Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official InformationQueensland
History
Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official Information
Queensland
Queensland -- History
No less than four Land Bills were passed during the session, and the
Governor, writing to the Secretary of State, said, referring to them,
that these Acts might be called "The Land Code of Queensland." The
first of the "Code," which was entitled the Unoccupied Crown Lands
Occupation Act, repealed the New South Wales pastoral leasing law of
1858, and the Orders in Council then in force in Queensland in so far
as they were repugnant to the new Act. Any person was to be permitted
to apply for an occupation license for one year for a run of 100
square miles, and if there were more than one applicant for the same
run preference was to be given to any person who had occupied it for
two months previously. Within nine months after the granting of the
license application might be made by the occupier for a 14 years'
lease conditionally on the run having been stocked to one-fourth its
assumed carrying capacity of 100 sheep or 20 head of cattle per square
mile. An absolute power of resumption at any time during the lease
on 12 months' notice was given. The second was the Tenders for Crown
Lands Act, authorising the issue of 14 years' leases to lessees of
runs already liable for rent; also authorising the acceptance of
tenders (which had been held over awaiting legislation) for runs
occupied since 1st January, 1860, and the granting to the tenderers of
14 years' leases.
The third measure of the "Code" was the Alienation of Crown Lands Act,
which fixed the minimum upset price at auction or otherwise at L1 per
acre; and which provided for the setting apart, within six months from
the bill becoming law, of not less than 100,000 acres on the shores
or navigable waters of Moreton Bay, Wide Bay, Port Curtis, and Keppel
Bay, and also within five miles of all towns with upwards of 500
inhabitants, as agricultural reserves of not less than 10,000 acres
each, which should not be for sale by auction, but surveyed and opened
to selection as farms of not less than 40 nor more than 320 acres
at the fixed price of L1 per acre; the purchase money to be paid in
advance, and the Crown grant issued at the end of six months if the
selector had occupied the land and commenced to improve it during
that term. If a selector failed so to occupy and improve, the
purchase-money was to be returned to him, less 10 per cent., and the
land again opened for selection. A selector was also entitled to lease
three times the area of his farm--but so that the whole should not
exceed 320 acres--in one lot or conterminous lots within the same
reserve, for a term of five years, at sixpence per acre rent, with
right of purchase, if fenced in, at L1 per acre at any time during the
currency of the lease. A further provision of importance in the
same Act was the granting of a land order for L18 on arrival to each
immigrant from Europe who paid his own passage, and a further land
order for L12 at the end of two years' residence in the colony. It was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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