page_title: Lands administrative divisions of New South Wales
section_title: Creation of county areas
hierarchical_section_title: Lands administrative divisions of New South Wales / Creation of county areas
caption_attribution_description: English: Map shewing the roads &amp; distances in New South Wales
context_page_description: The lands administrative divisions of New South Wales refers to the 141 counties within the Colony of New South Wales, that later became the Australian state of New South Wales.
  The counties were further subdivided into 7,419 parishes. There are also three land divisions, approximately one hundred land districts, and several other types of districts as well as land boards used at various periods. There were also thirteen hundreds proclaimed in Cumberland County, which were later abolished. These divisions are part of the lands administrative divisions of Australia. Unlike the local government areas of New South Wales, which have gone through restructuring periods by the government, the counties have been the same since the nineteenth century.
context_section_description: The first county proclaimed was Cumberland on 6 June 1788. Northumberland was named in 1804. Several other counties were established around Sydney; by the 1820s there were nine counties (see 1828 and 1832 maps). They were: Roxburgh, Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, Argyle, Camden, Ayr and Cambridge. They were in the approximate area of the present day cadastral units except that some of them were larger and took up land which was in 1834 assigned to other counties. Ayr and Cambridge were not used in the 1834 counties, taking up area which is approximately in what became Macquarie County and Brisbane County.
  Instructions were given to Governor Brisbane in 1825 to survey New South Wales and divide it into counties of various sizes, hundreds, and parishes between 15 and 25 square miles (40 and 65 km²). The Nineteen Counties were surveyed by Thomas Mitchell in 1834. Thirteen hundreds were proclaimed in Cumberland county, but not in anywhere else in New South Wales, and these were repealed in 1888.
  As the counties are based on area, rather than population, there are huge differences in the populations of the coastal counties with those for the remote west. The whole of Sydney with several million people is located within Cumberland County, while there are many counties for areas in the Far West which have a very low population.
caption: 1872 map showing the 19 populated counties
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