Counties of Victoria

Counties of Victoria
1877 map of the counties of Victoria

The Australian state of Victoria is divided into 37 counties. They are part of the lands administrative divisions of Australia. These counties were gazetted in stages between 1849 and 1871 as Victoria was progressively opened up to European settlement. By 1890 all parish boundaries had been gazetted. Unlike counties in the United States and the United Kingdom, Victoria's counties have no administrative or political function. They exist purely as cadastral units: used for the purposes of identifying the location of any piece of land. The counties are furthermore divided into 2914 parishes and townships.

The county names have also been traditionally used as names for electoral districts, although these districts seldom have boundaries coinciding exactly with county boundaries. The Victorian Legislative Assembly currently has electoral districts called Benambra, Evelyn, Lowan, Mornington, Polwarth, Ripon and Rodney. The counties are also related to the boundaries for the Victorian forecast districts.[1]


Contents

Naming of the Counties

1852 map of eastern Victoria, showing seven former counties

The majority of the counties proclaimed prior to 1871 were named after conservative and titled English politicians. The counties formed from the Gipps Land District, Loddon Land District, Murray Land District and Wimmera Land District proclaimed in 1871 were all given aboriginal names.

Earlier maps of Gippsland area in the eastern part of the state show unsurveyed counties of Douro (a title of the Duke of Wellington), Bass, Haddington, Bruce, Abinger, Combermere and Howe with approximate boundaries. These counties are shown on several early maps such as 1845 map[2] and 1848 map.[3] They were presumably changed in the mid 1860s, as they appear on maps up until 1864,[4] but the new counties appear on an 1865 map.[5] This was during the period of the liberal Government (1863-1868) of Premier James McCulloch.

Land Districts

Victoria was also divided into land districts in the nineteenth century, as shown on a 1864 map.[6] The land districts were used as the names for parts of the state where no counties had been proclaimed yet. The land districts included:

  • Bourke Land District (Melbourne area, including the County of Bourke)
  • Geelong (or Grant) Land District
  • Gipps Land District (name for the area today is still Gippsland)
  • Loddon Land District
  • Murray Land District
  • Normanby Land District [7]
  • Western Land District
  • Wimmera Land District (the southern part still called the Wimmera today)

List of Victorian Counties with the year proclaimed

Map showing the names of the counties

[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Victorian Forecast Areas Map". Bureau of Meteorology. Commonwealth of Australia. http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/vic/vic-forecast-map.shtml. 
  2. ^ Rapkin, John (1845). "Australia". National Library of Australia. London. http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm3709. 
  3. ^ "(No 2.) outline map shewing the positions of the proposed New Counties in the Port Phillip district which will be ready for Proclamation before the end of the Year 1848". National Library of Australia. London: J. Arrowsmith. 1948. http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-nk2456-130. 
  4. ^ Bartholomew, John (1864). "Victoria". National Library of Australia. London; Liverpool: George Philip & Son. http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-nk10524. 
  5. ^ Victoria. Dept. of Crown Lands and Survey (1865). "Map of Victoria". National Library of Australia. Melbourne: Dept. of Lands & Survey. http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-t1466. 
  6. ^ Stephens, W. B. (1864). "Stephens' new map of Victoria". National Library of Australia. Melbourne: W. B. Stephens. http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-f280. 
  7. ^ Skene, Alexander James (1945). "Map of the district of Geelong". Geelong, Victoria: Jas. Harrison, Advertiser Office. http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm983. 
  8. ^ "List of the Counties in the State of Victoria - 1910". Rootsweb Genealogy. Ancestry.com. 2000. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kenmac/victowns/viccounties.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-20. 
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