Robert Hoddle - Surveying in Australia

Surveying in Australia

Robert Hoddle trained as a cadet surveyor in the Royal military surveyors beginning in 1812. He sailed for the Cape Colony, South Africa in 1822 where he worked on military surveys. Ten years on he migrated to the Australian colonies, arriving in Sydney aboard the William Penn in July 1823. Governor Brisbane appointed him assistant surveyor under surveyor-general John Oxley. He spent the next twelve years in Queensland and later still in NSW where he surveyed the sites for the New South Wales towns of Berrima and Goulburn as well as Bell's Line of Road in the Blue Mountains. Between 1830 and 1836, Hoddle made several visits to the rural district now occupied by the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.), where he surveyed property boundaries. Squatters were urgently pressing for government surveyors to legalise their rural holdings. Hoddle’s field book indexes the history of the aforementioned areas and pastoralists— George Palmer, Robert Campbell and Hamilton Hume.

Hoddle arrived in Port Phillip the future site for Melbourne, in March 1837 and was appointed senior surveyor with his assistants D'Arcy and Darke; he was to take charge of the surveying work which had been begun by Robert Russell. Whether Hoddle planned Melbourne or used Russell's ideas has been a subject of controversy. Hoddle's first map of Melbourne, completed on 25 March 1837, covered the area from Flinders Street to Lonsdale Street, and from Spencer Street to Spring Street. The principal streets were made one and a half chains wide (30 m), and the smaller, then intended merely to furnish back entrances, a half chain wide (10 m). Later Hoddle provided for wide exits from the city such as Wellington and Victoria parades, and the continuation from Elizabeth Street to Sydney and Mount Alexander roads. He also made provisions for squares and reserves in the city itself and in the immediate suburbs. He was in no way responsible for the narrow streets which later were formed in Fitzroy, Collingwood and Richmond. These were made when comparatively large areas were subdivided by their owners.

By 1838 Melbourne, Williamstown and Geelong were quickly surveyed for deliverance to the market as real estate. He fixed the site of Geelong in spite of opposition from the Sydney authorities who favoured Point Henry. His designs were an innovation for Australian cities, as Melbourne and its inner suburbs were planned in the grid style.