Building the Foundation
Nicola Forbes | April 7, 2010
Open Forum’s featured forum topic for this month is “Building Surveying and Spatial Capabilities”. I would like to consider a fresh angle to this topic by looking at the term “building”.
A strong foundation is a prerequisite to any building work. In New South Wales, the surveying and spatial capabilities upon which we rely have been built up in a relatively short time through hard won knowledge, experience and sheer hard work.
A relatively short time ago, the Colony of New South Wales was an enormous landmass (comprising the known Australian continent and New Zealand) without marking, boundaries or means of distinguishing entitlement to land. Early surveyors in Australia relied on expertise and tradition taken from a nation long surveyed and marked and where the right to private property was firmly established and set out to explore and survey a land without legal boundaries and borders – a blank canvass if you like.
The story of the introduction of land administration and of private and government ownership of land in Australia is one which has been considered as both a tragedy and as a triumph. Nevertheless, it is one which is pivotal to our history and it is the foundation which we use to build our future capabilities. For this reason on 12 April 2010 we will be launching a new website which will function as a heritage portal and online exhibition space.
The website has been named after the New South Wales survey baseline standard, made up of stainless steel rods, it is set in the bedrock of the Old Department of Lands building in Sydney. Using the baseline as a symbol of the foundation of the land administration system in New South Wales, we have established www.baseline.nsw.gov.au to allow us to explore the story of surveying and land administration in Australia in all its complexity.The initial launch of our website will include three very different temporary exhibitions.
The first is a surveying heritage tour, designed for the international delegates to XXIV FIG Congress, and available for the general public’s enjoyment. The tour map will be available in a downloadable version from www.baseline.nsw.gov.au to let you experience the sights of Sydney through the eyes of surveying history.
The second is an online version of an exhibition opening at the Museum of Sydney on Monday 12 April. Designed to coincide with the Bicentenary of Macquarie, it considers Macquarie’s vision for the development of colonial Sydney from an unruly penal colony to a land where convicts, emancipists and free settlers could forge a new life of financial independence from Britain and the role of surveying and land administration in that vision.
The third is called "Land for Sale", it will explore in detail the significance and beauty of the sales lithographs in our collection presented in an online gallery.
We hope you can take the time to have a look at www.baseline.nsw.gov.au.
Nicola Forbes is Manager Corporate Records and Information Services at the Land and Property Management Authority NSW.
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