Historical town plans from across regional NSW now available online
Over 4,600 historic plans of 460 regional towns in NSW — from Bourke to Bega — have just been digitised and made available for the first time on the State Library website.
Subdivision plans are a goldmine for genealogists and local historians with fascinating details like property prices, town descriptions and sometimes a photograph.
Dating from as early as the 1880s, up to the 1930s, the plans were produced by real estate agents and auctioneers to advertise new subdivisions and land sales. They range from hand‐drawn surveyors’ plans to beautifully designed colour posters.
Subdivision plans were ephemeral items, usually discarded once a development site was sold but the State Library acquired these 100-year-old plans so that they could be preserved. For the past 10 years the Library has progressively digitised its collection of 40,000+ subdivision plans of suburban and regional NSW with funding support from the NSW Government.
Subdivision plans make great gifts!
You can order an archival print of any of the digitised plans from the Library Shop. Simply search your regional town here, copy the link of your chosen map, and send an enquiry to library.shop@sl.nsw.gov.au.