South Australia and Western Australia

Whatever interests may for the moment be uppermost in the thoughts and words of Australian legislators and speculators, wool still remains and for many years will remain the staple produce of the country at large. In Victoria, indeed, wool is for the present second to gold. And in South Australia wool is second to wheat. The wheat grown in South Australia during eleven years up to 1871 has fetched an average of £1,283,630 per annum, whereas the wool exported from the colony,—in which is included a small amount exported from South Australian ports but grown in other colonies,—has fetched an average of £987,194 per annum. The wool produced has, in fact, been worth no more than three-fourths of the wheat grown. But the produce of a country which is exported always receives more attention than that which is consumed at home. Who thinks anything of the eggs that are laid around us, or of the butter made? In calculating the wealth of the country, who reckons up the stitching of all the women, or even the ploughing and hedging and ditching of the men? The calico and cutlery and cloth which we export, and the ships which take these things away, are to our eyes the source of our commercial wealth. I remember being told in America that in the year before the war the hay produced in the single State of Maine had been worth more than all the cotton exported from all the cotton States in that year. South Australia is perhaps in a safer condition than any other of the Australian colonies, because she can feed herself. But not the less on this account does she regard wool as the staple of the country. It is the business of Australia to supply fine wools to the world, and South Australia thinks that she performs her part of that business very well. South Australian farmers simply live comfortably and die in obscurity by growing wheat; but South Australian squatters make splendid fortunes or are ruined magnificently by growing wool.

In the last two years things have been going well with the wool-growers; but for some years before that things were not going well, and there was much magnificent ruin. Owing to the drought to which the country is subject, and to the very limited rainfall in the large northern pastoral districts, squatting,—which is always precarious,—is perhaps more precarious in this colony than in others. In 1865 there was a great drought. In 1864 very little rain fell in the districts north of Goyder’s line, and in 1865 none fell. When 1866 came many of the South Australian squatters were ruined,—and others were broken-hearted. The records of this time are terrible to hear. It was not so much that sheep were perishing from want of water. The wells did not run dry, and in that district no squatter trusts to surface water for his sheep to drink. But there was not a blade of grass, and the animals were starved. The owners did not know in what direction to stir themselves. Hundreds of thousands of sheep were driven south in order that they might find pasturage as they wandered. It must be understood that a squatter may drive sheep anywhere over unpurchased land,—that is, over land which is simply leased by other squatters from the Crown. But he is bound to give notice of the coming of his flocks, and to move them along at the rate of not less than six miles a day. It has not been an uncommon thing in any of the colonies for small squatters, when short of grass, to have their sheep driven about over hundreds of miles,—say in a wide-spread circle, so that at last they should be brought home again,—in order that thus they might be fed. In ordinary years this is not regarded as a thoroughly honest kind of grazing. It is difficult to prevent the usage, as the owner, though he must give notice of the coming of his sheep, is not bound to explain why they are on the road. They may have been sold and be travelling to the purchaser, or they may have been sent out for sale. But though the practice cannot be stopped, it is known and understood, and the large squatters who are the sufferers are often indignant. But in 1865-66 the larger the flocks were, the more urgent was the necessity which compelled the owner of them to send them forth, lest they should be starved at home. Mob after mob of wretched animals streamed down from the then barren plains, 300 miles north of Adelaide, to the southern districts near the sea and round the lakes,—perishing by the way, or doomed to perish when they got there. Those who started first,—whose owners, either by themselves or their servants, had been the first to see the necessity of going,—were saved. I heard one squatter’s overseer tell how he had taken some 10,000 sheep down to the sea-side and brought them all back again. When I suggested to him, before his tale was at an end, that he had lost many of them,—I had heard more then of what had been lost than of any that were saved,—he answered me with indignant denial. He at that time had been a hero. But there were few such heroes. As the mobs followed, one upon the heels of another, the grass disappeared before them. They were driven hither and thither, till they died; but there was no grass. And it is easy to conceive the sort of welcome which these intruders would receive at such a time,—how the shepherds would be desired to move on, and do their six miles a day whatever might become of them afterwards, how hated they would be, coming with their flocks like locusts upon a country that was bare enough at that time even without such strangers! And the life of those who followed their flocks week after week and month after month could not itself have been very pleasant. Among Australian graziers young men are accustomed to this work. It is no uncommon thing that a flock of sheep,—they call them mobs in Australia,—perhaps four or five thousand strong, should have to travel six hundred miles, either being brought home by a purchaser or taken to some city for sale. There must be necessarily five or six men to accompany them, with seven or eight horses, and probably a cart. They kill their own meat as they go; but they carry their flour and tea, and perhaps a tent. They enter no houses and spend little or no money. They travel on their six miles a day;—and though their work be very tedious, it is endurable as long as each day’s work is a portion of a successful commercial operation. But at this terrible time there was no idea of commerce. As they went along, the country was strewed with the bodies of the useless animals, and the only effort was to move on in some district giving still sufficient grass to keep the flock alive. Thousands were slaughtered to reduce the numbers in the scanty herbage, and I heard of one flock-owner who at last adopted the course of drowning a thousand in the sea. In Adelaide a large flock was offered to a merchant, who was also a squatter, at 1s. a head. He offered 6d. for them, and rejoiced afterwards that his bidding was not taken. At that time sheep were simply an encumbrance. There was imposed on each owner the duty of trying to save his property, but without the hope that he should succeed in doing so. It was a bad time then, in South Australia, for in the same year,—the season of 1865-66,—the wheat crop was also low. But the price of wool was high;—and therefore, though many squatters fell,—they who were already weak on their legs or in debt,—the strong men won their way through, and survived their losses.

After that came a great depression in the price of wool, and the colony was again at a low ebb. In March, 1866, unwashed South Australian wool fetched 1s. 2½d. a pound. In March, 1869, it fetched 8d. In looking at the difference between these times, the reader must remember that the squatters’ liabilities were the same with the low price as they had been with the high. The normal squatter generally owes money to his banker or merchant, for which he pays some rate of interest varying from 8 to 11 per cent.,—and not unfrequently a percentage even higher than that. I have endeavoured in the former volume to explain his condition in this respect. With unwashed wool at 1s. 2d. or 1s. 3d. a pound not only will his interest not trouble him, but his debt will diminish apparently without any effort on his own part. But with wool at 8d. his debt, if it be at all heavy, will grow. The sum he realises from his wool will not pay the expenses of his men, keep himself, and pay his interest. After a year or two with such a result the merchant will feel that he is becoming insecure and will foreclose. Then the squatter is no longer a squatter, but takes probably to the care of sheep for some more fortunate man. In March, 1869, 8d. a pound was the price for unwashed or greasy South Australian wool; in 1870 it was 8½d.; in February, 1870, it was again 8d. These had been three bad years, and many men were either ruined or on the brink of ruin; but in July, 1871, it had risen to 11d. a pound; in September, 1871, to 1s. 0½d.; and in March, 1872, it was as high as 1s. 2d. and 1s. 3d. Twenty thousand sheep is by no means a large flock. On the contrary a squatter with no more than 20,000 is a small man. But a difference of 6d. in the pound on unwashed wool from 20,000 sheep amounts to about £3,000. It will be exactly that sum if each sheep give 6 lbs., which is a high but not an excessive average for unwashed wool. The expense of maintaining a run with 20,000 sheep, including the cost of the squatter’s own home, may be put at £2,000 per annum, being £100 for every thousand sheep. It will at once be seen how rich the poor man may at once become by such a change in the circumstances of the wool trade. And it will be seen also how speculative and precarious such a business must be. The wool-grower of Australia watches the price-list for England with an intense and natural anxiety. He can do little or nothing to regulate the market. He cannot understand why it is that the fluctuations should be so great. But he obeys the market, too often with an implicit confidence which it does not deserve. When prices are high he increases his flocks,—and with his flocks he increases his debt also. He is almost negligent how much he may owe if wool be high. The temptation is so great that if his credit be good he will almost assuredly increase his flock to the bearing capability of his run. Three years of high prices will, perhaps, make him a rich man. But a fall again,—a speedy fall,—will bring him to the dust. It must be remembered that many of these men are dealing not with 20,000 sheep, but with more than five times that number; sometimes with more than ten times that number. When the large squatter really owns his flocks,—when he owes nothing to his merchant,—then even at the worst of times, with wool even at 8d., he does well; and in that condition, when wool rises he becomes a millionaire. Things, as I write now, are all rose-coloured with the squatters;—but it may well be that before these words are published there shall come a change.

I went about two hundred miles north of Adelaide, so that I might get outside of Goyder’s rain-line, and see something of the country in which rain is so scarce. I cannot say that the country is attractive to a visitor. There is very little to gratify the eye, and almost nothing to satisfy the taste. The South Australian free-selecter makes for himself a plentiful and I hope a happy home;—but he does not surround himself with prettiness or even with neatness. The greatest part of our journey, however, was beyond the free-selecter’s limits, through a country that was brown, treeless, and absolutely uninteresting. I was frequently told that the run through which I was passing was excellently well adapted for sheep, and that the squatter who owned it was doing well. But I saw no grass and very few sheep. A stranger cannot but remark, throughout the pastoral districts of Australia, how seldom he sees sheep as he travels along. As in this country they do not carry above one sheep to ten acres, and as the animals would hardly be observed if each sheep maintained solitary possession of his own ten-acred domain, the result is not wonderful. But the traveller expects to see sheep and is disappointed. It may be that he will also expect emus and kangaroos, and he will generally be disappointed also in regard to them. Kangaroos I certainly have seen in great numbers, though by no means so often as I expected. An emu running wild I never did see. Tame emus round the houses in towns are very common, and of emus’ eggs there is a plethora. On this journey I saw hardly any living animals. We went with four horses, at about six miles an hour, through a brown ugly district, which was bounded, nearly the whole way, by low hills, and on which there is no sign that timber has ever grown there. We put up for the night at the station of a non-resident squatter, in seeking which we lost our way in the dark. For an hour or so I felt uneasy, thinking that we should have to “camp out,” without any preparation made for such a picnic;—but at last we were attracted by lights, and a party of us who had gone forth on foot reached the house. We met there a young man who was waiting for a companion, with whom he intended to make his way from the centre of Australia to the western coast. It seemed that his party would be lamentably deficient in means for such an expedition, and that he had hardly the energy for such an undertaking. In this work of Australian exploring men have to carry flour and tea with them, and to be satisfied to live upon flour and tea,—to protect themselves from the blacks,—to run the risk of failing water,—and to be constant, from month to month, without excitement to keep their courage warm. Our new acquaintance seemed to be going because he might as well go as let it alone;—but it may be that under that deportment were hidden all the energies of a Marco Polo, a Columbus, a Sturt, or a Livingstone. We fared sumptuously at the absent squatter’s station, and went on our way the next morning.

I had not then seen a salt-bush country, though I subsequently passed through such a region in a part of New South Wales, of which I said a few words in speaking of that colony. Here, in the salt-bush of South Australia, there was not a blade of grass when I visited it. The salt-bush itself is an ugly grey shrub, about two feet high, which seems to possess the power of bringing forth its foliage without moisture. This foliage is impregnated with salt, and both sheep and cattle will feed upon it and thrive. It does not produce wool of the best class,—but it is regarded as being a very safe food for sheep, because it rarely fails. At the period of my visit the country was in want of rain; and I was assured that when the rain, then expected, should fall, the surface of the ground would be covered with grass. I can only say that I never saw a country more bare of grass. But for miles together,—over hundreds of square miles,—the salt-bush spreads itself; and as long as that lives the sheep will not be starved. Sometimes this shrub was diversified by a blue bush, a bush very much the same as the salt-bush in form, though of a dull slate-colour instead of grey. On this the sheep will not feed. There is also a poisonous shrub which the sheep will eat,—as to which there seemed to be an opinion that it was fatal only to travelling sheep, and not to those regularly pastured on the country.

The run which I visited bears about 120,000 sheep,—and they wander over about 1,200,000 acres. For all these sheep, and for all this extent of sheep-run, it is necessary to obtain water by means of wells, sunk to various depths from fifty to one hundred and twenty feet. The water can always be found,—not indeed always at the first attempt, but so surely that no land in that region need be deserted for want of it. The water when procured is invariably more or less brackish;—but the sheep thrive on it and like it. The wells are generally worked by men, sometimes by horses; but on large runs, where capital has been made available, the water is raised by windmills. Such was the case at the place I visited. The water is brought up into large tanks, holding from 30,000 to 60,000 gallons each, and from these tanks is distributed into troughs, made of stone and cement. These are carried out in different directions, perhaps two or three from each tank, and are so arranged that sheep can be watered from either side. If therefore there be three such troughs, the sheep in six different paddocks can be watered from one tank,—the well being so placed as to admit egress to it from various paddocks, all converging on the same centre. In this way 10,000 sheep will be watered at one well. As these paddocks contain perhaps 40 square miles each, or over 25,000 acres, the animals have some distance to travel before they can get a drink. In cold weather they do not require to drink above once in three days;—in moderate weather once in two days;—in very hot weather they will lie near to the troughs and not trouble themselves to go afield in search of food. On the run which I visited there were twenty of these wells, which, with their appurtenances of tanks, and troughs, and windmills, had cost about £500 each;—and there had been about as many failures in the search of water, wells which had been dug but at which no water was found;—and these had not been sunk without considerable expenditure. It may therefore be understood that a man requires some capital before he can set himself up as a grower of wool on a large scale in South Australia.

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.