The Court held that land depicted as a street in a deposited plan registered in 1886 was a public road, finding both dedication by the subdividing owner and acceptance by the general public prior to 1 January 1920. Acceptance was inferred primarily from a series of land sale transactions conducted on the basis that the street was a public road — including the sale of a lot that would otherwise have been landlocked — rather than from direct evidence of physical user, applying the principle from Permanent Trustee v Campbelltown that where dedication is evidenced by a deposited plan, no great amount of public use is required. The Court also rejected an alternative personal equity claim for access, holding that estoppel cannot run at large and requires an underlying transaction amenable to enforcement against the registered proprietor.
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