When James Cook sailed on the east coast of Australia in 1770 he named it New South Wales.
As the interior was explored and mapped, squatters and free settlers followed eager to take up land. Where ever Europeans went Aboriginal people were pushed from their home lands.
When John Batman, one of the pioneers in the founding of Victoria, first settled at Port Phillip, he made an attempt to buy the land from the Aboriginal people through a treaty. New South Wales Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, effectively quashed the treaty with this Proclamation issued by the Colonial Office and sent to the Governor with Despatch 99 of 10 October 1835. Its publication in the Colony meant that from then, all people found occupying land without the authority of the government would be considered illegal trespassers.
The Proclamation of Governor Bourke implemented the doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it. Aboriginal people therefore could not sell or assign the land, nor could an individual person acquire it, other than through distribution by the Crown.
Although many people at the time also recognised that the Aboriginal occupants had rights in the lands (and this was confirmed in a House of Commons report on Aboriginal relations in 1837), the law followed and almost always applied the principles expressed in Bourke’s proclamation. This would not change until the Australian High Court’s decision in the Eddie Mabo Case in 1992. 1
The Proclamation of Governor Bourke, 10 October 1835 is historically significant. It implemented the doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it.
The Proclamation of Governor Bourke has research value in the study of British settlement of Australia, the legal principle of ‘terra nullius’ and dispossession. The Proclamation of Governor Bourke, 10 October 1835 contains evidence of the construction of the legal principle of ‘terra nullius’ upon which the British settlement was based.
The Proclamation of Governor Bourke has intangible significance as evidence of the changing migration patterns on Australia in the early 19th century and the demands for land. It provides a powerful symbol of the British Government’s control of social and land policy in Australia and the dispossession of the Aboriginal people.
