page_title: Black Stump
section_title: Blackall, Queensland
hierarchical_section_title: Black Stump / Etymology / Blackall, Queensland
caption_attribution_description: English: Reconstruction of the Black Stump (the original was burned down), Blackall, 2019
context_page_description: The Australian expression 'black stump' is the name for an imaginary point beyond which the country is considered remote or uncivilised, an abstract marker of the limits of established settlement. The origin of the expression, especially in its evolved use as an imaginary marker in the landscape, is contested. The various claims are discussed below.
  The term "Black stump" was used as land markers on a surveyors plan and was first referred to as a boundary marker in a New South Wales court case involving a land law dispute. See R v West [1831] NSWSupC 66. The case refers to vacant land at Woolloomooloo where a surveyor had difficulty in ascertaining the boundaries as he could not find a plan from the days of Governor Lachlan Macquarie. In the case it stated, "...and he pointed to some old stumps, which he said had been marked...defendant would not admit that the cross line marked by me on the plan was not part of his boundary...he said it ran to a black stump beyond the line, which he said had been marked...; he said the line was to run somewhere thereabouts; utmost extent claimed by defendant was the black stump of which I have spoken...made no claims beyond South Head road..."
context_section_description: The town of Blackall, Queensland makes the following claim to the origin of the expression. In 1887 a group of surveyors arrived in Blackall (near the centre of Queensland, over 1,000 kilometres west of Brisbane) and established an Astro Station on this site to conduct survey readings to establish a principal meridional circuit traverse around the town. Stumps and other suitable stable platforms were often used rather than a set of legs because they gave more stability to the heavy theodolites then used to take longitudinal and latitudinal observations.
  This Astro station was used as part of the survey to fix the position of principal towns extending from Brisbane to Boulia via Roma, Charleville and Blackall and enabled the mapping of Queensland on a more accurate basis.
  It was considered at the time that country to the west of Blackall was beyond the 'black stump'.
  A stump of petrified wood which marks the location of the original Astro Station is found at the monument in Thistle Street (24.4238°S 145.4697°E) near Blackall State School. This petrified stump replaces the original blackened timber stump destroyed by fire.
caption: Reconstruction of the Black Stump (the original was burned down), Blackall, 2019
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