Seems the debate is back - South Australia is apparently attempting to argue for the Disputed Territory again.
Back in the 1800s when map makers were drawing up the state boundary between Victoria and South Australia, they made a wee mistake in their maths.
The area became known as 'The Disputed Territory' until in 1914 when it was officially made part of Victoria.
The most outstanding feature of the Territory is Serviceton and its railway station. Serviceton is the only town located in the Territory, it's reason for its existence was as a border crossing on the main interstate rail line. When the
railway line was built from Melbourne to Adelaide, the Serviceton station was paid for equally by both governments to
provide a place for the exchange of locomotives and crews. It was the customs post on the incorrect state border, now it is firmly in Victoria - but for how long?
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| The South Australian end of the Serviceton station |
A tv crew from Today Tonight are filming a segment on the dispute at Serviceton, to be telecast sometime afterwards.
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| The border line on the Western Highway |
The
“Disputed Country” was a thin sliver of land between Victoria and South
Australia. It lies between the 141st east longitude (intended as the border
line) and a surveyed line approximately 3 km to the west of that longitude.
Following
the establishment of the colony of South Australia in 1835, a survey of the South
Australian - Victorian border from 1847 to 1850, (the Port Phillip District was
created as the separate colony of Victoria in 1850) was a three-year struggle
of dogged persistence through flooded swamps, then the waterless Mallee scrub
and the almost immediate destruction of the border markers by a devastating
fire.
In 1839
Charles Tyers was transferred from the Royal Navy to the Colonial Service, to
ascertain the 141st meridian (the eastern border of South Australia). At the
mouth of the Glenelg River at Nelson, he formed a broad arrow with limestone
rocks. This became known as Tyers' Mark and was used to determine the starting
point for the border survey. Due to his inadequate equipment this was later
determined to be 3.3 km in error.
No action
was taken to extend Tyers’ work, but by 1845 there were disputes with South
Australian pastoralists working their way east from the coast meeting
pastoralists from the Wimmera region pushing their way westwards with flocks of
sheep. In November 1846 the Colonial Secretary's Office directed surveyor Henry
Wade to proceed to the disputed territory to define a "Boundary for Police
Purposes".
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| Border plaque, Western Highway |
In March
1847 Wade’s party of seven and equipment, at the mouth of the Glenelg River, was
joined by assistant surveyor Edward Riggs White (appointed by the South
Australian government to act as an observer on its behalf). The
expedition collapsed at the 36th Parallel in July, after nine months
of swamp, sand dunes and broken equipment, deprivation and hardship due to
drought, and reluctance by his men to continue with poor work conditions - still
250km short of the Murray River.
The two
colonies agreed that White should complete the survey from “Wade’s Termination
Point" is just north of the present day Bordertown, SA to the Murray. In August 1849 White
and his party of five encountered the severe nature of the Big Desert. Where there
was little water in 1847, but none two years later. Within two weeks his
mutinous men had deserted White and two of his three horses died. On the verge
of collapse, he managed to bleed the last horse and drink half a pint of its
blood. Lost, he managed to stagger on for about two miles (3.2 km) to the riverbank
at the border of three states and complete the survey.
Doubts as
to the accuracy of the Wade-White line grew. Determining longitude back in the 1840s was
imprecise owing to the lack of precision clocks. At the time, the assumed
longitude for Sydney Observatory’s was in error by about 3 km. Since the Vic-SA
border survey took the Sydney Observatory as its starting point, it too was in
error.
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| The Sydney Observatory today |
In April
1868 an expedition led by the NSW Government Astronomer George Smalley and
Charles Todd the South Australian Superintendent of Telegraphs, led to the
discovery that the proclaimed border on the ground was at least 3.6km to the
west of the more accurate measurement of the 141st meridian.
However
by 1849, 47% of the Disputed Territory had already been sold or leased out by
the Victorian Government.
In February 1851 a gigantic firestorm (the bushfire as
immortalised by William Strutt in his painting “Black Thursday 1851”) wiped out
many of the timber border markers. Wade’s Line has been recovered with
reasonable accuracy, but the location White’s Line has been lost ever since.
Because the original survey books have been lost, and most of the original
timber posts were lost to the fire, the location of the actual state border is not
known, even today.
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| Strutt's epic 'Black Thursday 1851" at State Library of Victoria |
Between
1883 and 1893 South Australia sought Victorian relinquishment or financial
redress. At
the peak of disagreement South Australia threatened to ‘invade’ Victoria and
sub-divide the disputed country. But the Victorian government threatened to
arrest any such invaders and the threat was not put into action.
South
Australia finally abandoned all hope of settlement, due to Victoria's
intransigence, and in 1911 it appealed to the High Court which dismissed the
appeal. Eventually,
in 1914, the Privy Council in London ruled in Victoria’s favour - that Wade
& White’s line was the legal border, and £215,000 was awarded to South Australia as
compensation for the forfeiture of 1,300 km2 of territory lost. But since the
border markers were wiped out by fire the location of this line has been lost
for 160 years. Complicating the re-survey of Wade & White's line is the
loss of their original field survey books. So there are no detailed notes as to
its location, only a few scattered "fixes" from other surveyors who
came later.
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