was maintained, it was unreliable and could be challenged in the courts at any time. The limits of the deeds-registration system meant that transfers of land were slow, expensive, and often unable to create certain title. Creation Sir Robert Richard Torrens, Registrar-General and Treasurer of the colony of South Australia and later a member of the House of Assembly, lobbied for many years for a new title system to improve the currently cumbersome, slow and expensive system of land transfer. He was largely responsible for shepherding the new Bill through Parliament, enacted in 1858 as the Real Property Act 1858. The system laid out in this bill became known as the Torrens title system, and was based on a central registry of all the land in the jurisdiction of South Australia. Torrens drew ideas from the system of registration of merchant ships in the United Kingdom, experience gained from his years of working as a customs official. He also used many of the ideas incorporated in the Act from Ulrich Hübbe, a German lawyer living in South Australia at that time, who had expert knowledge of the Hanseatic registration system in Hamburg. Land register The central aspect of the Torrens system is the land register, in which all dealings with land are recorded. The register may be a bound paper record, but today most registers are typically kept in a database. Ownership of the land is established by virtue of the owner's name being recorded in the government's register. The Torrens title also records easements and the creation and discharge of mortgages. On the first registration of land under the system, the land is given a unique number (called a volume-folio number) which identifies the land by reference to a registered plan. The folio records the dimensions of the land and its boundaries, the name of the registered owner, and any legal interests that affect title to the land. To change the boundaries of a parcel of land, a revised plan must be prepared and registered. Once registered, the land cannot be withdrawn from the system. A transfer of ownership of a parcel of land is effected by a change of the record on the register. The registrar has a duty to ensure that only legally valid changes are made to the register. To this end, the registrar will indicate what documentation he or she will require to be satisfied