and Braidwood. In 1840, he surveyed the route of The Wool Road. By this time, he had settled in the Braidwood area, where he was to live for the rest of his life and be a prominent citizen. Larmer bought land in Braidwood, in 1843, on which he built the Royal Hotel building but was not the licensee of the hotel. In 1841, he reserved the site for a village at Currowan, although the plan of the village, in 1844, was the work of his surveyor colleague and explorer, the ill-fated Edmund Kennedy. In 1840, he reserved the site for a village of Elrington, which would later be better known as Majors Creek. Larmer also laid out plans for townships along the road from Braidwood to Jervis Bay (The Wool Road). Some of these towns never eventuated at all, and others were not built in the form planned by Larmer. His plan for Larbert would prove disastrously inept, after the site was inundated by the Shoalhaven River flood of July 1853. However, his mistakes at Larbert had no malicious intent, because Larmer himself had bought three lots within the Larbert township site, in 1843. An economic depression in the early 1840s led to government cost cutting, with surveyors’ salaries being reduced by a third. In recognition of this sacrifice, these government surveyors were allowed to do some private work. In 1844, Larmer was appointed as the Licensed Surveyor for the County of Murray and Commissioner for Crown Lands for the same area. In 1847, Larmer's plan of the village of Gundaroo was gazetted and — as a Commissioner for Crown Lands — he identified people who were squatting, without authority, on crown lands along the Yass River downstream of that village. In 1849, he designed the plan of the village of Murringo and, In 1851, he surveyed a road from that new village to the Burrangong Station (near modern-day Young). The town of Gundagai was gazetted, in 1838, but it was soon obvious—after the floods of 1844 and 1852—that much of the original town site was subject to inundation. In 1845, Larmer was surveying new town allotments on the higher ground of the original town. In the eyes of some, he was held responsible for the original plan of the first town on the flood-prone river flats; he definitely drew up plans of town allotments in Gundagai in 1841. In