South Australia and Western Australia

by Anthony Trollope

The state of the meat market in England is already affecting the South Australian squatter very materially,—as also the squatters in the other colonies. I left England in May, 1871, and at that time Australian meats had only begun to make their way in the London markets. In speaking of the Queensland meat-preserving companies as I found them in August and September, 1871, I spoke almost with doubt of the trade;—for there was doubt when I was in Queensland. But when I was in South Australia in April, 1872, the trade was established, and squatters were already calculating that the carcase should not in future be made to give way altogether to the wool. Meat, which is in round figures 10d. a pound in London, costs but 2d. a pound in South Australia. Then arises the question whether meat can be carried half-way round the globe in a good condition, or whether its nature makes it impossible that good mutton should be imported from Australia as well as good wool. That bad mutton may be imported,—that is, mutton which has been changed from good to bad by processes of cooking and packing previous to exportation,—we have known for some time. That any Australian meat has as yet reached the English market in a state that would enable it to compete with English meat, I do not believe. I feel sure that none has done so. But every mail during the latter months of my sojourn in Australia brought out tidings that the trade was on the increase,—so that when I left the colonies sheep were worth 3s. or 4s. a head more for butchers than they were twelve months earlier, when I arrived at Melbourne. Three shillings a head is certainly not much on a sheep in England,—where the animal at twelve months old may be worth from £3 10s. to £4. But in Australia, where 10s. a head is even now a good price, the difference is very large. When I reached Melbourne in July, 1871, I was told at a meat-preserving company that they could not afford to give more than 6s. a sheep. All that goes home to England is, after all, but a morsel to the markets of that little island; but to this wide continent the preparation of that morsel is most important.

In the district of which I am speaking the sheep are all “paddocked,”—that is to say, kept in by fences,—so that shepherding is unnecessary. I hope that I have already made clear to my reader the difference between shepherding sheep and paddocking sheep. I found that brush fences had been made at the rate of about £23 a mile. A brush fence, made of loose timber and wood, is not so neat as a wire fence, but it is equally serviceable for sheep;—and when fences have to be made by hundreds of miles, the difference in expenditure is considerable. A wire fence that will keep in sheep and lambs, can hardly be put up for less than £40 a mile. Five wires would suffice for sheep, but the lamb requires a lower wire to restrain his innocence. Nothing, I think, gives a surer proof of the wealth of the Australian colonies generally, than the immense amount of fencing that has been put up within the last ten years. A run of twenty miles square, or containing 400 square miles, equal to 256,000 acres, is by no means excessive in size, though it is about as big as a small English county. The squatter who intends to paddock his sheep instead of hiring shepherds to go about with them, has to divide his area into perhaps twenty different paddocks. Should he do this, with the smallest possible amount of distance of partitions, he would have to make 240 miles of fencing. At the station which I visited we had come again upon timber, though the country was by no means thickly wooded. But when there is no timber near, the cost of fencing is more than doubled.

It is of course understood that the normal squatter is a tenant of the Crown. In Victoria the great wool-growers now own for the most part their own lands;—and the purchase of pasture lands has become general elsewhere under the pressure of the free-selecter. But the genuine squatter is he who sits upon government land for which he pays a rent to the colony; and in South Australia such is still the condition of the larger wool-growers. Outside of Goyder’s range,—which is the South Australian squatter’s proper region, the rental varies according to the value of the land and the nature of the pasture. A computation is made of the number of sheep the land should carry, and the squatter is charged 6d. a sheep on the best land, 4d. on the second best, and 2d. a sheep on the poorest. If he should keep more sheep than the number computed, he pays at the same rate for the excess. But for the number computed he must pay, even though he should not keep so many. I found that this arrangement gave satisfaction even to the squatters,—a result which has certainly not been common in the Australian colonies generally. On runs within the line of rainfall, this rule as to the rate at which sheep are pastured does not prevail; but such runs have generally been purchased, and are the freehold property of the wool-growers, or are occupied as commonage by the owners of neighbouring freeholds.

I feel it to be impossible to describe with accuracy the effect upon pastoral speculators of a rise in the price of wool amounting to 80 per cent., the whole difference going to profit. My readers may perhaps be able to imagine the present condition of the squatter’s mind. “Non secus in bonis Ab insolenti temperatam Lætitia,” are words which not unfrequently rise to the minds of the observer. It is, however, very much to the advantage of the colony at large that this prosperity should be continued. When wool is low every interest in Australia is depressed. Even mining shares do not go off so readily under the verandahs when the pockets of the squatters are not full of money.

I also visited a large cattle station in the south of the colony, on the eastern side of the lakes. It belongs to a rich Scotch absentee landowner who sits in our parliament, and I will only say of it that I think I ate the best beef there that ever fell in my way. Like other things beef must have a best and a worst, and I think that the Portalloch beef was the best. I heard that there was beef as good,—perhaps even better,—up at a large cattle station far north; but the information reached me from the owner of the northern station who was with us at Portalloch. As I found his information on all other subjects to be reliable, I am bound to believe him in this. If it be so, he must be the very prince of beef-growers. On the road from Adelaide to the lakes,—on the lake side of the Mount Lofty hills,—we stayed a night at the little town of Strathalbyn. Afterwards, on my route back to Victoria, which I made by steamer from Port Adelaide to Macdonnel Bay, and thence overland across the border, I stayed also at the little town of Gambier-Town, under Mount Gambier. I mention these places because they were the cleanest, prettiest, pleasantest little towns that I saw during my Australian travels. I would say that they were like well-built thriving English villages of the best class, were it not that they both contained certain appliances and an architectural pretension which hardly belong to villages. When the place in question is dirty, unfinished, and forlorn,—when the attempt at doing something considerable in the way of founding a town seems to have been a failure,—the appearance of this pretension is very disagreeable. But at Strathalbyn and Gambier-Town there had been success, and they had that look about them which makes a stranger sometimes fancy in a new place that it might be well for him to come and abide there to the end. They are both in South Australia. Perhaps I was specially moved to admiration because the inns were good.

The country around Mount Gambier is very pretty, and un-Australian. There are various lakes,—evidently the craters of old volcanoes,—lying high up among hills. And among them and about them the grass is green, and the ferns grow wild,—much to the disgust of the owners of the land, upon whom they have lately come as a new infliction. And the trees stand about in a park-like fashion. The country here was some time since given up to agriculture, and the Gambier-Town people were proud of their wheat. But the grass grows again now,—artificial grass, and a large herd of Lincoln sheep is in fashion,—partly from the increased price of mutton, but chiefly because at this moment the long coarse staple of the Lincoln wool is high priced. The weight of wool given by these sheep is very much greater than that of the Merino. Squatters say just at present that the Lincoln sheep pay better than the Merino, where the land will carry the former. I doubt, however, whether this state of things will last.

I was told, when in the neighbourhood, that the farmers from Gambier-Town had gone across the border into Victoria, tempted by the terms on which free-selecters there were allowed to buy land. Many no doubt had done so, settling themselves in the western district of that colony. But when I was again in Victoria, I was told that there was another exodus of farmers commencing, and that men were going back to South Australia under other temptations offered by the South Australian laws. Considering the condition of the population and its sparseness, considering also the great blessing of settled prospects, I could not but feel daily how great was the pity that there should be six different sets of Australian laws for the people of the six colonies. There are in all about 1,700,000 of them, and they agree to be united on no subject.

I will venture here to allude to a matter very far removed indeed from the general scope of this book. Before leaving England a friend of mine had put into my hand a volume of ballads, which had been sent home to him from Australia, called “Bush Ballads, or Galloping Rhymes.” He told me that the author had been a young Scotch gentleman who had gone out young, but had not done well. He had taken to a sporting life, and had then fallen into a sad melancholy, and had—died. I read the ballads, and was greatly struck by their energy. It was evident that the writer of them had lived out of the literary world, and that he had lacked that care and spared himself that labour which criticism and study will produce, and which are necessary to finish work;—but of the man’s genius there could be no doubt. There was one called “Britomarte,” which alone entitled him to be called a poet. I found that he had lived in this neighbourhood, near to Mount Gambier, and that he had been well loved by many friends. For a while he was in the South Australian parliament, but parliamentary work had not suited him. He was given to the riding of racers,—and was prone to write about horses and the race-course. In the literary traces which I found of him in the neighbourhood, there was but scanty allusion to other matters, except to racing, and to the melancholy, thoughtful, solitary, heart-eating life which a bushman lives. His horse had been his companion when he was alone,—and when he got back to the world horses were his delight. They are seldom safe companions for a man prone to excitement. I heard wondrous tales of the courage of his riding. As a steeple-chase rider he was well known in Melbourne; but few seemed to have heard of him as a poet. It is as a poet that I speak of him now. His name was A. L. Gordon.

CHAPTER V.
MINERALS.

South Australia is a copper colony. Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland are pre-eminently golden. Tasmania is doing a little business in gold, but by no means enough to give her importance. Western Australia has lead-mines, though as yet she has derived but little wealth from them; she also is waiting for gold, hoping that it may yet turn up. South Australia is undoubtedly auriferous. Not only have specks of gold been found as in Western Australia, but diggers have worked at the trade, and have lived upon it, and the industry is still continued. At a publican’s house I saw bottles of gold, which he made it a part of his trade to buy from diggers. At a certain bank in Adelaide I saw a cabinet with drawers half full of gold, which it was a part of the business of the bankers to buy from publicans or other intermediate agents. But this was all digger’s gold, not miner’s gold,—gold got by little men in little quantities from surface-washing. Of gold mines proper there are none as yet in the colony. That there will be such found and worked up in the northern territory, within the tropics, is now an opinion prevalent in Adelaide. Whether there be ground for such hope I have no evidence on which to form an opinion; but should this be the case, the northern territory will probably become a separate colony. Of this, however, I shall have to speak again in another chapter. Up to the time of my visit to Adelaide gold to the value of three-quarters of a million sterling had as yet been found in South Australia. This, of course, is as nothing to the produce of the three eastern colonies, and therefore South Australia is not hitherto entitled to consider herself as a golden land.