Too large a proportion of the people of Australia is already congregated in the capital cities on the seaboard, and this centripetal tendency constitutes one of the problems most difficult of solution in our young communities, as it is proving in the older countries of the world. Here, however, we are not confronted with the obstacle of high-priced land, and no effort is being spared to turn the tide of settlement to the true source of national virility and prosperity—the land.
The suitability of the State for agriculture is amply demonstrated by the condition of those engaged in that industry, for there is no considerable class in the community so prosperous. Comfortable homes, well-stocked farms, overflowing barns, and other evidence of labour richly rewarded, bear witness to this fact. The abundance of a series of fat years more than compensates for the loss of crops and stock in occasional years of drought, and these losses it is possible to minimise by devoting attention to afforestation, the conservation of water, irrigation, and the storage of fodder.
Diversity of products is to be expected in a country stretching through 18½ degrees of latitude, possessing an infinite variety of soils, and divided into a hot and humid coastal belt, an elevated tableland with cool climate and moderate rainfall, and a huge plain with light rainfall and dry, invigorating atmosphere. There is probably no country in the world with so wide an agricultural range. To mention crops which can be, and are being, grown with gratifying results would be to set forth in detail nearly every crop of economic value found in the torrid or the temperate zone. Wherever Nature is so generous with her gifts there must be accompanying drawbacks in the shape of vegetable and insect pests, but, by the application of intelligence and industry, the farmers of Queensland are able to combat these petty foes.
Some of the principal objects of culture have a remarkably extensive distribution. Citrus fruits, fodder crops and artificial grasses, pumpkins and melons, flourish in every part of the State. Maize is very prolific throughout the littoral and on the tableland. Sugar-cane and tropical fruits grow luxuriantly on all the coastal lands. Most of the fruits of the British Isles and Continental Europe are at home everywhere except on the coast north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and reach perfection on the elevated lands of the Darling Downs. Cereals and root crops are produced in the Southern and Central West districts equal in quality and yield to the crops in the Southern States and oversea countries.
"Agriculture," says Professor Robert Wallace, of Edinburgh University, "is one of the oldest of human arts, dating from long before the dawn of history. The savage who lives on the roots and fruits he finds ready to his hand stands lower in the scale than the huntsman living by the chase. The herdsman leading a nomadic life belongs to a higher stage of human culture; but civilisation in any full sense only begins amongst men with settled habitations, who till the soil for their sustenance." Judged by this standard, Queensland has passed through the evolutionary stages. Eighty-five years ago, when the first British settlers landed on the shores of Moreton Bay, the country was sparsely inhabited by savages of the lowest type, dependent upon native roots and fruits and the chase for a subsistence. For a quarter of a century, settlement on the coast was confined to a few convicts and military guards stationed at Brisbane and Ipswich, and a handful of free settlers. In the year 1840 some adventurous spirits, searching for sheep country west of the Main Range, found themselves on the magnificent tableland which Allan Cunningham had discovered in 1827, and which, during the intervening years, had remained untrodden by the foot of a white man. Soon the whole of the Darling Downs was parcelled out into large sheep stations. Agriculture, until the advent of small selectors many years later, was only represented by garden patches of cereals, vegetables, and fruit trees, grown for the use of the station-owners and their employees.
On the Eastern side of the Range the industry was in almost as backward a state before the arrival of the first shipment of agriculturists in the ship "Fortitude" in January, 1849. Gangs of convicts felled the scrub on the banks of the Brisbane River adjacent to the barracks; with the hoe they planted maize among the stumps and tree-trunks under the constant surveillance of armed guards, and, when the corn was ripe, dragged it in carts to the windmill on Wickham terrace, still a conspicuous landmark, though now used as an observatory. There the maize was ground into "hominy," an important item in the menu of those days.
A band of Moravian missionaries settled at what is now known as Nundah, and they and the majority of the "Fortitude" immigrants were the real pioneers of agriculture in the infant settlement.
Land orders, free immigration, and the discovery of gold were all factors in the development of the country, and the demand for farm lands led to the unlocking of areas previously given over to grazing. The pastoralists regarded agriculturists with disfavour, and in some cases with open antagonism. By the exercise of "pre-emptive rights," which their influence in the Legislature secured for them, they converted into freehold large blocks of the best land, as well as strategic areas by the possession of which they were able to close against settlement immense tracts preeminently suitable for farming. This was particularly the case in the settled districts of Moreton, Darling Downs, Wide Bay, and Burnett, and to a lesser degree in Maranoa. To such an extent was the right of preemption used that many squatters seriously crippled themselves, the price paid being too high for grazing to be remunerative on their freehold lands.
HARVESTING WHEAT, EMU VALE, NEAR WARWICK