From the end of the 1780s, the colonial government of New South Wales began to turn parcels of the 1770 Crown land claim into plots, large and small, of private property.

With funding from the Australian Research Council (DP240100395) and University of Technology Sydney, the Private Property Frontier explores the means by which a large-scale study of the pattern and pace of that process – that is, first generational alienation – took place over time.

Ultimately contributing to the Time-Layered Cultural Map of Australia, the study explores the history of land alienation through one consistent mechanism: separation of private property from the Crown land claim. When and where was land first considered to be in private hands? What did that privatisation entail? How was it mediated? And what did it allow? The research begins with the observation that the history of Australian architecture is also a history of the relationship between what we build and where we build. Using the tools of the digital humanities, it offers a spatialised account of an important aspect of Australian history – at the intersection of governance, law, architecture, and culture.