Cadastral divisions in Victoria are called counties, which are further subdivided into parishes and townships, for cadastral or land administration purposes. Cadastral divisions of county, parish and township form the basis for formal identification of the location of any piece of land in the state. There are 37 counties and 2004 parishes and 909 townships.[1][2] Parishes were subdivided into sections of various sizes for sale as farming allotments, or designated as a town and then divided into sections and these subdivided into crown allotments. However, many parishes do not follow county borders, some being located in more than one county.
Counties in Victoria, Australia were gazetted in stages between 1849 and 1871 as Victoria was progressively opened up to British settlement. All parish boundaries were gazetted by 1890.
In addition to identification of particular parcels of land by county, parish and other names, such parcels are also usually identified by reference to a lot number of a particular plan of subdivision or other certified plan or survey. Legal documents (such as grants, titles or transfers) that describe a particular parcel of land do so by reference to the county, parish, township (if there is one), section, crown allotment number, and certified plan number[3] — for example: "County of Dalhousie, Parish of Lauriston, being 2 hectares, being Crown Allotment 2, Section 40";[4] or "Parish of Ballarat, County of Grant, Crown Allotment 29, Section 101, Township of Ballarat East, as shown on Certified Plan No. 105127" [5] Under streamlined rules of the Torrens title in Australia, a parcel of land on a transfer, etc. can now be described by reference to the relevant volume-folio number on the Land Register, which is itself based on the cadastral descriptions described above. When searching for title details, for example online, searching by street address is also often available. In each case, titles continue to be based on the original cadastral descriptions.
Unlike counties in the United States and the United Kingdom, Victoria's counties have no administrative or political function. County names have traditionally been used as names for Victorian electoral districts, although the boundaries of these districts seldom coincided with county boundaries.
- ^ "Land Records and Parish Maps Research Guide" (PDF). Goldfields Library Corporation.
- ^ List of Parishes in the State of Victoria (PDF).
- ^ Crown Survey Requirements Archived 2008-01-26 at the Wayback Machine, land.vic.gov.au
- ^ LAND (MISCELLANEOUS) BILL 2004
- ^ Ballarat (Sovereign Hill) Land Act 1970 Archived 2008-06-25 at the Wayback Machine. Act No. 7955/1970