At present it is not known whether drought cycles can be predicted; how far the large quantities of water which flow through the Murray River and its tributaries could be utilised for irrigation; how far improved methods of farming will increase the extent to which the rainfall can be utilised. “No country in the world,” says Dr. T. W. Barrett, whom we have already quoted, “is more dependent than Australia on such knowledge as can be afforded by meteorology; and perhaps no country in the world is more disadvantageously placed, since at present there is no means of obtaining information from the waste of ocean which lies to the south.”
This brings us to a problem of very great interest in the land question in Victoria, a tendency to convert agricultural into grazing land. Returns show that the very large holdings of 10,000 acres are decreasing in number, and that an aggregation of holdings of from 500 to 800 acres constitutes the present problem. The successful farmer tries to increase his holding, but when he begins to grow old, and is confronted with the disorganisation and high wages of agricultural labour, he relinquishes cultivation and resorts to grazing stock on his larger area, which will provide him with a comfortable living. Consequently less labour is employed, the local schools decline, the trade of the neighbourhood languishes. So it comes about that many of the richest districts of the state are the least progressive. “The land around these centres,” says Professor Cherry of Melbourne University, “is probably as rich as that in any part of the world. But instead of the farm areas being reduced by subdivision they are steadily growing larger by aggregation.... The evil is intensified, because as the land goes out of cultivation, the workmen leave the district and general stagnation ensues.... Not one-tenth of the available land is under cultivation.”[15] And it must be borne in mind that agriculture is the basis of existence in Victoria.
The Government realise this. There are the Agricultural High Schools, an Agricultural College, a School of Agriculture at the University, and every primary school has its experimental plot of ground for gardening. Australia has its own peculiar problems to solve here as in other districts, especially that of breeding wheat which will be “drought-resistant and capable of growing outside the existing rainfall margin of profitable cultivation.” It is believed that vast areas of pastoral country in the interior of the continent, which now support a few sheep, might be successfully brought under cultivation, if a kind of wheat could be evolved that would grow, as many native grasses grow, under a low rainfall. As yet the average of wheat grown per acre is very low, only amounting in ten seasons up to 1911–12 to 10·58 bushels an acre, due, it is believed, partly to imperfect methods of cultivation, as well as to the growth of wheats that are not well adapted to local conditions.
CHAPTER XII
THE BLACK SPUR
The Victorian bush is very beautiful owing to the immense tree-ferns that grow among the gums, and during our stay in Melbourne we were motored out to Black Spur, a favourite objective of Melbourne picnic and week-end parties, and a point of the “Great Divide,” as the Dividing Range of Australia is familiarly called. From Melbourne, which lies at the edge of a plain, the country rises to the great Dividing Range. This belt of highlands starts from Queensland, and separates the coastal drainage from that flowing westward. An early rain had laid the dust, so that we had ideal conditions for motoring, as we left the city behind us, and passed through a region of trim villas or bungalows in gardens, each one of which showed its patch of wattle gleaming among the grey gum trees. At one point the road was bordered by fir trees, often planted by early Scotch settlers to remind them of home. Presently we had left all traces of the suburbs behind and were crossing “Kangaroo Ground,” where, alas! kangaroos have long ceased to browse and skip. The distant mountain range loomed up before us gloomy and threatening. Every stream we crossed had its course marked by a ribbon of wattle flashing among the sombre eucalyptus. Boys were going out rabbiting this spring morning with bags of ferrets; the whole country-side lay open to these infant patriots intent on slaying their country’s enemies. The day was like a showery April morning at home, with heavy drifting clouds, that threw deep shadows on the dark mass of the mountains rising on our left. Sometimes we ran through cleared open country with pale patches of early crops, oats or barley, springing here and there, or lean store cattle, brought from up-country to be fattened for sale, and feeding on the richer pastures. Sometimes our way led through the bush, sometimes through occasional villages.
THE DIVIDING RANGE.
At last we had climbed Christmas Hill, and stopped to survey the famous view from its summit. Here the road runs between banks with the dark shining gum trees stretching away on either side. We climbed through a fence, where a little cleared space enabled us to look over the tops of the trees to the valley of the Yarra spread out beneath; a wide, wide plain with the stern-looking ranges in the background. Below us the Yarra meandered like a yellow ribbon threaded through the green, for its course was outlined by flowering wattle. Beyond, the gloomy and forbidding wall of the Great Divide went up to meet the low-hanging clouds.
At the foot of the Black Spur there is a sort of pleasure place, with villas, hotels, and a golf course. Immediately afterwards we began to ascend a very steep gradient. Here the Government have taken over a reserve large enough to provide a sufficient water supply for Melbourne. From time to time we had seen the aqueducts on our way. In the early part of the year there had been a great bush fire; it had raged for three weeks, and the smoke had hung about distant Melbourne like a fog. The after effects of the fire were curious and very interesting. In some places a whole gully had been burnt out, leaving only the immense white poles of the gums upstanding like the masts of ships. So wonderful is their vitality that in many cases the gum trees had begun to reclothe themselves with young green shoots as if with ivy. Great tree-ferns shot up too in the cleared spaces, repairing the havoc that the fire had wrought; bracken covered the ground, and some kind of pink heath was coming into flower. The fire had been curiously partial, sometimes leaping the road, sometimes leaving a small area untouched. Nothing can be done to stem the torrent of these fires or to arrest their course, for they travel at sixty miles an hour.