Counties of Victoria

The counties of Victoria are names of the divisions used in Victoria, Australia, for land administration purposes. Victoria is divided into 37 counties, which were gazetted in stages between 1849 and 1871 as Victoria was progressively opened up to British settlement. Unlike counties in the United States and the United Kingdom, Victoria's counties have no administrative or political function. They exist purely as cadastral units: used for the purposes of identifying the location of any piece of land. The counties are further divided into 2914 parishes and townships.

The county names have also been traditionally used as names for Victorian electoral districts, although the boundaries of these districts seldom coincided with county boundaries. The boundaries for Victorian forecast districts are also based on county boundaries.

Following the unauthorised settlement of settlers from Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land) in the future Melbourne in 1835, in September 1836, Governor Bourke established the Port Phillip District of New South Wales. He also commissioned Robert Hoddle to make the first plan for the town. The plan was completed on 25 March 1837, and came to be known as the Hoddle Grid. The surveys were intended to prepare for land sales. The boundaries of the Port Phillip District were not settled until 1 July 1843, when a proclamation formalised the border as running from Cape Howe, to the nearest source of the Murray River, and then along the course of the Murray to the border with South Australia.

Before the division of the Port Phillip District into counties, Victoria was divided into land districts, as shown on an 1864 map. The land districts were used as the names for parts of the state where counties had yet to be proclaimed. The land districts included:

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