Survey and Crown Lands Department (GA419)

Due to the nature of colonisation in South Australia the office of Surveyor-General was vital and general land administration came under his control as early as 1841. By 1857 surveying was still the most important function of what was becoming a wide-ranging and multi-functional Department.

With responsible government in 1857 the Survey and Crown Lands Department came into being, under the Ministerial control of the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Immigration. The Surveyor-General was the administrative head of the Department, which comprised a Survey and Land Branch (surveyors, draftsmen and the Land Office) and a Waste Lands Branch (Crown Lands rangers).

A photolithographer was added to the Department staff in 1867. His organisation's main function was to print maps for all Government departments but it also printed photographs to illustrate Government publications. It was transferred to the Government Printing Office in July 1973.

In the late 1860s the system of cash sales of Crown land by two alternatives - credit sales and 21 year Leases of land for farming. In 1871 an Inspector and Valuator of Lands Purchased on Credit was appointed to ensure that the terms of sale or lease were complied with. He and his staff were known as the Credit Lands Department from 1881 to 1896, after which they were listed in the Survey and Crown Lands Department under the heading "Inspectors and Rangers".

Two long-standing boards began in the late nineteenth century: the Land Board in 1886 to allot leases of land to farmers (doing away with the system of bidding for leases) and the Pastoral Board in 1893 to supervise the pastoral industry beyond the fringes of the agricultural areas.

An Expert for Village Settlements was appointed in 1896 to assist the communities of fruit growers who held Crown leases at selected sites on the River Murray. Reclamation of swamps along the lower reaches of the River in the early twentieth century became his responsibility, and in 1910 he and his staff became the Irrigation and Reclamation Department.

The Advances to Settlers' Board was created in 1908 to administer loans to the Department's tenants for capital improvements to their farms.

Other Departments had their genesis in the Survey and Crown Lands Department, or grew to maturity there.

A mine surveyor had been appointed, under the control of the Commissioner of Crown Lands, in 1847 following the discovery of copper. When G.W. Goyder became Surveyor-General in 1861 he was also appointed Inspector of Mines. The Mines and Goldfields Department was created in 1889 and combined with the Government Geologist in 1893 to form the Mines Department.

The appointment of a Forest Board in 1875 under the chairmanship of the Surveyor-General led to the creation of the Woods and Forests Department, responsible to the Commissioner of Crown Lands, in 1882. It was tranferrred to another minister in 1917.

From the beginning the laying out of country roads was a survey function. From 1839-1861 the Surveyor-General was responsible for building roads and bridges. Although these functions were then transferred to the Commissioner of Public Works (and later became the Roads Department), the Surveyor-General and his staff continued to be involved in local government affairs until 1917.

The duties of the Inspector of Scab in Sheep were transferred to the Surveyor-General in 1842. In 1852 there was an Office of the Chief Inspector of Sheep which became the Stock and Brands Office in 1879, its duties having expanded considerably in the intervening years. In the general re-organisation of 1917 it became the Stock and Brands Department.

There was a major re-arrangement of portfolios under the Commissioner of Crown Lands in 1917. The Survey and Crown Lands Department shed the Stock and Brands Office (which became a separate department) and the Local Government Office (which was amalgamated with the Roads Department to form the Local Government Department).

Much of the State was now accurately surveyed and the Department still performed a great many functions relating to the management and administration of Crown and freehold lands. In recognition of this change of emphasis in the work of the Department it was renamed the Lands and Survey Department, and a Director of Lands was appointed as its administrative head in place of the Surveyor-General.