Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official Information

by Queensland

When, in after years, it would have been to their advantage to subdivide and sell to farmers, it was not in their power to give titles. In the course of time railways were built through some of these large estates, but their earning power was seriously hampered by country capable of supporting a very large agricultural population being devoted to pasturing sheep and cattle. As the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty, successive Governments have repurchased a number of properties at a cost exceeding a million sterling, and resold them in small areas to farmers, with highly gratifying results both to the settlers and to the State.

The immediate effect of the exclusive policy adopted by the pastoralists, however, was to force many selectors to take up land in dense scrubs on steep mountain slopes and in river pockets which were useless to stockowners. They had literally to hew their homes out of the jungle. Having no roads, they were thrown upon their own resources, and were obliged to live very largely upon the produce of their farms. Erecting a rude makeshift fence around a clearing of a few acres, the "cocky" or "cockatoo farmer," as he was contemptuously styled by those who regarded him as an interloper, planted maize and pumpkins among the remains of the scrub. Despite the ravages of bird and beast, he persevered, until at last success began to crown his efforts. A cow or two provided him with milk and butter, any surplus butter being sold to the storekeepers in the towns which quickly followed in the wake of settlement. Lucerne, sorghum, and other fodder crops formed part of his husbandry, live stock multiplied, and thus commenced that system of mixed farming to which thousands of the farmers of Queensland owe their prosperity. The coming of neighbours and the making of roads rendered life less lonely. With increasing prosperity, improved implements and methods were adopted. The plough succeeded the hoe; the harvester or the reaper and binder took the place of sickle and scythe; and the slab humpy or bark hut gave way to the comfortable farmhouse.

Though these early selectors were driven into almost inaccessible scrub, they were at least within the region of heavy rainfall, and, even where some distance from permanent streams, suffered little from drought. Settlers who went over the Range, profiting by the experience of the pastoral pioneers regarding the vicissitudes of climate, avoided the mistake of relying upon a single crop, or, to use a homely phrase, of putting all their eggs in one basket—an error which brought ruin to thousands upon thousands of the people who, between thirty and forty years ago, flocked from the Atlantic seaboard to the arid regions of America, west of the Mississippi. Mixed farming became the general rule on the further side of the Main Range, so that, if wheat and maize failed, the farmers had their flocks and herds and their shearing cheques as a standby until the next harvest was garnered.

It is sometimes said with scorn that there is comparatively little real farming in Queensland; but the conditions peculiar to settlement in the State are responsible for the trend of agricultural development. In the United States and Canada, the flood of immigration and the part played by the great railway companies as land-owners and promoters of settlement to provide traffic for their railways led to the creation of small holdings, which, in turn, led to intense cultivation of field and orchard crops. In Queensland, immigration has never been conducted on an extensive scale, and, indeed, for over a decade almost ceased. There was no great demand for land, and, as the mistaken belief long prevailed that the quantity of arable land was small, the area of so-called agricultural farms was made sufficiently large to enable a man to make a living from stock-raising, dairying, and pig-breeding. Field labourers being scarce and stock cheap, the farmer's aim has rather been to grow feed for his stock than crops for human consumption. He has followed the line of least resistance, so using his land as to carry on his operations with family labour and a little casual assistance during the busy seasons.

Events have justified this mixed farming from the point of view of the farmer, and doubtless the monthly returns from dairying will cause most of the farmers of Southern and Central Queensland to rely chiefly upon that industry so long as high prices continue, and to look to pig-breeding and lamb-fattening as subsidiary branches. But for the swelling tide of newcomers the supplies of rich scrub, alluvial flat, and volcanic downs country must sooner or later prove inadequate. Indeed, within the last few years settlers have been turning their attention to land which was once regarded as inferior. From the lighter soils of plain and upland larger and more certain crops of grain are being won, and on these lands dairying will take second place to cereal production.

Since an enlightened Legislature has resumed many millions of acres previously held under pastoral lease, and repurchased large estates in districts enjoying the advantages of railway communication, there has been no need to go far afield, and settlement has been chiefly confined to the lands adjacent to the rivers and railways in the coastal belt, on the Darling Downs, and, of recent years, in the Burnett district.

Still, within the last thirty years, from one cause or another, groups of settlers have made their homes far beyond those limits. Thus the wheat lands of Maranoa were settled when there was no farming more than a few miles to the west of Toowoomba. Over eighteen hundred years ago Tacitus wrote of our Saxon forefathers: "They live apart, each by himself, as woodside, plain, or fresh spring attracts him." And this racial characteristic is strong in many of their descendants in Queensland. Better results and greater profits might have accrued from concentration, but the wonderful development of the British Empire owes much to this centrifugal impulse and to the spirit of independence and self-reliance which it has fostered; and as the flag has followed the adventurer in so many parts of the globe, so are the scattered pioneers of our Western lands nuclei around whom settlement is gradually gathering.

To people coming for the most part from the mother country, experience constituted no safe guide to the agricultural possibilities of their new home in the South. Naturally, mistakes were made and time and money lost before they discovered which crops were the most profitable, and on what kind of land those crops could be grown with greatest certainty of success.

When Dr. Lang induced the "Fortitude" immigrants to cast in their lot with the Moreton Bay settlement, in whose welfare he took so deep an interest, his desire was to establish the cultivation of cotton, to which he believed the climate and soil were specially adapted. But, despite the heavy crops produced on the river flats, cotton did not prove remunerative until, after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the Lancashire spinners were reduced to such straits that they gladly paid high prices for all that could be obtained from Queensland. The product was of excellent quality, but the cost of picking precluded competition with countries where cheap labour was plentiful, and, with the return to normal conditions in the United States after the termination of the war, cotton passed almost out of cultivation, and has never since become a crop of commercial importance. An effort was made some years back to resuscitate the industry by the offer of a Government bonus upon manufactured piece goods. The bounty was earned by a mill at Ipswich, but the industry did not long survive the stoppage of the bonus. Since the drought of 1902 cotton has again been grown, principally in West Moreton and North Queensland, as a subsidiary crop, and farmers have been encouraged to extend their operations by the recent offer of a bounty by the Commonwealth; but, until machinery takes the place of hand-picking, farmers are likely to prefer crops which are not subject to competition with the cheap labour of other lands.