Preserving Our History
Hundreds and Townships of South Australia
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Hundreds
 | | The Hundred of Maitland, Yorke Peninsula, proclaimed 1872. SRSA GRS 6910 |
One of the tenets of the Wakefield scheme that guided the founding of the colony of South Australia in 1834, was that no land was to be given away. All land was considered to be the property of the Crown. It was either to be surveyed and sold systematically or leased for pastoral use on payment of the prescribed rental. The funds raised were to be used to pay for the passage of selected settlers, preferably farming families. There was also a clear intention that surveys should always precede sales. Over time, the major units of survey established themselves as the county, the hundred and the rural section. The use of the hundred was first suggested by Commissioner of Crown Lands Charles Bonney in 1845. By 1846 it was widely accepted that hundreds had to be proclaimed before land could be surveyed and sold. In 1855 Goyder reinforced the use of the hundred by advocating a pre-survey sketch of the surrounding hundred before surveying sections. This procedure was formally adopted in about 1860. Each hundred was approximately 100 square miles, and each hundred was given a name and divided into numbered sections. Originally, a rural section was 80 acres. Gradually, the hundred became a device for regulating both the pace and the direction of settlement, which fitted in with another Wakefieldian ideal - the orderly progression of settlement. The hundred also took on another significance. It became not only a cadastral unit for achieving survey accuracy, but also a means of placing a network of roads and planning for the community needs of early settlers. From the 1870s its use was extended again. At the request of Parliament, and under the instruction of Goyder, surveyors added soil and vegetation information to the drawings in the Diagram Books of the sections of hundreds they surveyed to help the farmers make their selection of land. The original sections within the hundred had been set at 80 acres with the idea of encouraging the small farmer. By the 1860s the government had accepted the reality that wheat growing - a mainstay of the economy - required larger farms. Under the Strangways Act, 1869 land could be bought on credit with sections of up to 320 acres replacing the old 80-acre section.
 | | The Hundred of Booleroo proclaimed in 1875. SRSA GRS 6910 |
Goyder's Imaginary Hundred
 | | South Australian Parliamentary Paper 36 of 1864 |
This is Goyder's sketch that accompanied his instructions to the surveyors sent to the Northern Territory in 1864. - 'Goyder drew a sketch plan of an imaginary hundred including a town centre, parklands and surrounding suburban land. This became the model for surveyors for the rest of the 19th century and little copies of Adelaide were strewn all over the agricultural areas.'
(John Love, The Measure of the Land)
Between 1869 and 1879, 101 government townships were surveyed - not all of them became set in stone. Many of the early attempts to settle a town in each hundred were a failure, either because pastoralists were able to pay town allotment prices and keep the land for grazing, or, as in the case of the ghost towns of the north, drought drove people out.
Townships
 | | The government town of Maitland proclaimed and surveyed in 1872. SRSA GRS 6910 |
Apart from Adelaide, the earliest towns were private ventures. In 1846 the government began surveying country towns. At first, Goyder did not like the idea of creating townships in pastoral districts, and expressed his concerns in a letter to Freeling: - 'The first erection would undoubtedly be an inn which would be the resort of the shepherds and stockmen within reach and whose wages would go in the purchase of ardent spirits, rum and beer, demoralization would ensure and the interests of the squatter seriously affected.'
Evidently the need for public watering places and accommodation in the pastoral lands became clearer to Goyder when he and his survey party and their exhausted horses were turned away from a water reserve at a private station near Willochra. - 'It would be impossible to convey to you an idea of the day and I bitterly felt the want of some accommodation for the poor brutes [horses], and really must respectfully urge upon you the propriety of surveying allotments at this inhospitable abode with the least possible delay.'
In the 1860s the planning of townships became an integral part of the survey procedure. It became common to lay out at least one town in each hundred, leaving little scope for private towns.
 | | Township of Jamestown proclaimed and surveyed in 1872. SRSA GRS 6910 |
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