Lands administrative divisions of South Australia

In the early days of European settlement in South Australia, land was released in the colony for farming in an orderly manner by the government. Initial land sales were made as a prerequisite to the founding of the colony, with "preliminary land orders" being made to a total value of £35,000 prior to the 1837 settlement. A preliminary land order entitled the buyer to a 1-acre (4,000 m²) town block and an 80-acre (32 ha) section of rural land which was to be chosen by the individual following the earliest land survey after settlement.[2] The initial town survey of Adelaide was completed in March 1837.[2] By February 1839 the surrounding country from coast to foothills up to present-day Grand Junction Road had been surveyed into country sections, with between a quarter and a half having already been claimed by the early investors or purchased by early settlers.[3]

The country sections delineated in the early land surveys generally formed the hundred sections when the first hundreds were proclaimed in 1846 (Adelaide, Yatala and Noarlunga). From this time, the government surveyor systematically established new areas to be released by creating the boundaries of a county, and then dividing that into hundreds of approximately the same size. Outside the initial survey area centred on Adelaide, hundreds were surveyed into sections of varying sizes with the intention that the section would support a single viable farm.[2] These sections were available for purchase soon after a hundred was surveyed and proclaimed. Most hundreds had a town near the middle, and smaller sections closer to the township. Contemporary definitions of rural real estate in South Australia still typically includes the section number(s) and hundred name.

A total of 540 hundreds were proclaimed in the state from 1846 to 1971, but only 535 exist today, following the discontinuation of the hundreds of Murray, Cooper, Randell, Giles and Morphett alongside the Murray River in 1870. A total of 561 names of hundreds are listed in the South Australian official gazetteer Placenames Online,[4] with the 21 extra names unused today due to either renaming or failure to adopt proposed names.