VPRS 5312 Register of Lessees, Mallee Lands, Horsham Land District

These Registers of Lessees record the payments of rents for leases of Mallee lands. It is probable that these were kept and maintained by Receivers of Revenue (often the Clerk of Courts) at such towns as Dimboola, Kaniva and Nhill.Details given are the date of the lease, the number of the lease, the name of the lessee, the location of the land, the rates to be paid for the removal of vermin, for fencing and the survey fee and the instalments of rent paid. Any transfers, cancellations or revocations of leases are also recorded.Mallee lands were classified as those in the Mallee region of Victoria and those on the Mallee Border in the Land Districts of Horsham, Kerang and St Arnaud. Sections 15 to 17 of the Mallee Pastoral Leases Act 1883 (later Section 157, Land Act 1890) set out the terms and conditions for these leases. Mallee allotments were to be for not more than twenty years, with half a year's rent being payable in advance. At the end of the lease, the land and all improvements were to revert to the Crown. Existing occupiers of the land were entitled to the lease of one Mallee allotment if they applied within one month. Otherwise, the land was to become part of that generally available. By the 1890 Land Act, the area of all allotments held by one person was not to exceed 20,000 acres.Section 3 of The Mallee Act 1889 permitted lessees of Mallee allotments to select an area of up to 320 acres out of that allotment as an agricultural allotment. The conditions were to be the same as those pertaining to agricultural allotments in the Land Act 1884. Section 19 of the Mallee Lands Act 1896 continued this provision with the maximum amount of land able to be licensed or leased as an agricultural allotment being 640 acres. The same privilege of selection of an agricultural allotment from Mallee lands was extended to non-Mallee allotment lessees in Section 7 of this same Act, with lessees able to select outside their leased areas. Sections 217 and 218 of the Land Act 1901 continued these rights of selection of agricultural allotments with the amount of land being determined by its classification.Section 147 of the Land Act 1898 (subsequently Section 309, Land Act 1901) provided for the leasing for no more than five years of 100 acre allotments of the Little Desert. Only one allotment at a time could be held upon payment of a peppercorn rental.