What the piece of paper in your filing cabinet does not tell you about the land you think you own — and why the original Crown grant matters more than you may realise
The Piece of Paper
Somewhere in your home — in a filing cabinet, a safe, perhaps a bank’s strongroom — there may be a document. It is headed “DUPLICATE CERTIFICATE OF TITLE”. It has a (legal) name on it. It has a volume and folio number, or a lot and deposited plan reference. It has a Registrar’s stamp. It looks official. It looks complete.
If you live in New South Wales, you may not even have that. The NSW Government abolished all paper Certificates of Title on 11 October 2021. Printed paper certificates lost their legal validity on that date. What remains is an entry in an electronic register maintained by a private company. Your land, in New South Wales and increasingly across every other state, is now represented by a database record.
In every state and territory, your title is no longer complete.
Your Duplicate Certificate, or your electronic record, tells you who the registered proprietor is. It gives you a lot number on a Deposited Plan — a registration identifier pointing to an administrative record in a database, not a description of the physical land itself. The lot number tells you which unit of the registration system corresponds to the land you occupy. It does not describe the land. The land pre-existed the lot number, the Deposited Plan, and the registration system entirely. The original Crown grant described the land directly — by name, by district, by acreage, by the plan drawn on the grant itself. The modern certificate points to a number that points to a plan that points to a survey that represents the land. The land remains the land. The registration system records dealings in interests over it. They are not the same thing.
The modern certificate may list current mortgages, caveats, or easements. It points to a deposited plan for the boundaries.
What it does not tell you is what was reserved from the estate when it was originally granted by the Crown. What minerals lie beneath your land and who owns them. How deep your title actually goes. What rights the Crown retained when it gave the land to the original grantee. Who the Crown was, constitutionally, when it made that grant. Whether the entity now claiming to be that Crown’s successor is the same entity, constitutionally, or a different one.
These are not theoretical concerns. They are matters of property law, of constitutional record, and of documented history that affect every man and woman who holds freehold land in Australia derived from a Crown grant. That means nearly everyone who holds freehold title in this country.
This article asks you to do one thing: find the original Crown grant that grounds your title and read it.
What a Crown Grant Actually Is
Every piece of freehold land in Australia was, at some point in its history, Crown land. The land belonged to the Crown. At some point, the Crown granted it to a private man or woman — a settler, a farmer, a company, a speculator. That grant is the original source of all freehold title in Australia. Without it, there is no title. The entire structure of property law in this country rests on that foundational act.
The Crown grant is a formal instrument. It names the grantor — the Monarch, by their full royal style. It names the grantee. It describes the land. It states the consideration. It records the terms on which the land was granted. And it reserves to the Crown — specifically, to the Crown’s “heirs and successors” in perpetuity — certain rights that were never part of what was granted.
Those reservations were not trivial. In a typical Crown grant from the early to mid twentieth century, the Crown reserved:
All mines and minerals of every kind beneath the surface — gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, coal, mineral oil, and all other metallic and non-metallic substances.
The right to resume the land at any time for public purposes — roads, railways, bridges, drainage works, and any other purpose of public utility — without compensation for the resumption itself.
All indigenous timber on the land.
A depth limitation — typically to 200 feet (approximately 61 metres) below the natural surface, beyond which the title did not extend.
These reservations were stated in full in the original Crown grant. They were written out in detailed legal language. The grantee received the land knowing exactly what was reserved, what was retained, and what terms bound the estate.
Your Duplicate Certificate of Title, or your electronic title record, does not say any of this. It acknowledges, in its standard printed opening paragraph, that your estate is held “subject to the reservations, conditions and depth limit contained in the original grant (if a grant issued).” That is the Torrens system’s own admission that the original grant’s terms bind you. But the modern certificate does not tell you what those reservations are, what the depth limit is, or who currently holds the rights the Crown reserved.
To find those answers, you need the original Crown grant.
The Private Company Now Handling Your Title
Before examining what the Crown grant contains, it is necessary to understand what the title system has become — because it has changed significantly in recent years, and most registered proprietors have not been told.
Property Exchange Australia — known as PEXA — is the platform through which the vast majority of Australian property transactions are now conducted. PEXA was formed in 2010 following a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) initiative to create a national electronic conveyancing platform. It is a company limited by shares. Its shareholders include the Victorian, New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australian governments and the four major banks.
PEXA is not a government authority. It is a private company. It is the platform through which your title is transferred when you buy or sell property. Documents are created digitally, signed electronically by your conveyancer or solicitor on your behalf, and lodged with the relevant state Land Titles Office through the PEXA workspace. Your representative signs using a personalised digital stamp. You do not physically sign the transfer of your land.
In New South Wales, all paper Certificates of Title were abolished on 11 October 2021. The electronic record in the NSW Land Registry Services database is now the ultimate record of land ownership. In Victoria, banks replaced paper certificates with electronic certificates in October 2016. In Western Australia, mandatory electronic settlement for eligible transactions was introduced from 1 December 2018. Every state and territory has either mandated or is progressively mandating electronic conveyancing through PEXA or its competitor Sympli.
If you are self-representing — conducting a transaction without a licensed conveyancer or solicitor — you cannot use PEXA. The platform is available only to licensed subscribers. A man or woman dealing directly with their own property, without a licensed intermediary, cannot access the primary platform through which Australian property transactions are now conducted.
This means that the title to your land — the registration record that determines who owns it — now moves through a private company owned in part by the major banks, operated on a digital platform, with transactions conducted by licensed subscribers acting on your behalf, under digital signatures that you do not personally affix, in a system you cannot directly access.
The original Crown grant, by contrast, was a document sealed with the Public Seal of the State, signed by the Governor, witnessed by named individuals, and handed to the grantee in physical form. It was a direct transaction between the Crown and the man or woman receiving the land. It has not been digitised. It has not been replaced. It remains exactly what it was when it was executed — the primary source of all rights in the land.
How to Find the Original Crown Grant
Every Crown grant in Australia is a registered instrument on the public record. It is not secret. It is not hidden. It is accessible to any registered proprietor who knows where to look.
In Western Australia: Contact Landgate at landgate.wa.gov.au. Request a “Historical Title Search” for your property. This will show the complete chain of title from the original Crown grant to your current certificate, including all volume and folio references. You can then order certified copies of the original Crown grant by reference to its volume and folio number. The fee is modest — typically under one hundred dollars for a certified copy.
In South Australia: Contact the Lands Titles Office at sailis.sa.gov.au. The historical search function allows searching by Certificate of Title number to find predecessor titles.
In Victoria: Contact Land Use Victoria at land.vic.gov.au. The Torrens title register is searchable and historical titles are accessible online through Property Exchange Australia or through a licensed search agent.
In New South Wales: Contact NSW Land Registry Services at nswlrs.com.au. The eCOS system allows title searches, and historical records are accessible through the State Archives for older grants.
In Queensland: Contact the Queensland Titles Registry through the Department of Resources at resources.qld.gov.au.
In Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and the Australian Capital Territory: Contact the relevant Titles Office in each jurisdiction. All maintain historical register records.
National Archives of Australia: For Commonwealth Crown grants — grants made in the name of the Commonwealth of Australia for land held by the Commonwealth — the National Archives at naa.gov.au holds relevant records.
The search you are looking for is described in different jurisdictions as: “Historical Title Search,” “Previous Title Search,” “Muniments of Title,” or “Chain of Title.” Ask specifically for all predecessor titles back to the original Crown grant. The register number or lot reference on your current certificate is the starting point.
What to Look For When You Find It
When you obtain the original Crown grant for your land, read the following sections carefully and note each item in writing.
The Grantor’s Style
Who granted the land? What was the Monarch’s full royal title at the time of the grant? This establishes the constitutional framework within which the grant was made. A grant made by “George the Fifth, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India” was made by a Monarch whose relationship to Australia was as King of the British Dominions. A grant made by “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of Australia” was made under a different royal style — one that came into effect only after the Royal Style and Titles Act 1973. The royal style tells you which constitutional Crown made the grant and when.
The Constitutional Framework
Look for the Governor’s witness clause. It will say something like “Governor in and over the State of [X] and its Dependencies, in the Commonwealth of Australia.” The Commonwealth of Australia is named as the constitutional framework within which the Governor exercises authority. Note those words. They establish that the grant was made within the Commonwealth as constituted by the people’s agreement under the Constitution Act 1900.
The Consideration
What was paid for the grant? The consideration establishes the contractual character of the grant — it was not a gift. It was a transaction. The grantee gave value. The Crown gave land on specific terms. Both sides are bound.
The Depth
Look for a phrase such as “the natural surface and so much as is below the natural surface to a depth of [X] feet.” Write down the depth. Your title extends to that depth only. Below that depth, the estate does not run. The Crown retained everything below.
If your grant does not state a depth, you may hold a Commonwealth of Australia Crown grant, which carries no depth limitation and no mineral reservations. That is a significantly different estate from a State Crown grant with a depth limitation.
The Mineral Reservations
Look for a clause beginning “we do hereby save and reserve to Us, Our heirs and successors, all Mines of Gold, Silver…” and read it in full. Write down exactly what minerals were reserved. This is what lies beneath your land that you do not own. These minerals are owned by the Crown’s heirs and successors — whoever they now are.
The Resumption Power
Look for a clause beginning “it shall be lawful for Us, Our heirs and successors… to resume and enter upon possession of any part of the said land…” Read the resumption clause in full. Write down the purposes for which the Crown reserved the right to resume. Understand that this power runs with the land in perpetuity. Every subsequent owner has taken the land subject to it.
The Timber Reservation
Look for a clause permitting the Crown to cut and take indigenous timber. Note whether it applies to all timber or specified species.
The “Heirs and Successors” Formula
Every Crown reservation runs to “Us, Our heirs and successors.” Write down those words. They are the key phrase. The reserved rights do not belong to a named individual or government department. They belong to the Crown’s heirs and successors — whoever lawfully succeeds to the Crown’s constitutional position.
Why the Heirs and Successors Question Matters Now
The original Crown grant for land granted before 19 October 1973 was made under a specific constitutional description of the Crown — the Crown of the Commonwealth of Australia, acting within the constitutional framework constituted by the people’s agreement in the referendums of 1898-1900.
Between 1970 and 1973, a documented sequence of administrative and legislative changes altered the vocabulary through which the Crown’s authority is described in the official record. The Australian Government Publishing Service replaced the Government Printing Office in 1970. The Gazette masthead changed silently in January 1971. The Acts Interpretation Act 1973 imported a geographical conception of the Commonwealth absent from the Constitution. The Great Seal changed from the “Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Australia” to the “Great Seal of Australia” on 19 October 1973. The Statute Law Revision Act 1973 substituted “Australian Government” for “Commonwealth” throughout hundreds of Acts.
None of these changes was submitted to a referendum under section 128 of the Constitution. The Constitution has not been amended. The Preamble still describes the Commonwealth as constituted by the people’s agreement. The constitutional name — Commonwealth of Australia — is still in the Constitution.
The question this raises for every Crown grant made before 19 October 1973 is precise: the reserved rights were made to the Crown of the Commonwealth of Australia and its heirs and successors. The Crown now claiming to hold and exercise those reserved rights describes itself as the Crown of Australia — a description derived from ordinary legislation enacted without referendum. Whether the Crown of Australia is the constitutional heir and successor of the Crown of the Commonwealth of Australia, or whether it is a different constitutional entity, is a question no court has answered.
This is not an argument that resumption powers cannot be exercised, or that mineral rights have been abandoned. It is an observation that the constitutional identity of the entity exercising those reserved rights has changed, by documented instruments, without the consent of the people — and that the change is not recorded anywhere in the modern title system.
The man or woman who holds the original Crown grant for their land knows what was reserved and to whom. The man or woman who holds only the modern title record — paper or electronic — knows neither.
What the Modern Certificate Tells You — and What It Hides
Return to your Duplicate Certificate of Title, or your electronic title record. Read the opening paragraph carefully. It says you hold your estate “subject to the reservations, conditions and depth limit contained in the original grant (if a grant issued).”
The system is telling you, in its own words, that the original grant’s terms bind you. Not the modern certificate’s terms — the original grant’s terms. The modern certificate or electronic record is the starting point for any search, not the ending point.
Now count what the modern title record does not tell you:
It does not name the grantor.
It does not state the depth limitation.
It does not list the mineral reservations.
It does not describe the resumption power.
It does not name the constitutional framework of the original grant.
It does not identify the entity now holding the reserved rights.
It does not disclose that the constitutional description of that entity changed between 1970 and 1973.
It does not tell you that the Crown’s heirs and successors are a contested constitutional question.
It does not tell you that the registration of your title now moves through a private company owned in part by the major banks, using digital signatures your conveyancer affixes on your behalf, on a platform you cannot directly access.
All of the missing information is in the original Crown grant. None of it is in the modern certificate or electronic record. The modern system’s opening paragraph points you to the original grant and then stops. The rest of the work is yours to do.
The Specific Steps to Take
Step One: Locate your current Duplicate Certificate of Title if you hold one. Note the volume and folio number or the lot and deposited plan reference, and the name of your state or territory Titles Office. If you are in NSW or another jurisdiction where paper titles have been abolished, obtain a current title search from the relevant Land Registry Services to confirm your registration details.
Step Two: Contact the relevant Titles Office and request a full Historical Title Search for your property. Ask specifically for all previous titles back to the original Crown grant. Pay the search fee — it is modest.
Step Three: When you receive the historical search, identify the earliest instrument in the chain. This should be the original Crown grant — a volume and folio reference from the early Register Book.
Step Four: Order a certified copy of the original Crown grant from the Titles Office. In Western Australia this is done through Landgate. In other states, through the relevant Lands Titles Office or State Archives. Pay the certified copy fee.
Step Five: When the certified copy arrives, read it. Work through the checklist in this article — grantor, constitutional framework, consideration, depth, minerals, resumption, timber, heirs and successors. Write down each item.
Step Six: Compare what the original Crown grant says with what your current title record shows. Note every item that the original grant contains that the modern record omits.
Step Seven: Consider whether you wish to have a notation added to your current title recording the specific Crown reservations from the original grant. In Western Australia, this is done under section 70A of the Transfer of Land Act 1893 through an application to Landgate. Other states have equivalent provisions.
Step Eight: Hold the certified copy of the original Crown grant, the complete historical chain, and a record of the Crown reservations together. These constitute the complete record of your title — the record the modern system does not provide.
A Note on the Territories
Men and women holding land in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory hold title on different terms from those holding State Crown grants, because those territories are held by the Commonwealth rather than by the states. Commonwealth Crown grants — grants made in the name of the Commonwealth of Australia — carry no depth limitation and no mineral reservations. If you hold land in a Territory, the identity of the grantor — the Commonwealth of Australia as constituted by the people’s agreement — is even more directly relevant to the incidents of your title.
What This Is Not
This article is not advice to refuse to pay rates or taxes, or to deny that valid law creates obligations.
It is not a claim that modern title instruments are invalid, or that the Torrens system cannot be relied upon for the purposes it was designed to serve.
It is not a suggestion that mineral companies cannot operate, or that roads cannot be built.
It is a statement of documented fact: the original Crown grant for your land contains information about your title that the modern title record — paper or electronic, Torrens certificate or PEXA database entry — does not show. That information is on the public record, accessible to you, and directly affects the incidents of the estate you hold.
The man or woman who knows the full terms of their Crown grant is in a position to engage with any assertion of Crown reserved rights — resumption, mineral extraction, access — from a position of knowledge. The man or woman who knows only the modern title record is not.
The Crown grant is your deed. The modern certificate or electronic record is an administrative record of registered dealings conducted through a private platform. They are not the same thing, and one does not replace the other.
The Record Is There
The original Crown grant for your land was sealed, signed, witnessed, and registered. It is in the Register Book of the Titles Office for your state or territory. It has been there since the day it was issued. It has not been destroyed. It has not been hidden. It has not been cancelled in the sense of extinguishing its terms — the “CANCELLED” stamp on an old certificate of title means the dealings on that paper have been superseded by a new certificate, not that the legal incidents of the original grant have been removed.
The Crown that made the grant reserved rights to itself and its heirs and successors. Those rights still exist. They are still held by someone. Your modern title record acknowledges they exist but does not tell you what they are.
The answer is in the original Crown grant. It has been there, on the public record, since the day the land was first alienated from the Crown. All that is required is for the registered proprietor to obtain it and read it.
While the transactions that transfer your title now flow through a private company’s digital workspace, the foundational document that created the estate in the first place is still parchment and ink in the Register Book. It was sealed by the Governor. It named the Commonwealth of Australia. It bound the Crown and the grantee. It bound every subsequent owner. It binds you now.
The digital system records what has happened to the estate since. It does not replace what created it.
Cuilibet in arte sua perito est credendum. In matters of their own estate, the informed man or woman is better placed than the uninformed one. The information is public. The access is straightforward. The cost is modest.
What is required is only the decision to look.
This article has been prepared as a public information piece drawing on primary source research into Crown grants, the Transfer of Land Act 1893 (WA), the documented constitutional vocabulary transition of 1970-1973, and publicly available information on electronic conveyancing. It does not constitute legal advice. Men and women with questions about their specific title are encouraged to seek independent legal advice from a qualified practitioner familiar with property and constitutional law in their jurisdiction.
Veritas odit moras. Truth is ill-served by delay.
Last Updated 4 months ago
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