Origins of Travelling Stock Routes. 2. Early development, management, and the growing embrace of the law (1830 - 70s)

Abstract

Travelling Stock Routes (TSRs) are a network of grazing routes and reserves which are thought to have originated from the informal tracks of early European explorers, pastoralists and settlers. However, their origins are much more complex, and entwined in legislative and administrative attempts from the 1830s to 1870s to manage and control diseases in sheep and cattle. We describe (1) the development of management controls for the emerging TSR network, through the series of enactments in legislatures designed to eradicate scab in sheep, and ovine catarrh from the pastoral industry, and (2) identify the people who made the decisions which influenced the management and design of the TSR network. Requirements for droving permits, access to squatting runs, and historic methods for sheep disease control are described, and development of major quarantine points on stock routes are highlighted. As we indicate, this narrative sets the stage for the formal survey of the first TSRs in the early 1870s, and highlights the rich social and economic drivers that contributed to their development upon the landscape, their design and location, and influence on present-day management approaches.