According to the historian Geoffrey Dutton, the squatters of Australia were primarily settlers who used the land for grazing. They rode out across the broad plains of NSW. Those squatters who survived droughts, bushfires, floods, disease, overdrafts and the wrath nof the dispossessed Aboriginals became known as graziers, pastoralists, landowners (even when their land was in fact leased) and, sometimes, squires.
The apportioning of land in NSW was in the beginning at the discretion of the Governor who could make free grants to an emancipated convict or to free settlers on arrival in the colony, or to marines or officers.
