Guide to the Records of New Zealand and Australian Land Company (as filmed by the AJCP), 1862-1963

Request this via the Catalogue

Filter Online content

Some materials from this collection are available online.

Show only online content

Online content

View online

Summary

Collection number:

M1000 - M1092

Creator:

New Zealand and Australian Land Company

Extent:

404 items

Language:

English

Preferred citation:

Acknowledgement of use of this material should refer to the location of the original material and to the Australian Joint Copying Project.

Items from this collection should include references to the location of the original material and to the AJCP nla.obj number, which serves as the online identifier for the digital copy.

Example: M Series: Journal of Capt. James Cook, 18 February 1770, British Library Add. MS 27885 (AJCP ref: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1234)

Availability:

Available

Access conditions:

Available for reference.

Background

Content Summary:

Minute-books, balance sheets and balance account records of the New Zealand and Otago Agricultural and Land Investment Association Ltd 1862-68, the Canterbury and Otago Association Ltd 1865-76, the New Zealand and Australian Land Co Ltd 1866-1962.

Letter-books 1864-1945 of the New Zealand and Australian Land Co. The letters are arranged in chronological order, with each volume prefaced by a nominal index. M1003 begins with the letter-book of Douglas Alderson Co of Dunedin, New Zealand.

Outward Australian correspondence 1882-1912, arranged chronologically.

Outward New Zealand correspondence 1882-1912, arranged chronologically.

Letter-books containing outward colonial correspondence 1879-1939, arranged chronologically.

Australian and New Zealand correspondence 1939-45; foreign letter-book, Australia 1882-1934; foreign letter-book, New Zealand 1882-1924.

Letters inwards book 1932-62 giving name and address of sender, with a brief indication of the contents; letter-book of correspondence with HM Inspector of Taxes and Inland Revenue 1945.

David Murray correspondence 1881-84; 'Kawarau' letter-book 1884-89; private letter-book 1887-1907.

Colonial cablegrams 1888-1963, being copies of cables received and sent to both Australia and New Zealand. Many of the cables deal with financial arrangements, but the majority contain brief reports on rainfall and pastoral conditions; private reports by William S. Davidson, the General Manager, to the Directors concerning New Zealand and Australian properties, 1882 and 1886.

Balance sheets, reports and circulars 1865-1926.

Miscellaneous papers, including memoranda and articles of association.

Reports on estates 1909-30.

Taxation files 1926-47.

Land and wool sale files 1935-49.

M1088-1092:

Miscellaneous legal and financial documents, pamphlets, maps and plans.

Biographical / Historical:

Between 1859 and 1877 the landed interests in New Zealand of 17 individuals, companies and associations, all based in Scotland, were brought together to form the Australian and New Zealand Land Company. In 1865 the Canterbury and Otago Association was formed, with the Glasgow financier James Morton as the general manager. It took over three large properties which had been selected by Mathew Holmes, an Otago merchant. In 1869 it absorbed the holdings of another pastoral company, the New Zealand and Otago Agricultural and Land Investment Association, bringing its total acreage to almost 500,000 acres. Three years earlier, the New Zealand and Australian Land Company had been formed in Glasgow, taking over estates in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Otago and Southland. Its holdings amounted to 186,000 acres of freehold, mostly in New Zealand, and 1.2 million acres of leasehold, mostly in Australia. The Company was also managed by James Morton and in 1875 he proposed that the two companies be amalgamated. In 1877 a new company was formed by a private Act of Parliament, taking over the interests of the two older companies. It had a capital of £2.5 million. The head office was initially at Glasgow, but moved to Edinburgh in 1879. Morton was briefly general manager of the new company, but in 1878 he stood aside in favour of William Soltau Davidson.

Davidson had migrated to New Zealand in 1865 and had been employed by the Canterbury and Otago Association, first as a shepherd and ultimately as inspector of estates. He remained the general manager of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company until shortly before his death in 1924. He and his New Zealand superintendent, Thomas Brydone, played a leading part in the establishment of the frozen meat trade in the 1880s. From the beginning, Davidson believed that Australia was more suitable than New Zealand for large scale pastoralism and his plan was to release capital from freeholds in New Zealand and re-invest in leaseholds in Australia. The withdrawal from New Zealand began in the last years of the nineteenth century and by 1910 the Company retained only two estates in the South Island. Between 1880 and 1914 its sheep flocks in Australia rose from 257,000 to 1.6 million and its cattle herds rose from 1100 to 100,400. It owned or leased over 50 stations in New South Wales and Queensland and in this period it began to acquire estates in Western Australia as well. It opened an office in Sydney in 1908, while its office in Dunedin was closed in 1917.

Under Davidson's successors, the Company continued to be the largest woolgrower in Australia. After World War II, it lost some of its largest properties when they were taken over for soldier settlement, but during the 1950s wool boom it purchased several new stations. By the early 1960s resumptions and rationalisations had reduced the number of properties to 22, extending from Charleville in Queensland to Yathroo in Western Australia. In 1968 the Company was taken over by Dalgety and New Zealand Loan Ltd., which in the next ten years proceeded to sell off all the stations.

{"chronlist":{"head":"General Managers of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company","chronitem":[{"date":"1877-1878\t\tJames Morton"},{"date":"1878-1924\t\tWilliam S. Davidson (joint manager 1916-24)"},{"date":"1916-1928\t\tWilliam Bonnar (joint manager 1916-24)"},{"date":"1928-1936\t\tSamuel McCall-McCowan"},{"date":"1936-1946\t\tT. Dangerfield"}]}}

Access and use

Conditions Governing Access:: Available for Access.
Conditions Governing Use:: Many of the records digitised as part of the AJCP are still in copyright. Readers wishing to publish or reproduce documents should seek permission, in the first instance, from the owner of the original material.