verifying boundaries - note that multiple sources were used, as described in the methodology.
description: These boundaries have been collated from multiple sources (listed below) and checked against the following 1850 map: + ‘General Map of the South Eastern Portion of Australia: Shewing the Colony of New South Wales as Surveyed and Divided by the Sr. Genl. between the Years 1827 and 1850’. Sydney: J. Carmichael for N.S.W. Surveyor General, 1850. MAP RM 918. National Library of Australia. https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-231341310. Information on county gazettal dates has been taken from: + Atchison, J. F. ‘The Counties of New South Wales’. Australian Surveyor 30, no. 1 (March 1980): 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00050326.1980.12005895. + McInnes, Ken. ‘Counties in the State of Victoria Australia - 1910’, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20150713215421/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kenmac/victowns/viccounties.htm. + New South Wales Government Gazette. ‘Proclamation [Counties]’. 30 December 1848, pp 1881-1885. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article230151574. + New South Wales Government Gazette. ‘Proclamation [Electoral Districts]’. 28 February 1843, pp 312-314. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article230103380. + New South Wales Government Gazette. ‘Proclamation. Letters Patent Erecting Certain Portions of the Colony into Counties, Named Camden, St.Vincent, Northumberland, Durham, Hunter, Cook, Westmoreland, Argyle, Murray, King, Georgiana, Bathurst, Roxburgh, Phillip, Brisbane, Bligh, and Wellington’. 2 December 1835, pp 859-862. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article230656861. + Sydney Gazette. ‘Government and General Orders’. 3 March 1821, p 1. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2180122. + Sydney Gazette. ‘Government Order (No. 50.) Colonial Secretary’s Office Sydney, Oct. 14, 1829’. 17 October 1829, p 1. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2193642. The following contemporary geographical data for watercourses, coastlines, and elevation have been used to reconstruct county boundaries: + ‘Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) Digital Boundaries, Australia (Cat. No. 1259.0.30.001)’. Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics), 14 July 2011. https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/0832A60B7CCC8FA4CA257488001AD287?opendocument. + Hutchinson, M.F., J.L. Stein, J.A. Stein, H. Anderson, and P.K. Tickle. ‘GEODATA 9 Second DEM and D8: Digital Elevation Model Version 3 and Flow Direction Grid 2008’. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia), 2008. http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/66006. + National Map. ‘Watercourses, Major Rivers, Scale 5 Million to 300000’. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia), 2017. http://services.ga.gov.au/gis/rest/services/NM_Hydrology_and_Marine_Lines/MapServer/2. + Spatial Collaboration Portal. ‘Catchment Boundaries of New South Wales’. NSW Spatial Services, 29 March 2023. https://portal.spatial.nsw.gov.au/portal/home/item.html?id=aa047cfec8524763a2ad7d8b5b364f9a. + Spatial Collaboration Portal. ‘NSW Water Theme - Named Watercourse’. NSW Spatial Services, 6 February 2020. https://portal.spatial.nsw.gov.au/portal/home/item.html?id=cfb54c364661497288e1e7cd039bf2c5. The boundaries of counties within the current state of New South Wales have been adapted from and adjusted to match gazetted or authorised boundaries as found in 1850: + Spatial Collaboration Portal. ‘NSW Administrative Boundaries Theme’. NSW Spatial Services, 5 May 2020. https://portal.spatial.nsw.gov.au/portal/home/item.html?id=9dc2caa5f5f4418a87c7913b231b7b66. Boundaries within the current state of Victoria have been created from a dataset of geographical parishes, merged into counties according to a list that names the county associated with each parish (taken from Township and Parish Guide, Department of Crown Lands and Survey, 1955), and then adjusted with reference to the 1850 map, 1848 gazettal, and contemporary river routes: + DATA VIC, Victorian Government Data Directory. ‘Vicmap Admin - Parish Polygon’. Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning, 11 November 2022. https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/vicmap-admin-parish-polygon1. + ‘List of Parishes in the State of Victoria’. Public Records Office of Victoria, n.d. https://prov.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/List%20of%20Parishes%20in%20the%20State%20of%20Victoria%20-%20ListofParishes.pdf. + ‘List of Parishes in the State of Victoria’. Public Records Office of Victoria, n.d. https://prov.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/files/List%20of%20Parishes%20in%20the%20State%20of%20Victoria%20-%20ListofParishes.pdf. + ‘Victoria [Atlas]’. Melbourne: Dept of Lands and Surveys, 1884. MAP RaA 23. National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-231033948. Boundaries within the current State of Queensland have been redrawn with reference to the 1850 map, 1848 gazettal descriptions, and contemporary river routes. Placename locations have been occasionally verified using: + NSW Place and Road Naming Proposals System. ‘Place Name Search’. Geographical Names Board NSW. Accessed 12 April 2023. https://proposals.gnb.nsw.gov.au/public/geonames/search.