Item #102500 Northern Part of Australia. (Despatch Respecting.). Northern Australia.

Northern Part of Australia. (Despatch Respecting.)

Sydney, Thomas Richards, Government Printer, 1862.

Foolscap folio, 6 pages.

Drop-title; small holes in the inner margins where stab-sewn when bound (now disbound), with secondary page numbers (1091-1096) stamped in the top corners; a fine copy.

The despatches, from the Duke of Newcastle, the incumbent Secretary of State for the Colonies, concern whether 'the northern part of Australia should be formed into a new Colony, or that a portion of the territory in question should be annexed to Queensland'. Newcastle's recommendation was 'to annex to South Australia so much of this territory as lies south of the tropic, and to attach the rest of it provisionally to Queensland'. As it turned out, the Northern Territory of South Australia came into being in 1863, annexing all the relevant land both north and south of the Tropic of Capricorn. This annexed land was eventually surrendered to the Commonwealth in 1911. New South Wales Parliamentary Paper 708-A of 1862.

Item #102500

Price (AUD): $250.00