Charles Grimes: the Surveyor General Who Mapped Frontier

Previously published as Charles Grimes by Gordon J. MacKenzie.Charles Grimes was barely eighteen when he entered colonial service. Within little more than a decade, he had become Surveyor-General of New South Wales and one of the men responsible for turning Britain's expanding Australian occupation into something that could be mapped, recorded and governed.His career carried him from Norfolk Island to the Hawkesbury, Parramatta, Port Stephens and the Hunter River, then south through King Island and Port Phillip, where his expedition surveyed the Yarra River years before Melbourne existed.But Grimes was more than an explorer.Surveying stood at the heart of colonial power. A line on a map could become a farm, an estate, a road or a boundary backed by government authority. Maps transformed geographical knowledge into policy and helped convert Aboriginal Country into property recognised by British law.Grimes's career also placed him inside one of the most explosive political crises in early Australian history. He served during the rise of the New South Wales Corps, the struggle between Governor William Bligh and John Macarthur, and the Rum Rebellion of 1808. His decision to side with Bligh's opponents ultimately helped end his colonial career.Charles Grimes: The Surveyor-General Who Mapped the Frontier follows the largely forgotten official whose surveys reached from the farms of early Sydney to the waterways of Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land.It is the story of exploration, administration, ambition and the quiet power of drawing lines that governments would later defend as law.