Nineteen Counties

The Nineteen Counties were the limits of location in the colony of New South Wales (in the country of Australia defined by the Governor of New South Wales Sir Ralph Darling in 1826 in accordance with a government order from Lord Bathurst, the secretary of State. Counties had been used since the first year of settlement, with Cumberland County proclaimed on June 6, 1788. Several others were later proclaimed around the Sydney area. A further order of 1829 extended these boundaries to an area defined as the Nineteen Counties. Settlers were only permitted to take up land within the defined area. From 1831 there were no more free land grants and the only land that was for sale was within the Nineteen Counties.

The area covered by the limit extended to Kempsey in the north, Batemans Bay in the south and Wellington to the West.

The Nineteen Counties were mapped by the Surveyor General Major Thomas Mitchell in 1834. The scale of the map that Mitchell produced was determined by the amount of ship's copper available in Sydney to engrave the map.

Despite the uncertainty of land tenure, squatters ran large numbers of sheep and cattle beyond the boundaries. From 1836 they could legally do so, paying ten pounds per year for the right. From 1847 leases in the unsettled areas were allowed for up to 14 years. The Robertson Land Acts of 1861 allowed free selection of crown land and the limits of location were redundant. The counties continue to be used for the purposes of cadastral divisions, and the rest of New South Wales was likewise divided into counties, totalling 141 by the end of the nineteenth century.