At four a.m. on Tuesday, September 13th, the Captain reported a comet in sight, which, after considerable incredulity on behalf of some of our party, was at length acknowledged to be a most brilliant meteor. Euston Township (Nowong), so called after the Grafton family, we reached at ten a.m. It is a Government reserve, and seemed a fine clearing, though as yet the settlement is comprised in the Commissioner’s house, an inn, some huts, and a black encampment. Mr. Cole, the Crown Commissioner, received nearly all our party with great politeness, showed the ladies over his quarters—a log house, not impervious to the weather, but otherwise comfortable, if not pretty, which, indeed, none of the stations are; he then produced some wine, eggs, and lastly a salad. Here we obtained a sight of some newspapers, the latest from Melbourne, of the 23rd of the previous month.
The ladies were invited to see two specimens of the “lowen” or “luanna,” a bird resembling in some degree the pheasant of Europe, and also reckoned of delicious flavour.[14] The peculiarity of these birds is, that the hen does not hatch her own eggs, but buries them in layers of sand, whence, after a little time, the process is effected by heat. The Commissioner—whose district contains about 70,000 sheep, 15,000 or 16,000 head of cattle, and nearly 300 horses—complains of the impossibility of completing his establishment of white police, notwithstanding the liberal allowance of the Government to troopers, which amounts to 5s. 6d. daily, in addition to rations and quarters; he is, however, he tells us, to be joined by a European sergeant immediately.
From this point, Euston, there was, until lately, a post to Sydney and back, which, while it lasted, was conducted with rapidity; the floods, however, have been so troublesome, that it has been recently given up. The blacks here were numerous, and two-thirds of them, at least, disfigured with their mourning marks. Some of them were dressed in uniform as police troopers attached to the Commissioner. Mr. Cole, with a Mr. Morey, who has 7,000 sheep contiguous to the Government reserve (twenty-five square miles), came on board to dinner, when our commander’s champagne flowed freely; they afterwards accompanied us up the river some miles. The comet was reported very brilliant about four a.m.
Wednesday.—We reached the station of a Mr. Ross at an early hour. Here some shearers, who were rather the worse of their early potations, were inclined to be troublesome. Captain Cadell turned one of them out of the fore cabin without ceremony; and, shortly after, three of these men, endeavouring to aggravate some of the crew whilst taking in fuel, and to prevent the natives from giving their assistance, received from them a well-merited chastisement, which, though to a looker-on it might appear unnecessarily severe, had yet a well-timed and useful result. Nothing but a rough and summary mode of proceeding would be effectual with such people, whose conduct might destroy the comfort of all decent classes of passengers. They were probably ci-devant convicts, or, as they are here termed, “old lags.” At this station, we heard that 7,500 store[15] sheep had been brought over from Bathurst (500 miles), for the convenience of shearing, and afterwards transshipping the wool clip to Adelaide. We took in a stock of wood lower down the river, and, after passing Mr. McCullum’s station (Wella), where there are 13,000 sheep, pursued our onward course towards Swan Hill.
From the junction of the Murrumbidgee, or rather of the Logan or Wakool,[16] up which we steamed a short distance, the volume of the Murray diminishes, and its sinuosity increases; but the steamer made good progress on her way, anchoring about half-past twelve a.m., on Thursday morning, the 15th September, in mid-channel, with a strong tide running. Here we had lain perhaps an hour and a-half, when all on board were awakened by an awkward lurch of the Lady Augusta, which upset the cabin tables, and created considerable confusion in the dark. Some inquiries were made as to the cause of the unusual position of the steamer (for she did not right herself), but no steps were taken to ascertain the real cause of the accident, and all was attributed to the strength of the tide. Some, however, were not satisfied with this solution, or found sleeping on an inclined plane disagreeable; and, after the lapse of nearly half an hour, it was discovered that the Lady Augusta had made considerable water, which, rushing to one side, had caused the “list” complained of. The pumps were then set to work, as also buckets, and the hold eventually cleared of water. It appeared that some valve connected with the engines had been left unclosed—whence the shipment of so much water. At dawn, we had been passed by a little steamer, called the Mary Ann, which indeed had been seen lying off-shore the previous night. We found her again at the station of a Mr. Phelps. She is an open boat, apparently about fifty feet in length, carrying two masts, and fitted with an engine, by her owner, a Mr. Randall, whose enterprising talent, and skill in navigating his little craft, are highly to be lauded. At this station we found an old “man-of-war’s man,” a Mr. Reynolds, who had been so long away from civilised pursuits, that he said he hardly knew a steamer by sight. He supplied us liberally with milk and butter. I understood him to say that he had been thirty-six years in the Colony. Mr. Phelps’s brother is accounted a large sheep owner in this district, being the possessor of an extensive “run,” and about 17,000 sheep.
Lest the term “run” should not be clearly intelligible to some non-Australian readers, it may be here observed, that it is an extensive tract of country devoted to sheep-breeding, and held on lease from the Government for a term of years. Its chief excellencies are, of course, pasturage and good water; moreover, it must, at least, be capable of carrying 4,000 sheep, or an equivalent number of cattle—extra £2 10s. per annum for every additional 1,000 sheep, or proportionate increase of cattle.
For this run, the owner takes out a licence of occupation, at a rental proportioned to the number of sheep or cattle which the district is calculated to support. The capabilities of the location are estimated by a Commissioner of Crown Lands, and a half-yearly assessment is also laid on all the live stock at the station—a halfpenny per head for sheep, three halfpence for cattle, and threepence for horses. Formerly, the holder had the option of purchasing, at any time, the entire run at twenty shillings an acre; but this law has now been altered and, as some think, amended, by the impossibility, under the present system, of the existence of a race of licensed settlers, or leaseholders, in perpetuity, who might have been likened to the Crown feudatories of the middle ages, and paid an annual quit-rent for their possessions. These landholders are termed in Australia, “squatters.” In these runs, which sometimes equal in extent an English county, and usually about the centre or frontage, stands the homestead, a rude wooden building, with a garden, stores, offices, and adjacent stock or farm yards. A spacious grass paddock, and some smaller ones for tillage, all enclosed with a post and rail fence, with a large shed for shearing the sheep and storing the wool, are also necessary adjuncts of the head-quarters. The two great epochs of pastoral life are the lambing and shearing seasons; the latter duty having been performed annually by a distinct class of persons, who went about from station to station to be hired for this work. Since the gold discoveries, however, this duty has been in some degree performed, with considerable difficulty at times, by the settlers themselves. Independent of the head-quarters or head-stations on these runs, there are usually what are called “out-stations,” with small flocks of from 500 to 1500 sheep, in charge of two shepherds and a hut-keeper; who, whilst the former tend the sheep, looks after the yards, cooks the victuals, and watches by night against the attacks of the “dingo,” or wild dog—the most destructive of Australian vermin.
The cattle grazing is carried on generally in a different part of the run, by a stockman, who is provided with a hut-keeper. The chief requisite here is a firm seat on horseback, and great activity of body, as the cattle are much disposed to run wild, and are often with difficulty collected. Both cattle and sheep were annually slaughtered in great numbers, and boiled down for tallow, which was readily bought up, by foreign merchants, for the London market, and became an article of large export. The price of wool and mutton has, however, now put an end, or nearly so, to this custom. To improve the feed of a cattle or sheep run, recourse is often had to firing the country; and this practice, apparently singular in so dry a soil, is said to be effectual.
As a remarkable instance of the nature of Australian occupations, or the ups and downs of fortune, the list of shepherds given by a writer, in a certain district, is worthy of notice. They comprise “an apothecary, a lawyer’s clerk, three sailors, a counting-house clerk, a tailor, a Jew, a Portuguese sailor, a Cingalese, a barman, a gentleman’s son, a broken-down merchant, a former Lieutenant in the East India Company’s Service, a gipsy, a black fiddler, a dancing master. Of these the gentleman’s son, the Jew, and the barman made the best shepherds.”[17]
This summary of sheep farming—the substance of which is taken from a series of very good papers upon Australia, relating chiefly to New South Wales—is also applicable, in most respects, to the banks of the Murray, and I therefore introduce it here.[18]