Land+Ownership

Land ownership is a term used to state who's land it is. The Europeans claimed ownership of the land the Aboriginals lived within. Aboriginals did not 'own the land' in the same sense that the Europeans did. They belonged to the land and move around the country living in non-perminant huts allowing the land to regenerate.

The question of land ownership by Indigenous people was not dealt with by the colonisers until the mid-1830s. In 1835, John Batman signed two [|'treaties'] with Kulin people to 'purchase' 600,000 acres of land between what is now Melbourne and the Bellarine Peninsula. In response to these treaties and other arrangements between free settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, such as around Camden, the NSW Governor, Sir Richard Bourke issued a [|proclamation]. Bourke's proclamation established the notion that the land belonged to no-one prior to the British crown taking possession.