Casual Expansion by Land Grantees in Van Diemen’s Land

Talk to any surveyor, conveyance lawyer, or farmer in Tasmania today and you will hear stories of troublesome property boundaries that date back to the colonial period. These complaints are nothing new - from almost the beginning of the British colony, accusations were made against the Survey Office and the quality of its work. Two charges were commonly laid against the surveyors responsible for dividing, measuring and recording the alienation of land for the European settlers: incompetence and corruption. This article challenges this assertion by considering the actions of the European settlers within the colonial bureaucracy.