Detail View: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection: This Map of the Colony of New South Wales, Exhibiting the Situation and Extent of the Appropriated Lands...

Dixon, Robert (1800 – 1858)

Walker, J. & C.

1837

This Map of the Colony of New South Wales, Exhibiting the Situation and Extent of the Appropriated Lands...

Joseph Cross

London

Case Map

76

127

506,880

Australia

New South Wales

This Map of the Colony of New South Wales, Exhibiting the Situation and Extent of the Appropriated Lands including the Counties, Towns, Village Reserves &c., Compiled from Authentic Surveys &c. is respectfully Dedicated to Sir John Barrow Bar.t President of the Royal Geographical Society &c. &c. &c. By his obliged Humble Servant Robert Dixon.

15910.002

2

Dixon, Robert (1800 – 1858)

Walker, J. & C.

1837

This Map of the Colony of New South Wales, Exhibiting the Situation and Extent of the Appropriated Lands including the Counties, Towns, Village Reserves &c., Compiled from Authentic Surveys &c. is respectfully Dedicated to Sir John Barrow Bar.t President of the Royal Geographical Society &c. &c. &c. By his obliged Humble Servant Robert Dixon.

National Library of Australia: MAP F 891; State Library of NSW (3 examples): MTA4 811/1837/2, MTA4 811/1837/1, Z/MT4 811/1837/1; British Library: Cartographic Items Maps 90100.(4.); OCLC: 223327903, 556788902; Robert CLANCY, The Mapping of Terra Australis (1995), p.168, ill. Map 9.39; R.V. TOOLEY, The Mapping of Australia (1979), p.249, ill. Pl 183; [re: Joseph Cross’s biography:] Laurence WORMS & Ashley BAYNTON-WILLIAMS, British Map Engravers (2011), pp. 171.

"Very rare – the first edition of one of the great monuments of scientific cartography in Australia, being the first comprehensive cadastral and land management map of the ‘Nineteen Counties’, the officially sanctioned pale of settlement of New South Wales, predicated upon a series of trigonometric surveys conducted between 1828 and 1834, as the fast-growing colony finalized its transition from being a penal colony to a free settler society; the map predicated upon manuscript sketches and field books copied and controversially (without official permission) spirited to London by Robert Dixon, the Assistant Surveyor General of New South Wales, whereupon the map was published by Joseph Cross, a boutique printer who specialized in Australian cartography; the exquisitely engraved and resplendently coloured map served for many years as the masterplan, or blueprint, used by government officials and settlers for overseeing the development of New South Wales; today it is an invaluable resource for scholars investigating a pivotal era in the history of Australia. New South Wales was established in 1788, when a penal colony was founded at Sydney, making it the first European settlement in Australia. Initially, the colony’s boundaries were enormous, taking in all of Australia east of 135° longitude East (embracing 40 % of the subcontinent), plus, most of New Zealand, although for many years settlement was confined to the Sydney area and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Knowledge of the interior remained very limited, as the British crown discouraged free white settlement. During the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie (1810-21), New South Wales made the transition from being a penal colony to a free settler society, as free white immigration was encouraged, and new towns and infrastructure were built. Van Diemen’s Land split from New South Wales in 1825, while in 1829 the colony’s western boundaries were extended to the limits of the new Swan River Colony (the Perth area of Western Australia). Endeavours were undertaken to meaningfully explore the interior for the first time. In 1813, an expedition led by Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains. In 1824-5, Hamilton Hume and William Hovell explored the regions to the south, discovering the Murray River and reaching Port Phillip (the future Melbourne area). In 1828-30, Charles Sturt led two separate expeditions, one to descend the Murray River and the other to explore the Macquarie and Darling rivers, to the northwest of Sydney. During the early 1830s, Sir Thomas Mitchell, the colonial Surveyor General, led a series of expeditions to ‘fill in the gaps’ to complete the broad geographic knowledge of the territory that comprises today’s New South Wales. Importantly, in 1826, white settlement in New South Wales was limited to what was known as the ‘Nineteen Counties’, the cluster of already established jurisdictions radiating inland out of Sydney, that extended along the coast from Trial Bay in the north, to the Moruya River in the south, and into the interior as far west as the Murumbidgee and Barowa rivers. The territory beyond was too wild to tame and too remote for the crown to control, so the authorities were determined to keep the hinterlands free of white settlement (albeit with some limited exceptions), at least for the foreseeable future. The Nineteen Counties were as follows: 1. Gloucester; 2. Durham; 3. Northumberland; 4. Cumberland; 5. Camden; 6. St. Vincent; 7. Hunter; 8. Cook; 9. Westmoreland; 10. Georgiana; 11. King; 12. Murray; 13. Argyle; 14. Roxburgh; 15. Bathurst; 16. Brisbane; 17. Phillip; 18. Wellington; and 19. Bligh. Land settlement laws and regulations were at the heart of the development of New South Wales. Until 1831, unsettled land in the Nineteen Counties was offered for free to settlers, but from that time onwards titles had to be purchased and formally registered. In the early 1830s, the lack of scientifically accurate cartography led to major problems with defining land titles, so sparking innumerable unnecessary and costly legal disputes that soured the general climate. Further complicating matters, the period from 1820 to 1850 was the ‘Golden Age of the Squatters’, generally pastoralist settlers who occupied unclaimed land under dubious legal authority, often coming into conflict with land title holders and the authorities. From 1836, squatters were allowed to occupy unsettled lands for a period of 14 years, in return for an annual payment of ￡1. The 1833 census records New South Wales as having a population of 60,861 white settlers, with a high growth rate. South Australia was split off from the colony in 1836, while Queensland would be carved out of New South Wales in 1859, leaving the colony largely with its modern boundaries. By 1840, New South Wales had fully transitioned from a penal to a settler colony, as the importation of new convicts was banned, while a semi-elected legislative government was established in 1842. The Nineteen Counties technically remained the pale of settlement until the passage of the Robertson Land Acts of 1861, whereby the rest of the colony was opened-up to white settlement, and the land progressively divided into new counties (New South Wales would contain 141 counties by 1900). Thomas Mitchell, Robert Dixon and the Scientific Surveying of New South Wales In 1828, Thomas Mitchell (1792 - 1855), a highly educated and competent, but incredibly pompous and quarrelsome, man was appointed as the Survey General of New South Wales. Immediately upon assuming his new role, the Crown demanded that an accurate general map of the pale of settlement of the colony be created so that it could be used as a masterplan to oversee lands grants and infrastructure development. Not only were the exiting maps not helpful in this regard, but the surveyor general’s department was something of a backward mess, as its seldom employed modern scientific methods in its operations. Mitchell managed to convince Governor Ralph Darling that the only way an accurate general map of the Nineteen Counties could be realized was by employing advanced trigonometric surveying methods that, in the main areas of settlement, should be conducted in a systematic manner. This process would be much more expansive than mapping the country by rough and ready methods, but the need for accuracy was an urgent imperative, as land disputes were causing much confusion and rancour. A protagonist of Mitchell’s survey of the Nineteen Counties (1828-34) was Robert Dixon (1800-1858), a surveyor and explorer, who was a native of County Durham, England. Dixon immigrated to Van Diemen’s Land with his brother in 1821 but sold his interest in their shared farm in 1826, moving to Sydney. A skilled frontier surveyor, Dixon was hired by John Oxley, Mitchell’s predecessor as surveyor general, to be his assistant, in September 1826. Dixon’s first assignment was to map the southern districts of New South Wales down to Illawarra. In November 1827, he went on a solo mission to reconnoitre the Burragorang Valley, where for four days he became hopelessly lost, an experience that almost cost him his life. From 1827 and 1829, Dixon extensively explored and surveyed the Blue Mountains, executing a trigonometrical survey of Mt. King George. He made two attempts to map the Grose Valley, first, in 1827, in the company of Mitchell and Edmund Lockyer, and again, in 1829, while solo, but these endeavours proved fruitless due to the incredibly rugged nature of the terrain. Overall, however, Dixon’s Blue Mountain surveys were seen as a great success, as they enabled the opening of county, as they permitted Mitchell to build a new road to Bathurst. In 1828, Dixon, who was made Mitchell’s chief deputy that year, proceeded to lay out the original site of the town of Goulburn (then known as Goulburn Plains) by the Wollondilly River, although the settlement would be moved to a different location in 1833. In 1830, Dixon mounted an expedition, departing from Queanbeyan, and following the Molonglo River to its confluence with the Murrumbidgee, before continuing west. In 1831-2, Dixon mapped the Upper Hunter and New England districts, and in October 1833 was sent to survey the ranges between the Lachlan and the Macquarie Rivers, although he deviated from his instructions. Although Dixon proved to be an ‘independent operator’, who often strayed from Mitchell’s orders, he was an exceptionally intrepid and talented explorer-surveyor who contributed tremendously to the geographical knowledge and settlement of New South Wales. In 1834, Mitchell, who was desirous of enjoying the political and financial ‘fruits of his labour’ as surveyor general, decided the publish the first broadly accurate map of the New South Wales pale of settlement. This work was: To the Right Honorable Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley this Map of the Colony of New South Wales / Compiled from actual measurements with the chain & circumferenter, and according to a trigonometrical Survey… (Sydney: John Carmichael, 1834), sometimes known simply as the ‘Map of the Nineteen Counties’. Please see a link, courtesy of the National Library of Australia: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-230696897/view Mitchell’s map was a tremendous achievement of scientific surveying; however, it only brought the surveyor general trouble. First, while the map showcased a magnificent portrayal of the New South Wales’s inland mountain ranges, river systems and valleys, as well as depicting all towns and roads, it was essentially void of cadastral information (which was what was most valued by the crown and settlers). It was seen as having a more academic, as opposed to a practical importance, which was damning in such a frontier environment. Second, Mitchell paid ￡900 (then an enormous sum) out of his own pocket to have the map engraved and printed in Sydney. However, the government limited his print run to only 200 copies and did not allow him to profit from the map that was created out of his official duties (an unusually harsh restriction, as crown surveyors were generally allowed to profit from their official maps). As Mitchell was permitted to receive only ￡1 per copy of his map, he was left with a ￡700 debt. However, the worst was yet to come! The Dixon Map of New South Wales In 1836, Dixon was granted two years leave from his post as assistant surveyor general to travel to England for ‘urgent private business’. At no time did he inform Mitchell, or anyone else, of the true purpose of this sabbatical. As it happened, Dixon either purloined or copied virtually every manuscript and field book in the Surveyors General’s Office, and during the long sea voyage back home, he drafted a magnificent manuscript map that was the basis for the present work. Once in London, Dixon gave his map to Joseph Cross, a boutique cartographic publisher, who over the last decade had developed a specialization for important Australian maps. Cross was an unusually skilled engraver, and he coloured his maps (as here) in the most lovely signature hues. The first edition of Dixon’s Map of the Colony of New South Wales (as exemplified here) carried the imprint date of July 20, 1837, and was sold for the price of ￡2 per copy, double the cost of Mitchell’s work. Immediately, upon laying eyes upon Dixon’s map, one immediately realizes that it is a triumph. In exquisitely engraved detail, with resplendent colour, it brilliantly showcases the Nineteen Counties of New South Wales like never before, featuring a wealth of cadastral and settlement information. Executed to the ample scale of 8 miles to the inch (1:506 880), the map is dedicated to Sir John Barrow, Baronet, the President of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the Board of the Admiralty, who was famously a leading patron of Arctic exploration. The map precisely traces the colony’s Pacific littoral, and outlines its river systems, while the mountain ranges are expressed by lines of hachures. Each of the counties are named (the northern limits of Macquarie County remained to be mapped, so are left undefined) and are outlined in their own bright colours, while all cities, towns (ex. Sydney, Newcastle and Bathurst) and roads are depicted. Many brightly coloured patchwork clusters and lines permeate the interior and coastal estuaries, with these being cadastral lots of ‘appropriated lands’. As explained in the ‘Reference’, lefthand side, those labeled Government Reserves = ‘G.R.’ (shaded in Yellow); Church Reserves = ‘C.R.’ (designated for the Anglican Church); Village Reserves = ‘V.R.’ (being the locations of planned townsites, shaded in Burgundy). The hundreds of other cadastral lots, which contain their owners’ names and often their acreages, concern lands granted to private settlers up to August 1831, plus, lands sold to settlers between August 1831 and June 1836, while a note below reads “Locations without name were [sic] land applied for but not then sold”. These attricbutes reveal the explosive proliferation of land development in New South Wales during the era. Completed roads (in use) are represented by bold double lines, roads under construction are represented as dashed double lines, while tracks are shown as single dashed lines. Beyond the limits of the Nineteen Counties, are the three vast land tracts of the Australian Agricultural Company that, in aggregate, amounted to one million acres. This enterprise was given special license to operate outside of the pale of settlement, as the great size of its tracts would ensure a level of security and crown oversight. The cartographic inset, in the upper left corner of the composition, features the ‘General Map of Australia’ that shows the vastness of New South Wales, as compared to the limited size of the Nineteen Counties. It also depicts the three other colonies in Australia, being the Swan River Colony, South Australia and Van Diemen’s Land. The vast majority of the country is still, by European measures, a total wilderness. Below the inset, the ‘References to the Counties’ chart individually lists the 19 counties with their land areas in both square miles and acres. It notes that the Nineteen Counties had a total land area of 25,362,364 acres (39,585 sq. miles), of which 3,835,744 acres had been granted by the crown to private settlers before August 1831, while 583,014 acres were sold by the crown between August 1831 and June 1836. As such, a total of 4,418,758 acres of the Nineteen Counties were ‘Alienated’ lands, accounting for approximately 17.4% of the pale of settlement’s total land area. Importantly, Dixon’s map, while not the first broadly accurate map of the Nineteen Counties (that honour goes to Mitchell’s work), was the first to comprehensively record cadastral information and land settlement patterns, being of the most vital intelligence required by the colonial and central governments and the settlers and prospective settlers of New South Wales. As such, it was Dixon who fulfilled the mandate that the crown gave to Mitchell in 1828, as it was his map that was to be the masterplan, or blueprint, for the ongoing development of the colony, and not Mitchell’s academic and far less practically access to the best manuscripts and intelligence arriving from Down Under. Cross published many of the era’s landmark maps of Australia. Tn addition to the present map, these include: Map of Part of New South Wales embellished with views in the harbour of Port Jackson (1825); Chart of Van Dieman’s Land compiled from the Most Authentic Documents Extant (1826); Plan of the Australian Agricultural Company’s Grant at Port Stephens (1828); Chart of Swan & Canning Rivers on the Western Coast of Australia (1829); Map of the South West part of Australia, with the Latest Discoveries (1833); General Map of Australia (c. 1838); Chart of Part of New South Wales, with plans of the harbours (1839); North West Quarter of Van Diemen‘s Land: including the grants of land belonging to the Van Diemen‘s Land Company (1842). Cross also issued several works on his home city, including The Parish of Lambeth, divided into Ecclesiastical Districts (1824); Cross’s New Plan of London (1828, revised in several subsequent issues); and Cross’s London Guide (c. 1851). Additionally, he also published maps of overseas lands other than Australia, including A Map of the Company’s Tract of Land in the Province of New Brunswick: New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company (1834). " (Alexander Johnson/Dasa Pahor, 2024)

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Case Map

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Dixon, Robert (1800 – 1858); Walker, J. & C.