Rambles in Australia

by Edwin Sharpe Grew; Marion Sharpe Grew

Of course, there was a great deal that was unfamiliar: here were hedges of olive, thick-set and cut like box, other hedges were made of the South African box-thorn, and everywhere the sides of the roads were yellow with a pretty pale oxalis, regarded by the inhabitants as a noxious weed and called Sour Sod. There were many vineyards, and sheep and lambs feeding, for South Australia is largely a pastoral state. The development of pastoral industries has been an important element in her general prosperity. The pastoral settler gauged the capacities of the land and paved the way for agricultural and closer settlement. South Australia now has a larger acreage under cultivation in proportion to the population than any other state, and the annual returns from pastoral industries amount to nearly £4,000,000. In 1912 between two and three million pounds’ worth of pastoral products were exported, including sheep, cattle, horses, frozen meats, skins, hides, tallow, and wool.

South Australia was declared a province under the British Crown in 1836 by Governor Hindmarsh in the reign of William IV, so that the state has a history stretching back over a period of nearly eighty years, during which time she has progressed rapidly, and at the time of our visit was actually enjoying great prosperity after a series of good seasons, though we heard on all hands in Adelaide that there had been two dry springs and rain was badly wanted.

The climate is mild, the high temperatures that occur in summer are mitigated by the absence of humidity, and extreme cold in winter is unknown. Sheep, cattle, and horses live out of doors all the year round and thrive on natural herbage, so that neither artificial feeding nor housing is necessary, and the cost of production is thus greatly reduced. It is superfluous to enter here into figures showing the purposes for which the area of the state is leased or alienated, but beyond the limits of agricultural settlement more than 143,000 square miles are held by Crown lessees as sheep or cattle runs. Formerly the principal part of South Australian wool was shipped to London, and it was not till within the last forty years that local wool auctions attained importance.

Agriculture is determined by the rainfall, which varies from 10 or 11 inches in northern and inland districts to 30 or 35 inches in the south and in the more hilly regions. Within these widely varying conditions almost anything can be grown from corn to grapes, nearly every kind of cereal, fruit, or vegetable. But economically all the conditions of agriculture are very widely different from those at home, for it must be taken into consideration that the wages of farm labourers are about double those paid in England, and the cost of plant and implements about 50% more. Wheat predominates in the value of all crops grown, for while it is estimated that the total value of all crops, including fruit, amounts to £18 per head of the population, the value of the wheat crop for grain and hay is over £13 per head. The production of hay in Australia is intimately associated with the cultivation of cereals, as the greater bulk of this fodder is composed of wheat or oats. The Year Book returns for 1911–12 show more than two million acres under wheat cultivation with a total production of over twenty million bushels, a low average compared with other countries, but against which must be set the exceptionally low cost of production brought about by conditions of soil and climate.

One peculiarly local industry is the growth of wattle for its bark, which is utilised for tanning leather. The industry is a lucrative one. At from five to seven years old, when they are fit to strip, the trees yield from one ton an acre, and the market price of the bark is from £5 to £8 a ton.

But we must again insist that in trying to estimate the position of agriculture in Australia the different labour conditions have to be taken into consideration. In the first place it is possible for a man owning a team of eight or ten horses and the latest and best machinery, to do all the work on a holding of from 200 to 240 acres of wheat himself, with some extra help at harvest time, so extensive is the use of labour-saving machinery—multiple furrow ploughs, for instance, 12 or 14 furrow twin ploughs on the lighter land, and 8 to 10 horse cultivators. This being so, it can be easily seen that there is no surplus of skilled labour, for under such conditions a capable man very soon saves enough to begin farming on his own account, especially as he can get cheap land on easy terms. This, of course, applies to Australia generally; at harvest time, though the demand for labour is great and the pay high, thoroughly efficient men are not to be had. The same thing is true of dairying, so that the farmers are actually reducing their herds to numbers that can be conveniently managed by their own families with the aid of milking machines.

WOOL STORE, PORT ADELAIDE.

At the same time the Labourers’ Union has drawn up a “log” of prices and hours of labour, and requires its acceptance on the part of the farmer, who would be willing enough if the supply of labour were efficient. Economists question whether, if these conditions, including the regulation of hours, were enforced, the result produced might not be an increased adoption of grazing, where hardly any labour is required.

In the pastoral industry all conditions of labour and living are fixed by the Arbitration Court, and good accommodation is provided for shearers. Among farmers, on the other hand, though good food is always provided, the men often have to sleep in machinery sheds. Here, as everywhere else, labour is dependent not merely on supply and demand, but on desirable conditions of employment, and it is extraordinarily interesting to see our tentative efforts in the direction of Wages Boards, and the regulation of employment, reproduced in the form of the finished article in the Commonwealth, which had no great mass of vested interest and tradition to oppose to a generous system of Labour Legislation. It must be remembered, however, that Australia can hardly yet be considered as a manufacturing country, though her industrial development has been so rapid in recent years, that the total value of manufactures already amounts to more than a quarter of the whole production of the country. It is calculated that the value of productions from all sources per head of the population exceeds that of any other country.