There is a lot of difference between the two historically and practically.
Road reserves are the area between the boundary of a road on one side and the boundary of the road on the other.
Reserve roads are often called paper roads because they were often created on paper but never actually built and arose in the early colonial days of NSW.
In the early days land was granted or sold as a "portion" of a parish. Every parish has a parish map which records the grants or sales starting with portion 1 usually. A parish is a subset area of a county of NSW. There are now 141 counties and 7,515 parishes within those counties. The counties are spread over all of the three divisions of NSW but only the central and eastern divisions have parishes.
A Crown Plan known as a portion plan was created and recorded with the Lands Office to match the deed or grant which it often did not.
There were two types of Crown roads created along with crown grants and deeds of sale of crown land creating these portions. It was common to create a "boundary road" between portions at the time of creating the portions but because portion boundaries usually followed cardinal compass bearings and not topography the road was often completely impractical.
The second type of road created was a reserve road. These were generally created after portions were created and so were generally added over the top of portions. Reserve roads generally followed existing accessways or tracks or thoroughfares that were already in existence. Initially rivers were the primary route of travel portions were often allocated along river fronts such as the Hawkesbury River with road access following in the years after.
Reserve roads in their initial state are surprisingly common. Practically they are often fenced off as paddock despite being crown roads. The road formation of the reserve roads that had followed a track were rarely wholly within the boundaries of the road and so the boundaries had to be redefined primarily for legal reasons.
Land grants started in 1792 and finished after 1831. Sale of crown land continued on after 1831 but it was not until 1833 that the boundaries of crown roads could be altered.
The Roads and Streets Act 1833 known as the Act IV William IV part 11 (August 1833) allowed the boundaries of a crown road over private land to be altered requiring survey and proclamation at which time the road became a "confirmed" road. This act made provision for the making of, altering and improving of roads within the colony. In reality the act had been created to solve a number of problems at the time. The act enabled disagreeing neighbours to resolve access rights over each others land, it enabled the crown to remedy messy boundaries and it provided a way for the government to force each parish to pay for its own roads.
Contact us for more information or consult with a registered surveyor, Land Registry Services or a NSW property lawyer.
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