Squatting (Australian history)
In the history of Australia, squatting was the act of extrajudicially occupying tracts of Crown land, typically to graze livestock.
The term squattocracy, a play on aristocracy, was coined to refer to squatters as a social class and the immense sociopolitical power they possessed.
The use of squatter in the early years of British settlement of Australia had a similar connotation, referring primarily to a person who had occupied pastoral land not granted to them by the colonial authorities.
[1] In its early derogatory context the term was often applied to the illegitimate occupation of land by ticket-of-leave convicts or ex-convicts (emancipists).
As wool began to be exported to England and the colonial population increased, the occupation of pastoral land for raising cattle and sheep progressively became a more lucrative enterprise.
By that stage, the term squatter was applied to those who occupied land under a lease or license from the Crown, without the negative connotation of earlier times.
As legally unoccupied land with frontage to permanent water became more scarce, the acquisition of runs increasingly required larger capital outlays.
"[2] Eventually the term squatter came to refer to a person of high social prestige who grazes livestock on a large scale (whether the station was held by leasehold or freehold title).
Governors of New South Wales were given authority to make land grants to free settlers, emancipists (former convicts) and non-commissioned officers.
The 1847 Orders in Council divided land into settled, intermediate and unsettled areas, with pastoral leases of one, eight and 14 years for each category respectively.
The descendants of these squatters often still own significant tracts of land in rural Australia, though most of the larger holdings have been broken up, or, in more isolated areas, have been sold to corporate interests.
The lessees of the Crown lands came into Melbourne on horseback, and marched to the place of the meeting with flags flying, preceded by a Highland piper playing martial airs.
At this meeting petitions were adopted to be transmitted to the several branches of the Home and Colonial Legislatures, requesting alterations in the law of Crown lands and a total separation from the Middle District (New South Wales).
The Morris and Ranken committee of inquiry, which reported in 1883, found that the number of homesteads established was a small percentage of the applications for selections under the Act, especially in areas of low rainfall such as the Riverina and the lower Darling River.
The events of the shearers' strike of 1891 and the harsh counter-measures by government and squatters left a bitter legacy that adversely affected class relationships in the ensuing decades.
Clara Morison by Catherine Helen Spence explores the power of Australia to transform those with a lowly social station in Britain into the Aristocracy of a new world.
[17] Mary Theresa Vidal's 1860 novel Bengala is an Austenesque social comedy exploring the evolution of the pseudo-aristocratic manners which define the squattocracy.
The film Australia deals with the failure of many large grazier properties in the mid-twentieth century, as well as the Squattocracy's close historic links with the British Aristocracy, with whom they frequently intermarried.
