From 1885 to 1965, successive New South Wales governments made repeated attempts to break up large pastoral estates into family farms. This policy, which became known as closer settlement, was expected to address a range of pressing social and economic problems. This thesis takes a case study approach to assess the impact of this policy in a specific area, the county of Sandon on the NSW northern tablelands. It tests, at the local level, current theory and models of the land question, with the aim of furthering comprehension of this central issue in the development of New South Wales.
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From the passing of the Crown Lands Act 1884, the NSW government was increasingly intrusive in determining where land settlement should take place, who was permitted to acquire Crown land, and how large their farms should be. By the turn of the century, the attention of both the government and the community at large became focussed on the need to buy back land locked up in the large pastoral estates to create family farms for those who did not already own land. Under legislation passed from 1901 onwards, across the state many thousands of acres of freehold and leasehold land were compulsorily and voluntarily resumed for this purpose. In the county of Sandon, this resulted in some private subdivisions in response to the threat of compulsory resumption, a voluntary resumption in the late 1930s, and both voluntary and compulsory resumptions to provide farms for returned servicemen and women after the two world wars.
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The impact of closer settlement in the county of Sandon was marginal, in terms of the expected outcomes. A First World War soldier settlement at Kentucky in the south of the county resulted in an increase in the production of stone and pome fruit and a modest increase in population, with many of the soldier settlers being attracted from outside the district. A modest number of settlers came from outside the district to take farms created by the voluntary and compulsory resumptions in the late 1930s and following the Second World War, but otherwise there was no significant population increase. Over time successful farmers bought out their neighbours, and by 1965 most were engaged in the enterprise which had characterised the district in the first half of the nineteenth century, the grazing of sheep and cattle. Thus, there was no long-term change in agricultural output in the county.
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Based on this evidence, a new model of land settlement is proposed, that there are three forces which interact to determine the size of rural properties:
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∙ Government policy which was aimed at creating family farms of what was known as ‘a home maintenance area’, that is, just large enough to support a family in average conditions, undertaking an enterprise best suited to their land;
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∙ A tendency for more successful farmers to purchase additional land and so increase the size of their holdings, or to eventually provide farms for their children; and,
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∙ A tendency for farms, over time, to either enlarge or contract to a size which is the most efficient.
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While it would seem that the first force would be the most powerful, since governments had the power to legislate a maximum farm size, the experience in the county of Sandon demonstrated that this was not the case, as there was a marked trend towards properties of an efficient size. Thus, this study has demonstrated that the policy of closer settlement had little impact on the pattern of land settlement.