VPRS 14978 Locality Index to Lease Plans

This series is an index to parishes where mining leases and licences were held, and was created by the Mines Department (VA 612). The purpose of the index was to provide a means of accessing mining records relating to gold and other mineral leases and licences by providing the relevant mining district and locality plan number.Information recorded in the index includes the parish name, current plan number, mining district, and dead plan numbers (locality plans). The index was the precursor to a computerised index created in the 1980s.From the 1860s, mining had been organised by mining district. Each mining district had a separate numerical locality plan number sequence. There were 7 mining districts: Ararat, Ballarat, Beechworth, Maryborough, Castlemaine, Gippsland, and Sandhurst/Bendigo.The Mines Act 1958 (Act No.6320) brought about a system change as mining districts were abandoned. New lease plans were created (at this time) and arranged in numerical order (i.e., 1, 2, 3, etc.) and maps were now based on parish rather than mining district. Current plans were located at the Minerals Business Centre at the time of transfer (in 2007).This series enabled information recorded under the old system to be related to the new system through matching the old locality plan numbers with current plan numbers.