Border clash

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? 

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.

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".



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 36^th 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.

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.



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.

The position of today's border is 2.96-3.35km west of 141 east longitude.
Historical information from "The disputed country : Australia's lost border" by Bob Dunn and  John Deckert (of Nhill's Westprint Heritage Maps).