How do I find old survey plans and parish plans for my land?

The title search and the instrument search

Finding the old record starts with two searches that answer two different questions. A title search shows the current information held in the Victorian Register of land at the time the search is made. An instrument search returns copies of information on recorded or registered documents, including plans, covenants, planning agreements and any encumbrance relating to the title.

Which one to start with depends on what you already hold. With an address and nothing else, begin with the title search. The folio is the door: for each folio there is a certificate of title, which may be paper or electronic, and the diagram on it gives an indication of boundary dimensions. With a plan number in hand, go straight to the plan.

The planning map is a second way in. Through VicPlan a person can locate a parcel or a property, view the zones and overlays that apply anywhere in the state, and produce a planning property report. When you search for a parcel or lot by plan number, the separator is a backslash: VicPlan uses the standard parcel identifier, the lot and plan numbers separated by that character.

Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information · Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Using VicPlan

Plans of subdivision

A registered plan of subdivision is the record of how a parcel came to exist. Plans of subdivision depict the break-up of a piece of freehold land, showing parcels of land, commonly called lots, that can be sold separately.

The plan number is the handle. If you know the plan of subdivision number, you can easily search for a plan online for a fee through LANDATA or an authorised information broker. And the plan you find is not a separate document from the title: when a plan of subdivision is registered, the plan becomes the title diagram for the new folios of the register, so the old plan and the diagram on the current title are the same drawing, kept in two places.

Where the plan lives now is a submission system rather than a drawer. Under the Registrar's requirements for paper conveyancing, all plans first signed by the surveyor on or after 1 January 2020 must be submitted in SPEAR.

Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information · Land Use Victoria, Plans of subdivision and consolidation

Survey plans and field records

Underneath the registered plans sit the working records of the surveyors themselves. Survey plans and abstracts of field records are certified by Licensed Surveyors and show a summary of information used by a surveyor to establish the boundaries and dimensions of a piece of land.

Those State records have a home with a name worth knowing. The Central Plan Office is Victoria's virtual storeroom for State Government surveys and plans, as referred to in Victorian legislation. The Surveyor-General of Victoria, under the Survey Co-ordination Act 1958, has responsibility for the plans held by the Central Plan Office, and all plans there are protected by Crown copyright.

The guide The fence, the title, or the survey works through what a licensed surveyor does with these records on the ground.

Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information

Parish plans

A parish plan is the broadest of the old records. Parish plans define the positions and dimensions of all Crown allotments within a parish.

The description that points to one is worth recognising, because it reads differently from a modern address. The main parts of a Crown land description are the parish name, the allotment number and the section number, and subdivision, portion and block numbers can appear in one as well. A search for land by a Crown description uses those parts, rather than a street address.

That is the form in which an old lot is identified: the parish it sits in, the allotment, and the section, with any portion or block number that applies. Where those words appear in the record for a piece of land, they are the key to its parish plan.

Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information · Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Planning property report

Where the records are held

Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information

The Melbourne record

Melbourne's searchable record begins with its first survey. The city dates from 1835, and Queen Victoria declared it a city in 1847, and its growth began with the surveyor Robert Hoddle, who in 1837 set out streets and lanes in a grid north of the Birrarung, the pattern now called the Hoddle Grid.

The field work that followed is on the record as well. One early special survey in the district had its boundaries marked out in April 1841 by Thomas S. Townsend, with Robert Hoddle doing field work on the same boundaries later that year, and the area was subdivided during 1841, under a name chosen for it at the time.

The office that ran the land side of all this was in Melbourne: with one exception, Crown land in the district was to be sold at the Port Phillip District Land Office there.

For a Victorian address today, the order is: the title search for the folio, the plan from LANDATA or an authorised information broker once you have the plan number, and a property information certificate for land, building or planning information, ordered through LANDATA or an authorised information broker.

Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, Melbourne's strategic planning history · City of Melbourne, Hoddle Grid: heart of the city · Surveyor-General Victoria, Surveying for Land Settlement in Victoria, chapter 2 · Land Use Victoria, Property and land titles information · Land Use Victoria, Property information certificates

See also What the title shows and Subdividing a block.