The emergence of the Torrens System in Australia

Abstract

Introduction ‘In its beginnings South Australia was a land job.' Thus the towering figure of South Australian history, Professor Douglas Pike, began his brief account of the introduction of the Torrens system over 50 years ago - the topic to which this chapter is dedicated. Professor Pike’s memorable epigram contained, as he himself would be the first to admit, merely a large portion of the truth, not its entirety. It omits the substantial element of idealism that also motivated many of the founders of the Province of South Australia. But it cannot be gainsaid that even among the idealists there was hunger for private gain, often to be satiated in part by dealings in land (a lucrative government appointment was another favourite objective). Indeed, it was of the very nature of the colonial/Imperial enterprise in general and the British Empire’s version of it in particular that large amounts of land suddenly became available for profitable trading. Few people had such lofty motivations for proceeding to a distant colony - with all the consequent inconvenience and severing of familial and friendship bonds in those days of slow travel - that they would turn their backs on the opportunity to make a swift profit by trading in land (or anything else). Land titles had a particularly central role in the establishment of South Australia because of the Wakefield theory on which the founders built their colony. The Wakefield theory (developed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield while in prison for child abduction; his name is commemorated in the street that bisects central Adelaide) was, in brief, to the effect that access to land and distribution of settlement were the vital determinants of the character of a colony. In order to ensure the most advantageous development of a colony, the theory continued, land should be sold at a specially high price to the gentry and the proceeds invested in a fund which would be used to finance the settlement of labourers in the colony. The shortage of a labour force and the consequent high price of labour had proved to be significant problems encountered in other colonies, and one aim of the theory was to ensure that the poor could not purchase land too quickly and extricate themselves from the ranks of the paid labour force.