Gannawarra Shire Heritage Study Stage One Volume One Thematic ...

Gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851, and by 1858, 150,000 people were at work on the goldfields in
central Victoria. 28 With diminishing returns of alluvial gold on the fields of central Victoria, diggers
demanded that land be freed from the hold of the squatter. ‘Every man a vote, a rifle, and farm’ was the cry of
a demonstration outside parliament house in Melbourne in 1860. The subsequent Land Acts of the 1860s
promoted the ideal of the creation of a new rural society of an ‘industrious yeomanry’ of freeholders.
Under Duffy’s Land Act of 1862, it was proposed to open for selection an area of ten million acres of
the most valuable agricultural land in Victoria for nine-year leases. The Grant Land Act of 1865 focused on
controlled settlement in designated Agricultural Areas. Despite the fact that the best land in Victoria had been
licensed by this time, the maximum holding-size was reduced to 320 acres. Each Act brought with it
conditions that made it more difficult for squatting interests to select land. However through manipulating the
legislation of the Acts, by 1869 squatters had in actuality consolidated their holdings.
As exemplified by the actions of Gannawarra run licensee C. B. Fisher, although the 1869 Land Act
was designed specifically to break the hold of the pastoralists who continued to monopolize the best lands,
dummying continued. 29 Under the Act all unalienated land in the whole Colony was opened for selection of up
to 320 acres. Land could only be selected once and squatters were able to purchase 640 acres around their
homesteads (a pre-emptive right). Licences (Section 19s) were taken up for three years at 2s. per acre annual
rental. Conditions under which licences were taken up under the 1869 Act were aimed at ‘improving’ the
land. The selector was required to live on the selection for at least two and a half years, and within three years
build a house to fulfil residency conditions, fence the selection, cultivate at least ten per cent of the land, and
effect other improvements such as clearing vegetation, constructing water storages, and erecting outbuildings.
If improvements at a rate of £1 per acre were made within this time, the selector could either purchase the
land by paying the balance of 14/- per acre, or obtain a seven year lease (Section 20) paid at an annual rent of
2/- per acre and credited as part payment of the fee-simple. Under this Act one million acres were selected in
1872, and in the four years from 1873 to 1876 over five million. By the end of 1878, nearly eleven million
acres had been taken up, mostly in the mountainous country of Gippsland and on the plains of the north. 30
This Act and the high rainfall years of the early 1870s brought selectors in numbers to the country of
the present day Gannawarra Shire. Some settlers selected land in family groups and farmed the land as one
holding in an effort to make farming more viable. Small acreages of wheat or oats were cultivated, a vegetable
garden planted, and pigs and poultry raised along with a few head of sheep and cattle. Cows were kept for the
sale of butter and cream. By the dry year of 1876 however, farmers in the area were experiencing difficulties.
Continuous cropping, the invasion of rabbits from the Mallee, low prices, and the production for international
28
Graeme Davison, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre, eds., The Oxford Companion to Australian History (Melbourne:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 283.
29
‘Dummies’ were nominal selectors acting on behalf of someone else to apply for land or in fulfilling the residency
conditions. After paying off their leases under the Land Act, they transferred title to the squatter.
30
John Andrews, “The Emergence of the Wheat Belt in Southeastern Australia in 1930” in John Andrews, ed., Frontiers
and Men: A Volume in Memory of Griffith Taylor (1880-1963) (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1966).
Gannawarra Shire Heritage Study Stage One Volume One Thematic Environmental History
Robyn Ballinger (History in the Making) December 2008
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