ESTADO ACTUAL

The historian A.G.L. Shaw believed there was a problem in supplying colonial establishments with official personnel who were reasonably sober, competent,

Some department listings and staff can be found in: Australasian Pocket Almanack for the year of our Lord 1823, being the third after Bissextile, or Leap Year, and the fourth of the Reign of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth (Sydney, 1823); The Van Diemen’s Land Pocket Almanack for the year of our Lord MDCCCCXIV,being Bissextile, or Leap Year; and the fifth of the reign of his Most Gracious Majesty, King George the Fourth (Hobart Town, 1824); The Tasmanian Almanack for the year of Our Lord 1825, being the first year after leap year. Calculated for the meridian of Hobart Town longitude 147½ºE latitude 42º50’S (Hobart Town, 1825).

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industrious and honest.38 Van Diemen’s Land was not favoured with officials of high calibre, despite the importance of government departments for the development of the colony, and the Survey Office was one which suffered from defective

personnel and understaffing. The granting of land to settlers by both Sorell and Arthur was set against a backdrop of corruption and malpractice in the Survey Office. Surveying of estates was careless and inadequate. Grants and transfers were full of errors, boundaries, quantities and names were incorrectly described, the land intended for one man was conveyed to another, inaccurate charts multiplied

mistakes, and legal formalities which had to be completed in Sydney caused further delays and confusion. The frequent violation of the non-transfer condition of tenure and the power of the Governor, subject to the approbation of one of the principal Secretaries-of-State, to enlarge and grant as ‘grants in extension’, enabled both emancipated convicts and ‘meritorious settlers’ to increase their holdings by grants or purchases, resulting in large areas of granted land even before 1820.39

According to Assistant Surveyor-General George Evans in evidence to Bigge in March 1820, applications for land grants were made to Macquarie annually through Sorell, as near as possible to the month of June, as Macquarie had set June aside for that purpose. On receipt of the applications, Macquarie made a list of those to whom he ordered land and the size of the grant. The list was then transmitted to Sorell, who handed over the original or a copy to Evans with directions to mark off the

A.G.L Shaw, ‘Some Officials of Early Van Diemen’s Land’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings Volume 14, no. 4 (April 1967), p.140.

ground, providing the applicants’ choices did not interfere with any government arrangement. After completion of marking, the boundaries and descriptions were forwarded to the Surveyor-General at Sydney, who in turn sent them to Macquarie. Macquarie then directed that the grants be made out according to the description.40

In 1813 Macquarie had appointed Evans as Deputy Surveyor-General. Evans had received some training in architecture and surveying, become a storekeeper at Parramatta, farmed on the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales, and was twice temporarily employed in the Survey Department.41 Surveyors were empowered to ‘throw-in’ extra land when issuing grants, they were permitted to accept presents, and there were extra official services for which it was understood they might expect to be reimbursed to supplement their inadequate pay.42 It was also common practice to include extra land with grants to allow for any future requirement for roads.

According to Commissioner Bigge, frequent interruptions in surveying land grants in Van Diemen’s Land were caused by the long absences of Evans, Acting Surveyor- General James Meehan, and Surveyor-General John Oxley on tours of discovery for Macquarie. The operation of the department fell into arrears, made worse by the distances over which measurements needed to be executed, as well as the detention

R.W. Hartwell, The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820-1850 (Melbourne, 1954), p.36; West, The History of Tasmania p.111, Bigge, Report 3 Agriculture and Trade. p.34.

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HRA III, iii p.318 Evans to Bigge, 22 March 1820. 41

Shaw, ‘Some Officials of Early Van Diemen’s Land’ THRA P&P 14, 4 p.136. 42

Historical Records of Australia. Series III. Despatches and Papers relating to the settlement of the states. Volume vi. Tasmania April-December 1827. West Australia March 1826-January 1830. Northern Territory August 1824-December 1829 (Sydney, 1823), p.130 Goderich to Arthur, 18 August 1827.

of the grants in the secretary’s office in Sydney until the fees were paid. Also according to Bigge, Evans stated that the grants sent from Sydney to Van Diemen’s Land in 1817 were dated September 1813. The same cause of delay existed in New South Wales. Deeds were not delivered to the settlers immediately, often they were issued withlocation orders, and only after the expiration of five years were grants deed forms forwarded.43

Delays extended sometimes for years, in one extreme case, for more than seventeen years. As late as 1838, Sorell corresponded with Sir George Grey over details of a land claim made by Edward Clark, a settler who had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1821. In explaining that Clark’s deed had been returned to Sydney when it was found he was absent from the colony, Sorell also gave more details of delays. According to Sorell, between 1821 and 1823, no grant deeds had been forwarded from Sydney to Hobart Town, and consequently, in 1823 an officer of the Survey Department in New South Wales was sent to Hobart Town to deliver ‘some hundreds of these’.44

The deficiency in survey staff was partially alleviated by the appointment of Assistant-Surveyors William Stanley Sharland in 1823 and John Helder Wedge in 1824, but staff were still unable to accommodate the work. The course pursued was to make hasty surveys of the principal rivers by means of chain and compass, and the

Bigge, Report 3 Agriculture and Trade. pp.36-7; The Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter

14 February 1818 p.1, col. 1; S Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: Creating an Antipodean England (Carlton, 1992), p.8.

locations chosen on banks of rivers were then fixed on charts. If the surveyor did proceed to mark on the ground, he could seldom afford more time than to set out the width of a few farms by cutting notches in trees. The side lines were seldom

measured many hundreds of yards beyond the river bank. It was left to the fencers to produce the lines to the rear the best way they could over the generally irregular ground covered with trees.45