Regions of New South Wales

New South Wales, a British colony from 1788, which became part of Australia in 1901, can be subdivided in several meaningful ways for genealogical purposes.

Hundreds of small divisions
Many early documents refer to counties, which were, and still are, primary divisions of land for surveying and subdividing and selling, starting with Cumberland County in 1788 and eventually producing 141 counties covering the whole state. We intend to have at least one page for each county. See Counties of New South Wales.

In the 21st century the keepers of local records are mostly local authorities, elected councils of one sort or another, and their areas may be "shires" or "municipalities" but are generally called just "councils" too. New South Wales has 152 of them, with no particular relationship to county boundaries. See Local Government Areas of Australia and Local Government Areas of New South Wales.

Regions
In between the whole state on the one hand and the rather small counties and often very small councils on the other, various bodies have defined regions. Police have six, the Department of Planning has seven, the Health Department has eight, the Department of Local Government has twelve, Australian Bureau of Statistics has 13 Statistical Districts (though three extend outside the state) and a larger number of Statistical Regions, and Australia Travel has fifteen regions.

The grouping we have chosen is based on that defined by the Open Directory Project, which has Greater Sydney as one region (which we propose to divide into council areas or groupings) and 13 other regions. The page for each region should ideally list all the counties and possibly all the councils that are wholly or partly included. We welcome input from people with local knowledge in the creation of those lists.