^lE PASTORAL AGE
IN AUSTRALASIA

JAMES COLLIER

THE PASTORAL AGE IN
AUSTRALASIA

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THE

PASTORAL AGE
IN AUSTRALASIA

BY

JAMES COLLIER

AUTHOR OF "sib GEORGE GREY: AN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY^" ETC.
AND EDITOR OF COLLINS's " ENGLISH COLONY IN NEW SOUTH WALES "

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

WHITCOMBE & TOMBS, LIMITED

LONDON MELBOURNE
CHRISTCHURCH, WELLINGTON AND DUNEDIN, N Z

191 I

PRINTED AND BOUND BY

H'VZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,

LONDON AND AYLESBUEy.

V

ZQ

MY WIFE

IN LOVE AND HONOUR

Vi

>■

<J
00

4

4£6G36

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Prologue 1

II. Pastoral Systems, Ancient and

Modern ...... 7

III. The Australian Pastoralist Regime
the Physical Environment

IV. The Organic Environment

V, The Government as a Pastoralist

VI. The Clergy as Pastoralists

VII. The First Great Pastoralist

VIII. The First Reclaimer .

IX. The Genesis of the Station

X. The Evolution of the Station .

XI. The Pioneer Squatter

XII. Types of Squatter

XIII. The Route of the Pastoralist .

XIV. The Pastoralist and the Convict
XV. The Pastoralist and the Native

XVI. The Squatters' Battle

16

20

29

33

37

55

60

68

72

77

83

*98

119

131

Vlll

CONTENTS

CHAPTKR

PAQB

XVII.

The Squatters' Victory

136

XVIII.

The Squatters' Tribune

144

XIX.

The Anti-Squatting Governor

156

XX.

The Squatters' Apostate

161

XXI.

Squattero-Mastix

165

XXII.

The Prospector . . . .

179

XXIII.

The Nomad . . . . .

183

XXIV.

The Overlander . . . .

187

XXV.

The Superintendent .

196

XXVI.

The Stockman

201

XXVII.

The Bullock-Driver .

206

XXVIII.

The Sheep-Drover, the Shepherd

AND the Boundary-Keeper

210

XXIX.

Station Procedures and Processe

3 216

XXX.

Subsidiary Industries .

218

XXXI.

The Squatter's Foes .

. 220

XXXII.

The Breeder

227

XXXIII.

The Economics of the Station

. 229

XXXIV.

The Company as Pastoralist

. 238

XXXV.

The Homestead .

. 243

XXXVI.

Social Life ....

. 249

XXXVII.

Pastoral Marriage

. 266

XXXVIII.

Pastoral Morals .

. 268

XXXIX.

The Pastoral Cult

. 270

XL.

The Station and Science .

. 277

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER PAGE

XLI. The Station and Art . . . 283

XLTI. The Literature of the Station . 287

XLIII. The Squatting Township . . 299

XLIV. Later Developments . . . 303'

XLV. The Squatter in Politics . . 308

XLVL Pastoral Legislation . . . 324

XLVII. The Knell of the Squatter . 327

NOTES 343

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

John McAethur ....

Frontispiece

Blue-Grass Plains

PACI

Nfl PAdP.

10

Alexander Berry

56

Sir T. Mitchell

84

Gregory Blaxland .

. 112

Sir George Girps

. 132

William Charles Wentworth .

. 144

Dr. J. D. Lang ....

. 168

Overlandinq Cattle .

192

The Bullock-Team

208

Travelling Shekp

224

Mustering — The Start

240

Cutting Out ....

256

BURRAWANG STATION, NEAR FoRBTS

. 288

Sir John Robertson

314

Sir George Grey

328

The Publishers are indebted to the
GuUick, Government Printer, Sydney,

courtesy of Mr.
for supplj'ing e

W. A.

ectros

of some of the portraits. The admirable photograiDhs of Bush-
life and station-scenes here reproduced wei'e taken by Jlessrs.
Kerry & Co., 310 George Street, Sydney. They were selected
from a collection that is probably co-extensive with the pastoral
and rural activities of Australia.

THE PASTORAL AGE IN
AUSTRALASIA

CHAPTER I

PROLOGUE

Fae away in the South Seas, a hundred years ago, more
or less, the humane British Government was engaged
in making a social experiment that had an issue un-
dreamt of by its benevolent originators. It sent out
to the newly discovered wilds of New South Wales
successive contingents of its convicted felons, not only
from the natural desire of getting rid of its worst citizens,
but also with the hope of reforming criminals who
could, by no possible chance, be reformed in England.
The design succeeded beyond the hopes of its promoters,
but far less through the measures taken by them with
that end in view, than as an indirect result of unforeseen
occurrences. While its representatives at the Anti-
podes, the rulers of the new British colony, were planting
out so many of its " exiles " on farms near the settle-
ment or employing the more skilled among them in
works of public utility, an altogether new development
was initiated by private individuals, which was to
ensure by other means the results aimed at, and at the
same time bring about incalculable results of a totally
different nature.

For the first half-century of its history the new
province was divided into two parts — a part that was

1

2 THE PASTORAL AOE IN AUSTRALASIA

enclosed by the somewhat uncertain recognised bound-
aries of the settlement, and a part of indefinite extent
habitually described as being beyond those boundaries.
The portion " Avithin the pale " was occupied by several
distinct classes. The convicts, of course, formed the
bulk of the inhabitants ; and these, under the direction
of their superintendents, contributed somewhat less than
one-half of the total pastoral, agricultural and orchard
produce of the Colony. Over against these stood the
free citizens to whom the Government had assigned
grants of land. Chief among these were the officers of
the regiments then acting as a garrison, who found it
compatible with their mihtary duties to engage in
pastoral and agricultural farming, and who, by the
concession of abundant gratuitous convict-labour, were
encouraged, at once to provide for their own Avants, and
to aggrandise the wealth of the Colony. CiviUan
officers were treated in the same manner, and the
amount of the cultivation contributed by these classes
is compared, by the early chroniclers, to their advantage,
with the produce yielded by the mass of convict labour.
Foremost among these officials were the early chaplains,
whose energy and persistence entitled them to be
placed in a class by themselves. Still another class,
consisting of discharged soldiers and released convicts
(not always essentially different) to Avhom small grants
of land were made, hardly deserves to be taken into
account ; too often, either through fraud or as a
consequence of debauchery, as the records show, they
speedily parted with their holdings. A fourth class, of
sea-captains, who brought out vessels to the Colony
and remained in it, was gradually strengthened by
immigrant settlers. All of these were members of a
convict settlement. Convict labour was furnished, and
that labour regulated ; stock was supphcd, and the
produce of the farms bought, by the Government. It
was a compact and organized industrial system, with a
convict base, and the reformation of the convicts for
its reason of existence. It was never designed as a free

PROLOGUE 3

colony, and, so long as the original policy was main-
tained, it could never have become a free community.
For these free settlers were but a handful — a few hun-
dreds in the midst of many thousands of unfree, and as
fresh convicts were being constantly poured in, the free
would ever have been swamped by the unfree. This
predestined unfree settlement was, then, the base of the
free community that has been reared on it. But it
was never the root of that community. That we must
seek for elsewhere.

Within the somewhat restricted limits of the settle-
ment— necessarily restricted in order to keep the com-
munity well in hand — there was but little scope for
immigrant settlers. Yet these kept coming in in-
creasing numbers. Many an escaped or released convict
was doubtless among the numbers who gradually spread
beyond the legitimate boundaries of the Colony. But
these were not the majority. All who were attracted
by a life spiced with adventure — all who Avere moved by
the nomad instinct — all who were attracted by the wide
free spaces of the new colony and its wild free life — •
flocked to the country when its character had been
made known in England and the failure of the convict
experiment was threatening to prove a reality. Most
of these, many of them English pastoralists, set pastoral
pursuits before themselves as their chief object. Such
individuals, finding themselves cramped within the
limits of a strictly governed settlement, pushed out
across the Blue Mountains to the west, down south
towards the future colony of Victoria, or away north
towards the Liverpool Plains. By every creek or
river these experienced or apprentice pastoraUsts sat
down, bringing with them flocks and herds. By degrees
the new industry became an independent interest,
expanding and thriving, self-supporting and a producer
of wealth. It gradually changed the character of the
community from a convict settlement into a pastoral
community, using the convict elements at hand, indeed,
but radically different in principle, and thus initiating

4 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

a new departure. Henceforth, the convict staple
steadily loses ground, absorbed by the new elements,
or dying out, and no longer replenished from without.
On the convict base it had been founded ; from this
new pastoral root it grew. Now the real life of Austraha
begins.

The local Government was alarmed by those ugly
ducklings, who thus boldly took to the water. Urged
by the Home Government to put doA\Ti such unauthor-
ised squatters, it endeavoured to suppress them. The
character and the very existence of the Colony were at
stake. It had to be determined whether those immi-
grant pastorahsts should be hunted like wild animals
and turned into Bedouins of the desert, or should be
encouraged to grow up like the patriarchs of old, nursing
within themselves the germs of the future State. The
EngHsh authorities hesitated long, seeing their plans for
Australia on the point of being completely overthrown
by events they could never have foreseen. At first,
the Imperial Government decided in favour of adhering
to their original design, and instructions were issued to
arrest the overflow of unauthorised squatting beyond
the boundaries. It was too late ; the colonial Canute
who would have said to its waves : " thus far, and no
further," would have been as impotent as Mrs. Parting-
ton with her mop. Two wise Governors endeavoured
to regulate the inundation they could not dam, and by
a series of ordinances they introduced law aiid order
into the lawless doings of the adventurers. In these
they saw the promise of opulence and the beginnings of
a mighty State. These sagacious men reported to that
efi"ect to the authorities in England, and succeeded in
persuading them of the justice of their views. Squat-
ting was legalised and regularised, and, giving an
impetus to free colonisation, it lifted the community
to a higher plane, and started it on a new career.*

This, then, is the true germinal protoplasm of the

♦ Bush Essays, by CArRicoRNUs [Geoeqe IIanken]. Edin-
burgh, 1872, pp. 4-5.

PROLOGUE 5

British colonies at the Antipodes, their substance and inner
life, that for which, through more than half-a-century,
Australia existed, that out of which all else has grown.
The historical specialist * is perplexed by an inability
to discover the '' sociology " of a passage in Australian
history that she has skilfully delineated. I presume to
think that the solution of her problem will be found
here. The " autocracy " of Governor Macquarie was
a final and unsuccessful attempt to govern the Colony
on the lines the British Government designed from the
first. Those lines were not of Nature's drawing. The
true lines on which the Colony was to be built were not
prearranged ; they were found unconsciously by in-
dividuals who were bent on their own ends. The
abortive experiment being recognised as a failure, the
ground was left clear for a right design that was of
Nature's devising. The convict settlement being in
principle condemned, the pastoral community was
henceforth free to develop along its natural lines.

All else, I said, has grown out of this root. The
goldfields, and all the transformations they wrought,
are only an episode in comparison, tending to aggran-
dise the pastoral and central life of the Australian
communities. Other interests rise up by the side of
it, its nurslings, like the mechanical industries, or
spring up out of it by natural growth, as agriculture
and horticulture ; but, at the heart of everything
the pastoral interest remains, narrowed in area, but
deepened in intensity, and destined to an unlimited
duration. The history of Australia for fifty or sixty
years is the history of that interest ; its political history
is predominantly pastoral, and the men who figure most
prominently in that history were pastoralists. That

* Dr. Mabion Phillips, A Colonial Autocracy, London, 1909,
p. 331. Perhaps the two best monographs on Australian history
have been produced by women. The other is Ida Lee's (or
Mrs. Bruce Marriott's) The Coming of the English to Australia,
London, 1909. I have since found that Dr. Marion PhiUips
has clearly discerned and firmly grasped the key to the early
history of Australia. See her Colonial Autocracy, p. 331, etc.

6 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTEALA8IA

interest gave birth to some of the strongest personaHties
in the Colony. It led to revolutions in the affairs of
State. It gave birth to a pohtical organization. For
one generation or more it ruled the seven colonies with
a sway that waxed as the absolute power of the Governor
waned. It composed the legislature, appointed the
judges, controlled the executive, and, if the Governor
was refractory, it sent him " home." The agriculture
that has during that time arisen has existed to supply
its wants, and the various industries were long its
auxiliaries. Nay, the aristocratic industry par ex-
cellence was the first to organize and arm its artizans.
The largest union in Australia consists of workers on the
stations, and the most revolutionary journals published
in the Commonwealth are its organs. So was it Mith
commerce. Colossal wool-brokers have conjoined to
make Sydney " the greatest wool-mart in the world,"
it is claimed ; at all events, with Yorkshire Bradford,
one of the two greatest ; and the large importing houses
in each provincial metropolis have come into existence
to supply its wants. Villages were formed to supply
its local needs, and seaports created to afford scope for
its output. Rank, \^'ealth, and fashion have waited on
it. Social life reflected its tastes and was the measure
of its grandeur. It constituted ' society,' ran the races,
gave the balls, and kept open house ; the surrounding
villages Hved in its sunshine. By it, principally or
largely, the various colonies have been reknitted to the
Motherland, and new links of connection with it have
been forged. The old religion was born afresh on the
station ; literature, science, and various foims of art
have been begotten or rejuvenated by it. All this is
the work of the Golden Fleece.

CHAPTER II

PASTORALIST SYSTEMS, ANCIENT AND MODERN

The germinal protoplasm of pastoralism stretches from
age to age and spreads from this country to that, but
is always and everywhere self -identical. It is an un-
dying chain, which began with the first domesticated
herd of cattle or horses, the first tamed flock of goats
or sheep, is still vital, indeed is more vigorous than
ever, and will live on till mankind returns, at the end
of its long parabola, to a condition resembling its primi-
tive state. Its manifestations in this age or that, its
duration in this country or that, its transformations
and modifications, are all secondary ; they are but
changes of costume, slow or rapid, on the Earth's
stage, of an ever-during reality, which pursues its course
across all obstacles. This is primary and essential ;
all else is but a passing show. One and the same figure,
under many disguises, eternally reappears. The Hebrew
■ patriarch — Abraham, Father of the Faithful, or the
tickle Lot, in the dawn of time ; the ancient Arabian
sheikh — the patient Job ; Saul, the son of Kish, or
Psalmist David, as the sun of Palestine mounted to-
wards its zenith ; the magi who greeted the new-born
Saviour ; or the shepherd- and cattle-kings of Australia
— John McArthur and Ben Boyd, Patrick Leslie or Sir
Samuel McCaughey, James Tyson, Sidney Whitman,
or " Triggs of Yass " — in our own or recent days — there
is but one eternal shepherd or neatherd, with his flocks
or his herds, his patriarchal family, his moving tent
or his stationary abode, his simple life, his sane morals.

8 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

his primitive religion, his close contact \\dth Mother
Earth and ^ith the tame creatures that Uve still
closer to it. This is the age of innocence among
mankind, and the remains of it in the most advanced
country keep human existence clean and sweet, hke
a waft of ozone from the sea over a hot and parched
land.

To the anti-Semitic imagination of Edgar Quinet the
social state indirectly described in the Vedas is the
most primitive of which tradition has preserved any
account. There we perceive the true dawn of the
social world, where there is, as yet, no nation or State,
no people and no visible government, but only clans
and patriarchs, who are surrounded by their herds,
seeking from peak to peak of the Indian Alps the freshest
grasses ; with no other wealth than that which they
carry on their waggons ; lighting their fires on the
high plateaux by rubbing one branch against another ;
then burning the virgin forests in order to clear a track
or prepare the ground for a hut ; without agriculture
or fixed property, without temple or home ; marking
each stopping-place with a new song and a monumental
sacred stone ; already addicted to war for the purpose
of defending or increasing their own herds or of attack-
ing another's ; and connecting all things — their prayers
and poetry, their labours and beliefs — with those all-
nourishing herds as the source of life. Such is the
picture of the ancient Aryan Indians presented in the
Vedic hymns.* There are features of this primeval
pastoralism that are lost m the reproductions of it
found in other lands and other times, but its essential
characteristics are the same, wherever cattle are the
chief sustenance of a still nomad people. The Vedic
neatherd is the lineal ancestor of the Australian stock-
man.

Of at least equal, and possibly greater, antiquity are
the simple pastoral societies that figure in the Hebrew
books of Job and Genesis. The Book of Job is popularly
* Oenie dea Eeligiona, bk. iii. ch. L

PA8T0RALI8T SYSTEMS 9

believed to be the elder, but the pastoral development
seems there to be more advanced than in Genesis. The
community has apparently ceased to be nomadic ; and
the use of coined money or bullion, is known, as, indeed,
it is also in Genesis. What appears to be still more
decisive is the character of the discussions and specula-
tions enshrined in tliis the loftiest of ancient books.
It ranks, indeed, with (and above) the Prometheus
Bound and the Rubaiyat of Omar, above even Hamlet
and Faust, as the most inspired utterance that trial and
sorrow have wrung from the heart of suffering humanity.
Not in the morning of the world, any more than these
sublime masterpieces, but when Chaldaea's sun was
nearing its zenith, were those moving plaints and
threnodies, that noblest vindication of the ways of God
to man, conceived and composed.

Nevertheless, the life described is among the most
archaic that is known. Though probably Semitic, it
has one note of the Turanian race. The patriarch Job
is stated to possess 7,000 sheep, rising after his vindica-
tion to 14,000, and these are first mentioned. Either
number would seem small to a modern grazier on the
Canterbury Plains of New Zealand or the Liverpool
Plains of New South Wales. Yet Job was " the greatest
of all the men of the East." For he had, besides, 3,000
camels (where the modern pastoralist has horses), 500 yoke
of oxen, 500 she-asses (all of these figures were doubled
after his trials), and " a very great household." His
four sons had separate, but adjacent, households and
families of their own. Polygamy was practised, and
adultery committed. Agriculture was carried on jointly
with pasturing, as it has been to some extent from the
first by the Australian pastoralist ; and oxen were put
in the plow, as they were by early Australian pastora-
lists. Vines were reared. They drank milk and made
cheese. That the community was now stationary is
shown both by the existence of houses and by the use
of landmarks, which were sometimes fraudulently
removed. Flocks were violently stolen. Corn was

10 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

grown, ground into flour, and made into bread. Exact-
ness in commercial transactions is proved by the use of
the balance. Pledges were given. Wealth in gold and
silver abounded. Oil was expressed from plants or
trees. Golden earrings were worn by men as amulets.
They played on the timbrel and the harp, and " rejoiced
in the sound of the organ " ; and, like almost all known
peoples, they danced. They trapped animals with nets
and snares. They lived in a state of perpetual war with
the neighbouring peoples ; and they fought with iron
weapons and glittering swords and bows of steel.
Cities existed, and some kind of a government, with
the stocks as one form of punishment. Above all, the
true God was worshipped, though sacrifices of rams and
bullocks, as long afterwards in ancient Israel, revealed
its somewhat sanguinary character. Evidently, we
have in this account, drawn directly from Job, a picture
of a pastoral state that has long passed out of its in-
fancy.

That the pastoral state just described was Semitic
may, perhaps, be inferred from the fact that the Palesti-
nian pastoralism was plainly a continuation of it. An
intermediate stage is revealed by the delineation of
pastoral life in Mesopotamia, when Jacob revisited his
kindred in the old land. The narrative, as Milman
remarks, breathes the free air of the open inland plains
of Central Asia, where wide spaces are still left to be
occupied by the flocks, herds, and camels of those opu-
lent pastoralists.

A parallel and kindred development took place in
Palestine. There Abram, sheik or emir of a pastoral
clan — himself and his wife both belonging to a fair-
complexioncd people — possessed largo Hocks of sheep
and herds of oxen, asses and camels, men-servants and
maid-servants. So rich was he too in silver and gold
that he could pay down 400 pieces of silver, coined or
not. He was still nomadic, and, having migrated from
far Carrhan, where Marcus Crassus in later days was
defeated with a Roman army, to iVi'abia and Canaan,

PASTORALIST SYSTEMS 11

then gone south to Egypt, under stress of famine,
he finally settled in Palestine, first in the valley of the
Jordan, on the plains of Mamre, and near Hebron. A
warrior, too, he was, and he routed the hostile force
that had carried off his relative. Lot. He maintained
the purity of his race, and wives were sought for his son,
Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob, among his distant
kindred in the land of his birth. Though not himself
apparently pol3'gamous, he had children by a concubine,
one of his slaves ; and Isaac and Jacob w ere both
polygamous. The right or custom of primogeniture
was already in force, and, notwithstanding the con-
tentions of the brothers McLennan, who maintained
that the Hebrew patriarchs never possessed the Roman
patria potestas, or absolute paternal authority,* Abra-
ham's intended sacrifice of Isaac is a proof of the ex-
istence of very large paternal powers. A defined system
of succession, depending on relationship, was in use,
which would have opened up the headship after Abra-
ham to a relative in distant Damascus. The religion
of the patriarch, like that of all pastoralists, was simple
and, apparently, anthropomorphic ; he carried with
him his images of the Deity ; and goats, rams,
doves, and pigeons were sacrificed on altars reared on
the mountain-tops. Save in this, the Hebrew patri-
archs, in fact, so closely resembled the Arabs of the
present day, who have remained virtually unchanged
for thousands of years, that scholars adduce their
habits and customs generally to illustrate the manners
of the Hebrew patriarchal times.! Far away seem
these ancient worthies, and yet very near they are, as
we contemplate them from an Australian head-station.
" Men travelled with their flocks and herds," writes
Mrs. Campbell Praed, " and, Hke Abraham and Lot,
fought the tribes for land and ^ater." Their life and

* The Patriarchal Theory. By John and Donald McLennan.
London.

■f Milman, History of the Jews, bk. i., and Scheppig, Descrip-
tive Sociology, pt. vii.

12 TEE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

that of the Australian pastoralist were at bottom the
same.

Classical scholar as he was, and with the scholarship
that had been japanned at Oxford ingrained in his
mind by a residence in the Ionian Islands, Sir George
Bowen was apt to perceive the analogies between the
state of Homeric Greece and pastoral Queensland, The
"runs" that have replaced the old "sheep-walks"
he found verbally anticipated in the Spo/xot ivpU^ (or
" cattle runs," as Liddell and Scott have it) of the
Odyssey, and the comparison had already been made by
Mr. Gladstone, who was at one time Minister of the
Colonies. The high plateau of the Darhng Do^v^l3
reminded him of mountainous Thessaly, and there he
found the LarisscB campus opimce — "the prairie of
opulent Thessaly," while the Peneus had a worthy
successor in the Condamine, and the surrounding hills
recalled Pindus and Olympus ; he might have added
that the snowy crown of the mountain of the gods, with
the snowfalls that still occur in Athens, are paralleled
by the occasional winter-mantle of the Downs.

The pastoral system of New South Wales curiously
resembles all or most of the other pastoral systems the
world has seen at different stages in its history. It
may even be said to recapitulate them, as the embryo
retraces the evolution of its parent species. It certainly
has a remarkable resemblance to the Roman domain.
At the summit of that was the Imperial domain,
constantly being swollen by confiscations, and amounting
under Nero, who confiscated the estates of the six
largest proprietors, to one-half of Roman Africa. So
did the fee-simple of New South Wales, which in the
early days embraced Victoria and Queensland, belong
to the British Government. Its composition was akin
to that of the Roman saltus, and consisted of uncleared
forest, pastoral lands, and agricultural farms. The
status of the denizens on it was similar. There were
convicts, who were virtually slaves, at the base ; above
these, in both systems, were freedmen, emancipated

PAST0RALI8T SYSTEMS 13

slaves or convicts, often mechanics, as in Rome ; higher
still were tenant-farmers, who were often also emanci-
pated convicts, as the Romans were often emancipated
slaves ; then came the free settlers, farmers or agricul-
turists on a small or a large scale. Diffused among
them were superintendents of convict labour, who
easily, in time, passed into station managers, answering
closely to the superintendents of the ergastula or the
villici or bailiffs of the farms.

We do not need, however, to go far back to past ages
in order to witness the beginnings of the pastoral oc-
cupation of the Earth. On the level steppes of Central
Asia, over the vast tracks that lie between the Altaic
and the Tauric ranges, in countries like MongoHa and
Tartary, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific
Ocean, we may view this old world of ours as it was in
the days when the Vedic Indians A\'andered from plateau
to plateau of the Hindu Kush, or when the early Semitic
patriarchs, Abram and Lot, Job and Lamech, Jacob and
the hunter Esau, fed their flocks and drove their herds
on the plains of Mamre or Shiuar, or folded them under
the skies of Mesopotamia and Chaldee. There Ave may
still see the nomad pastoralist with his tents, often
surrounded for leagues by immense flocks and herds,
ranging from ten to one hundred thousand, living on the
flesh and the milk of these, and making their clothes out
of the skins and their tents out of the hair of their
camels. Out of the canes that grow by the river-beds
the warlike bands carve bows and arrows. Govern-
ment, properly speaking, they have none, but the
taming and pasturing of wild cattle, John Millar long
ago perceived,* gave rise to a permanent distinction of
ranks such as could never have arisen in the hunting
stage of mankind. Greater industry or better fortune
enabled individuals to acquire more numerous herds
and flocks, live in greater affluence, maintain a number

* The Origin of Ranks, p. 72. Third edition, 1871. The
treatise that initiated all subsequent speculations on the struc-
ture of the family.

14 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

of servaiils and retainers, and increase their power and
dignity ; all of ^^hich advantages were transmitted by
these patriarchs from one generation to another. The
tribes remain nomadic so long as they keep to the north
of the fortieth parallel of latitude. Let them cross that
vicAvless boundary, and they instantly settle on the
magical new plains, build houses, form governments,
wage -wars, and fashion peoples out of their once-
wandering hordes.

At the other extremity of the world, on the distant
pampas of South America, contemporaries of the
Asiatic nomads, but bringing something of a higher
civihsation from Southern Europe, the Spaniards,
themselves the first skilled sheep-breeders in modern
times, reared a pastoralist system that has both singular
homologies and pointed contrasts with the old-world
Asiatic and Arabian systems. On plains as vast as the
Mongolian steppes great ranches have been carved out
of the untrodden wastes, and mighty herds and flocks
graze where, for tens of thousands of years, no foot of
man or hoof of beast had ever stamped human owner-
ship on the wild. In the Argentine, in the thirties,
when Darwin travelled in the country, General Rosas
had a number of great estancias. One of these was
fortified against the Indians, and was of so great an
extent that Darwin, arriving in the dark, believed it
was a fortified town. The estate occupied seventy-four
leagues of land, employed about three hundred men,
and grazed immense herds of cattle — 300,000 in number.
Other estancias were much less extensive. One, in the
Banda Oriental, had only 3,000 cattle, though it would
have well supported three or four times that number,
600 sheep, 800 mares, and 150 broken-in horses. It
was valued at only £2,500. The cattle weie driven
twice a week to a central spot to be tamed and counted.
Some stations were ruined by the attacks of Indians.
At others there were no women. One or two wonderful
sheep-dogs sufficed to guard large flocks of sheep. As
in Austraha, the stations are visited by horse-breakers.

PA8T0RALIST SYSTEMS 15

The Gaucho, a marvellous rider, is the South American
homologue of the Australian stockman.*

Did we wish to descend below the nomad tribes that
wander between the Tigris and the Euphrates, we
should find them in the Hottentots of South Africa, the
Masai and Bahima of Central Africa, and the Todas of
India, and in all those peoples that are rising above the
hunting-stage and beginning to domesticate animals.
In Sardinia at the present day we may still perceive
the rude initiation of that pastoral existence which
spread from Arabia to Numidia and Spain, and thence
to Germany, France, and England, to South America,
and Australia.

* Darwin, Voyage of the Adventure, pp. 52, 85, 104. 1890.

CHAPTER III

THE AUSTRALIAN PASTORALIST REGIME :
THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

A HUGE parallelogram of a continent, not " much larger
than Europe," as Cook imagined, but somewhat smaUer
and nearly equal to the Dominion of Canada and to
the territory of the United States ; resembhng Africa
in its mass, with similarly unvaried outlines and com-
paratively few capacious harbours ; truncated by the
loss of portions now represented by the Great Barrier
Reef and islands hke New Caledonia, and thus sharply
isolated from all the rest of the world ; Austraha seems
to be set apart for the generation of peculiar vegetal
and animal species and the nurture of an original type
of human society. A vast and moderately elevated
tableland, M'hose low and scanty mountain-ranges are
but the escarpments of its plateaus, which slope down
to and surround the central basin with its desolate and
forbidding plains, it might appear the predestined
home of the pastoralist.

The pastoralist, however, needs something more than
level and spacious lands ; he needs water and grass.
Before there can be all-nourishing rivers, feeders of
flocks and herds, there must be mountains, the resting-
places of the snow and the reservoirs of the rain, Austra-
lia has its spinal mountain-chain, like other countries,
but it is ill-placed, forming a close parallel with the
eastern coast, and making the country lop-sided. It
is, moreover, of a low altitude, nowhere rising above the
snow-line, and therefore the rainfall is almost every-

16

Photo by Kerry, Sydney.

BIT-E-GKASS PLAINS, WITH ARTESIAN BORE RUNNING THROUGH.

p. 161

I

THE AUSTRALIAN PASTOR ALIST REGIME 17

where deficient. Nor is the soil, at first sight, at all
alluring. Calumniated by Dampier " the barrenest
spot on earth, it was called by Captain Cook " rather
barren than fertile," though in parts he found " a deep
black mould." " Barren . . . and [that] in a high
degree " — " in every respect the most barren country
I have ever seen," is the verdict of a great early observer,
Sir Joseph Banks, These disparaging statements are
very wide of the truth. Between " the rich, turf-clad
western plains in the Great Valley of Victoria " in the
South and the splendid pastoral country in the far
North-East, which Sir Thomas Mitchell declared " was
sufficient to supply the whole world with food," there
are rich grass-lands and fertile regions of lakes and
meadows, from the Darling Downs of Southern Queens-
land to the fine pastoral country of Kimberley in North-
western Australia, not less opulent in grass than in
gold. Nevertheless, the fertile coastal plains, alluvial
country and volcanic patches being thrown out, the soil
of Australia as a whole is better fitted for pasture than
for agriculture. The poverty of the vegetation and the
consequent poverty of the soil make it unfit for bearing
heavy crops. On this score, too, AustraUa is obviously
a predestined pastoral country.

Even as such it has obvious imperfections. Settlers
were to be long — they are still — handicapped by the
many eccentricities of Australian rivers. These take
their rise in the Dividing Range, it is true, but, instead
of thence making their way to the sea, the greater streams
flow towards the centre of the Continent. The river-
system of Eastern and Southern Australia virtually
consists of but one river, which has many different
names. Most of the Northern rivers flow into the
Darling and most of the Southern into the Murrumbidgee,
while both the Darling and the Murrumbidgee blend
their waters in the mighty but almost useless volume of
the Murray, which a seven-foot craft can hardly navigate
at its obstructed mouth. The country is, accordingly,
not only ill- watered, and pastoral occupation imperilled j

2

18 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

its rivers could never become the vomitories of pro-
duction or the highways of commerce. Next, Hke the
Rhine, they expire into swamps, or (as Dr. Fitchett has
wittily said) into " a landscape of swamps." Lastly,
in summer and autumn at least, most of them are of
feeble dimensions ; the third-class rivers, as the Lachlan
and the Macquarie, are then waterless beds, the hollow
mockeries of rivers ; even " the mighty Darling," for
many a month of every year, is but a chain of water-
holes. Yet it is on these disappointing streams that the
pastoralist depends, and along their banks — at first,
along them alone — that he settles.

Ill served by the rivers, the pastoral industry is

scarce more bounteously enriched by the rainfall. All

over the Continent, save on the fertile coastal belts, the

temperate water-supply is insufficient. Heavy enough

on these, it fades away as soon as the pastoral plateaus

are reached, and sinks to as small a quantity as six

inches annually in the central desert. Here the situation

of the Continent comes to the rescue. Raising both its

shoulders high into the tropics, it allures the tropical

rains that make the pastoral industry possible. Twice

a year, in February and August, or at other adjoining

months, the monsoonal rains pour down their golden

drops, like Zeus into the lap of Danae — often too late

for the farmer, whose crops were long before ripe, but

perenially useful to the pastoralist. The very scantiness

of the rainfall is his salvation. Finding it impossible

successfully to rear the cross-bred sheep that thrives

in well- watered New Zealand, he has devoted his efforts

to acclimatizing and perfecting the merino, which can

live, as it was bred, under comparatively rainless skies.

Playing a part equal to the situation and structure of

the Continent, as a factor in its economic history, the

climate is governed by these. They bestow a sufficient

rainfall on the plains and plateaus of the eastern and

southern coasts, where vast flocks of sheep are reared ;

while the western coasts (save from a point above

Fremantlc south to Albany) have a light rainfall, with

THE AUSTRALIAN PASTORALIST REGIME 19

a poor soil and a stunted vegetation. As the westerly
winds are robbed of their moisture by the heated
surface before they reach the interior, the centre of
Australia and tracts like the boundary between Victoria
and South Austraha are deserts. The northern portions,
on the other hand, embedded in the tropics, are drenched
by the monsoonal rains, and are eminently suited for
the rearing of cattle. The southern highlands of New
South Wales, paradoxically, have the same adaptation ;
while its northern highlands, with a milder climate, are
better suited for sheep. The arid extreme West of
the State is a sheep-breeding country, though, so light
is its rainfall, it carries only one sheep to eight or ten
acres. The reverse holds in Queensland. There the
hot north, with its strong grasses, is best for cattle
and horses ; while the pastoral downs in the south are
for sheep ; the west, again extremely arid, though with
soil rich enough for agriculture, is doomed to remain
pastoral by the inopportuneness of its rainfall. The
temperate climate, rich soil, and uniform rainfall of
Western Victoria give it an ascendancy in the rearing of
sheep. The wool grown there is one-fifth more valuable
than any grown elsewhere in Australia. Crowning all,
the elastic, buoyant atmosphere makes labour easy and
living a delight, while it facihtates all pastoral occupa-
tions and enables the skilled breeding of stock to be
rapidly perfected.

CHAPTER IV

THE ORGANIC ENVIRONMENT

If ever men, in the dim beginnings of history, were led
by Providence into lands where they could dwell with
their flocks and herds, as we read of the old Hebrew
patriarchs, no less did the first pastoralists in Australia
obey the leadings of Nature, when they travelled Avith
their flocks and herds into the hot interior of untrodden
New South Wales, or overlanded it, spite of many
trials, into South Australia, or pushed across the ranges
into unknown Southern and, in later days, into Northern
Queensland, or the still more distant and dangerous
Northern Territory, or the far north-west of Western
Australia. They were continuing and methodizing the
work of nature, which in lavish abundance produced
its nutritious herbage as if to invite the graminivorous
species to pasture on it and thus contribute to its
growth. For, at the very outset, we observe one notable
difference between the rich native pastures of Austraha
and the naturally grassless pampas of South America.
In these bare savannahs the ox must tread before the
sheep can graze or the man can settle or supervise. In
such countries the ox is the first colonist. Where he
plants his hoof he drops his manure, and in it germinate
the seeds that have come we know not whence or how —
it may be, hidden in the ox's coat, or passed through
his digestive organs uninjured. The wind scatters the
seeds that man could neither acclimatise nor propagate.
Finding soil and shelter, they spread and multiply ; they
advance and conquer ; without the aid of man they

20

THE OEOANIC ENVIRONMENT 21

prepare the ground for the sheep and the settler. The
pampa or savannah, the prairie or steppe, thus becomes
the arena of the pastorahst, and ultimately the home of
the agriculturist.*

Only part of this evolution has been witnessed in
Australasia. On the coast of Northern Queensland and
in the Northern Territory, where many species of grass
grow with tropical luxuriance, huge herds of cattle
graze, and browse on the salt-bush and other varieties
of bushes ; and it may never happen that the time will
come when the more lucrative rearing of sheep will be
prosecuted. Away in Western Australia, and still
more, perhaps, in " the Nor '-west of West," the grass
grows tall and rank, and cattle are there bred to eat it
down. But in all the cooler colonies, and in the interior
of the more tropical, the grass gro\\'S short and sweet,
and on all the vast plains sheep or cattle are reared
abundantly.

Yet the first accounts of the vegetation of New
South Wales were not encouraging. On the sandy, but
very light, soil Sir J. Banks found the grass tall enough,
but " thin-set," and the trees, too, were far apart.
Such was the general face of the country as you sailed
along side of it, and even some little distance inland —
as far, namely, as they penetrated. Captain Cook was
more cordial. In many parts the plains and valleys
were covered with herbage, and among the adjacent
woods there were " interspersed some of the finest
meadows in the world." Sixty years later the report
of a great naturalist was, on the whole, still unfavourable.
On the plains of Bathurst Darwin saw " a thin brown
pasture," which appeared to his eye to be " wretched,"
but was " excellent for sheep-grazing." That, he per-
ceived, was the secret of the prosperity of Bathurst ; it
was, indeed, the secret of the subsequent prosperity of
all Australia. A generation earlier another naturahst
had discovered the secret of the secret, M. Peron,

* E. Daieeatjx, Les Orands Pays d'Elevage, Bevue dea Deux
Mondea, April 15, 1886, p. 915.

22 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

naturalist of the French discovery-expedition that touched
at AustraUa in 1802, called attention to a hitherto un-
observed feature. He noted " the pecuhar nature and
agreeable perfume of the native herbage," probably
accompanied by an attractive flavour, that made it
doubly grateful to cattle, horses, and sheep. He already
foresaw the creation of a new and lucrative branch of
English commerce.

The earlier travellers had generahsed too hastily from
an insufficient field of observation. They did not
know — what was not discovered till long afterwards —
that the grasses of the interior are far hardier than those
of the coast. They Avere unaware that other vegetation
besides the grasses was available. The salt-bushes,
for example, are the hardiest of all the vegetal growths,
and of the greatest value to pastora lists.*

Henry Kingsley describes the portions of New South
Wales where he settled in the fifties. He writes of the
" bright green grass " (which often deserves to be called,
never-green), of the rich pastoral downs, of the broad,
well-grassed plains, of the richly grassed volcanic plains,
of the fertile grassy land on the volcanic slopes, and of
the grassland stretching before one " like a waveless
sea.f He carries his characters into Gippsland, and
there some Victorian pioneers had found 20,000 acres
of the finest herbage — a fine feeding country, lightly
timbered, with hills and glens, and suited for stations.
Yet only 1,000 miles in 14,000 were good pastoral
land. J

Pastoral Victoria was, at the end of the thirties, aa
Golden Victoria was fifteen years later, the cynosure of
all eyes. It was looked upon as the source of unbounded
wealth, by " affording unlimited pasture for sheep, and
that of the finest kind." When they landed at Mel-
bourne, the adventurers found the country, for milca
around Melbourne, grassy and luxuriant, with trees

* Palmer, Early Days in N. Queensland, p. 228.
t Geoffry Hamlyn, pp. 320, 322, 340, 379.
J Victorian Pioneers, pp. 295, 297, 193, 197.

THE ORGANIC ENVIRONMENT 23

scattered over it as in England. Some of the hills
resembled the Wiltshire downs, with the same short
pasturage, while others were covered with rich, long
herbage. All animals, they soon found, that were sent
over there from Tasmania, throve. At three months they
were equal to their mothers ; and the cows were Uke
" fats." Grass was abundant at every point.*

" When I arrived through the thick forest-land from
Portland to the edge of the Wannon country," enthusias-
tically WTites a pioneer squatter, "I cannot express the joy
I felt at seeing such a splendid country before me. ... I
could neither think nor sleep for admiring this new
world. ..." There were no fewer than thirty-seven
different species of grass, and they were about four
inches high, of a lovely dark-green. |

In Western Victoria billowy waves of oat-grass, wild
clover, and half-a-dozen strange fodder plants, adorned
the great meadows and river flats. Far-stretching
plains, where salt-bush, cotton-bush, and many another
salsiferous herb and shrub grew. It was called " sound
fattening country." J

In Western Victoria the volcanic plains are rich in
saline herbage, intermingled with the best kinds of
fattening grasses. § The most north-westerly tract of
pastoral country in the Wimmera district of Victoria
"is of the finest description of sheep country, very
openly timbered, but scantily watered."

Of South Australia we may compendiously say that
the grassy portion of it consists of endless undulating
plains, somewhat reduced in value by the lightness of
the rainfall.

Mr. Bartley writes enthusiastically of the broad
pastoral plains of Queensland. There " the rich succu-
lent herbage, showing less than a foot above ground, is
fed by roots six feet deep, moisture-gathering and

* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 276, 277.

t Ibid., p. 33.

X BOLDREWOOD, Squatter's Dream, ch. iii.

§ Ibid., ch. xxL

24 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

drought-defying." And he grows enthusiastic over the
Mitchell grass and the blue-grass prairies.*

Of the Northern Territory a resident writes that there
is a vast area of grass country near the magnificent rivers
of Arnheim's Land. There is no finer place, she adds,
for breeding cattle and horses. In other portions of
the territory there is a great variety of grasses and
bushes, all of them edible. f

In only two quarters is a different note struck. So
long ago as 1846, before the experiment had been
actually made, a false prophet rashly predicted that the
wide Canterbury plains in the South Island of New
Zealand would never be capable of carrying large flocks
of sheep. J These glacier-shaven plains, the prophet did
not know, though the fact would have confirmed him
in his opinion, have been levelled by glaciers from the
Southern Alps, but they have bred many millions of
sheep. Canterbury " contains millions on miUions of
acres of the most beautifully grassed country in the
world, and of the best suited for all manner of sheep and
cattle." §

On his way from Bahia Blanca on the coast to Buenos
Ayres, Darwin was greatly struck with the marked
change in the aspect of the country after he had crossed
the Salado. From a coarse herbage they had passed
to a carpet of fine green verdure. A like change was
observed between the country around Monte Video
and the thinly inhabited savannahs of Colonia. Darwin
was at first inchned to attribute the difference to some
change in the nature of the soil. It turned out to be
entirely due to the manuring and grazing of cattle. A
similar change is observable in North America, where
the coarse grass, between five and six feet high, changes
into pasture land after it has been grazed down by
cattle. In many parts of Australia precisely the same

* Opals and Agates, p. 18G.

t Cliamhers's Journal, 1846.

X Butler, Erewlion, p. 3.

§ Daly, Northern Territory, pp. 218-9, 276.

THE OEOANIC ENVIRONMENT 25

change is noted. In Western Australia, in particular,
the tall grass has first to be eaten down by cattle.
Darwin was puzzled to know whether the change was
due to the introduction of new species of grass, to the
altered growth of the existing species, or to a change
in their proportional numbers.* Perhaps the reader
who knows still less about Botany than the eminent
naturalist professed to do might plausibly conjecture
that the change is to be ascribed to the joint operation
of all three causes. He would be wrong, however.
It is the new grasses that change the complexion of
a country. These are the companions and allies of the
invading colonist, as the old grasses were of the indi-
genous inhabitants. That new species are introduced
has been proved by the naturalist, Azara, who found
a number of new plants in the track of horses. What
he says of wild horses is true of other species, especially
of dogs and of cattle. It is in the track of cattle that
the grasses have sprung up on the pampas.

A like change, though not quite of the same nature,
took place in Australia. There was grass everywhere,
said an early colonist ; yet it was thin. Then the soil
was, as it were, electrified by the touch of colonisation.
Trees and plants flourished where there had been
nothing larger than scrub or shrub. A change of
vegetation took place, and the very climate was modified.
A district that had been parched and waterless showed,
after a few years feeding, water permanently standing.
Sometimes a tufty herbage was changed into a sward.
It became a good level turf, intersected with runnels f.

The same phenomenon was to be found in the neigh-
bourhood of the Lachlan river. The rich river-flats
there afford fine feed for stock. Above them are
plains that extend for hundreds of miles, covered
with a low scrub. In the hollows some fine silvery
grass grows, but the tops are devoid of vegetation.
That was in 1844. Ten years later the whole of the

* Dakwin, Voyage of the Adventure, ch. vi.
t Ranken, Buah Essays, p. 5.

26 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

country had been occupied. The herbage had improved
from being fed over, and the sheep throve on the various
salsolaceous plants.*

In the same country a modification of the chmate
appears to have taken place. Tracts where the pro-
spector had ridden vainly in search of water were, some
years later, occupied by stock. The procuring of water
by artificial means is the key to the transformation.
Waterholes were sunk, and dams thrown across the
slight falls or declinations of the plain ; and these, in
the wet season, become runs of water, f

Settler after settler testifies that " the country is
now much improved for pastoral purposes. Inferior
grasses disappear, and superior grasses take their place.
146, 150. Imported animals, trees, and plants now five
and tlirive, where in forests comparatively few such
flourished before.|

Indeed, a complete change of both vegetation and
climate followed the settler with his flocks and herds.
After a few years of feeding with stock water was
found standing permanently where it had never stood
before, and a tufty herbage sprang up by its side that
formed a natural sward. Flats that had been swamps
in winter or bare dusty ground M'ith cracks in it in summer
formed a good level turf intersected with runnels cut
by the hooves of cattle and sheep.

At the confluence of the Lachlan with the Mur-
rumbidgee for hundreds of miles the plains are covered
with a low scrub, with fine silvery grass growing in the
hollows (the destructive silk-grass). So it was in the
forties. In the fifties the whole of this country was
occupied. The herbage improved from being fed over,
and the sheep throve on the various salsolaceous plants
that abound. A similar transformation took place in
the Billabong country in New South Wales and the flafc
box-country between the Edward and the Murrumbidgee

* Sturt, in Victorian Pioneers, pp. 243-4.

t Ibid., p. 240,

j Buah Essays, p. 5.

THE ORGANIC ENVIRONMENT 27

rivers. In the forties they were without creeks and
devoid of waterholes. In the early fifties sheep were
found in occupation of the whole of this country.*

The country in the Wimmera district, which was poor
and thinly grassed when it was first occupied, has so
much improved since it was stocked with sheep that
it will now fatten more than double the number, writes
a Victorian pioneer in 1853.

On the other hand, there has also been not a little
deterioration. On some runs coarse grasses took the
place of the natural grass and herbs. In other places
the native grass was apt to get scrubby from neglecting
to burn it. Having been driven Siwa,y from Van
Diemen's Land by the ravages of the silk-grass, which
was destroying the pastures, he rejoiced to be unable
to " detect any of this noxious grass." Alas ! he was
very soon to discover it. A severe frost, in one night,
destroyed the beautiful blackwood trees. Next, the
shrubs were all burnt. Deprived of their shade and
shelter, many of the herbaceous plants began to dis-
appear, and in their place the silk-grass began to
appear in patches on the edge of the bush-track, and
in patches on the hillside. The patches grew larger,
and herbacous plants and grasses gave way before them.
The consequence was that the long, deep-rooted grasses
that held the strong clay hill together died out ; the
ground was exposed to the sun, and it cracked in all
directions ; and landslips were numerous. The tus-
socky grass in the water-channels died before the
springs of salt water that burst out in every water-
course, where the soil was trodden hard by stock. Ruts,
from seven to ten feet deep and wide, made the country
as hard to ride over as if it were fenced. The settler
who tells this, in its way, tragic narrative, deplores that
the number of sheep his run would carry was daily
diminishing.! The pastorahst thus partly creates and
partly destroys the scene of his activities.

* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 243-4, 240.
t Ihid., pp. 147, 150, 33-5.

28 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Not a few portions of Queensland have been impover-
ished by constant grazing. It is otherwise with the
great Liverpool Plains in New South Wales. There
more than sixty years of continual grazing have
failed to exhaust what is described as the finest pastoral
country in Australia. It is said to carry a sheep to
the acre.*

Magical as is the transformation of the physiognomy
of a country made by the disappearance of its flora
and the advance of new graminivorous species, it is
paralleled and complemented by an equal change in
the fauna of the country. In Australia the kangaroo,
wallaby, opossum, and all the various marsupials, the
dingo, wombat, and bandicoot, the wild native cat
and the harmless native bear, have been driven to the
recesses of the bush or the rocks, and, having been
once equal denizens of the land with its human inhabi-
tants, they retire before the invaders along with them,
and become, like them, jercB naturce. They have to be
" protected," and they are hunted to provide specimens
for the museums. Their disappearance is no less
necessary for the success of the pastoralist than the
advance of the graminivorous species.

• Satge, Journal of a Queensland Sqitatter, pp. 90-1.

CHAPTER V

THE GOVERNMENT AS A PASTORALIST

The Government, in New South Wales, being then the
only capitalist, was the first pastoralist. The first
cattle and horses in New South Wales were brought
by Governor Phillip from the Cape of Good Hope in the
First Fleet. David Collins, the first chronicler of the
new settlement, regularly records the rise and fall of
the public stock. In December, 1792, the Government
owned 3 bulls, 15 cows, 5 calves, 11 horses, and 105
sheep. It made large importations of both cattle
and sheep from India and the Cape of Good Hope.
Travelling by the Cape in 1795, Lieutenant King
selected 53 young cows, of which only 28, with 3
bulls, were landed, at a price of £35 a head. In 1801
Governor King contracted for 150 young cows from
Bengal at £28 per head. The authorities needed the
command of many head of stock. Exercising paternal
— or, as we should now say, socialistic — functions, the
Government of Captain Phillip gave to each immi-
grant settler, each settler from the Marines, and each
settler from the Sirius one ewe and as many she-
goats as could be spared. Special services were by
this means rewarded ; the Governor presented John
McArthur with 100 fine ewes, and gave a cow to one
Squires for introducing hops. Long afterwards, con-
tinuing as late as the forties, a free loan of cows from
the Government stock was one of the many gifts that
immigrant settlers might expect from a benevolent
State,

29

30 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

It soon began to be felt in England that the Govern-
ment of New South Wales was plunging too deeply
into matters that properly belonged to the individual
citizen. The Secretary of State, Lord Hobart, accord-
ingly instructed Governor King to diminish the amount
of cultivation carried on by the Government, and this
would involve a decline in the number of stock bred
and kept. King mildly protested, representing it as
unavoidable in the then state of the Colony, and stock-
keeping, at least, was continued by the Government
for many after-years. It further encouraged pas-
toralism bj'^ being the chief purchaser of cattle for the
Government stores, and it regulated the market by
fixing the prices of meat.

The Government also took an interest in the improve-
ment of wool. Governor King engaged an expert wool-
sorter in order to derive from his suggestions the means
of improving it. In September, 1805, Mr. Wood
reported that, wherever in New South Wales he found
sheep bred, there was a prejudice in favour of weight
of carcase, while in England the manufacturers were
interested solely in the fineness of the wool. King
himseh admitted that the wool continued to ameliorate
beyond belief. Yet he refused to appropriate public
labour or public money for the work. He held that
it would thrive better in private hands. Compulsion,
he rightly beheved, would not be beneficial.

We do not complain that the Government of New
South Wales did not itself carry on the breeding of
sheep and cattle on a large scale ; that would have
been a grave error. Government in general takes up
a social institution that has been originated by indi-
viduals and perfected by associated activity. In
Australia, owing to peculiar circumstances, the oppo-
site course was adopted. The Government of New
South Wales initiated the pastoral development that
has made Australia great. Having given it a start,
it left the nascent growth severely alone at times, while
at others it thwarted and fettered, or favoured and

f

THE GOVERNMENT AS A PASTOBALIST 31

pampered it. For the first thirty years of the existence
of the Colon3^ the Government gave Httle encourage-
ment to the individuals who were ambitious of continu-
ing the work the Government had begun. Both the
Secretary of State and the Governor of New South
Wales persistently refused to grant the large estates
without which the industry could not have been sohdly
founded. Even after the Minister had authorised
extensive land-grants to enterprising individuals, the
local Government refused or delayed to give effect to
the instructions they had received. To judge from
the hesitations of Governor King, and the language
addressed to him by Governor Bhgh, one would have
said the Captain John McArthur was a would-be
pubhc pilferer, instead of being the greatest benefactor
the Colony ever had. When he endeavoured to float a
joint-stock company for the growing of wool, he had
again to encounter coldness and denial, though he was
this time supported by the authority of Commissioner
Bigge, expressly sent out by the Home Government
to report on the state of the Colony.

The two contending parties were controlled by two
incompatible ideals. The Government, Home and local,
desired to reform successive generations of English
convicts by creating out of them a community of
peasant-proprietors or peasant-tenants. The nascent
pastoralists aimed to build up a pastoral society of
freemen, with the breeding of stock for its chief end and
the employment of the convicts as its chief instrument.
The Governmental ideal was gradually relinquished,
but it controlled the policy of the Government for more
than thirty years and affected it for a quarter of a
century after it had ceased to control it. The pastoral
history of New South Wales, as of all Australia, is, indeed,
closely interwoven Mdth its political history. At every
point the main actors in it come into collision with the
actors on the political stage. Nay, these are themselves
among the chief actors. They pass from the one arena
to the other ; they energize from the one sphere into

32 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the other. The Government, like all early rulers,
possesses the eminent domain of the land, grants,
leases, or sells it to suitable or favoured recipients,
and controls the cultivation of the soil. To a very
late date — doA^Ti to the present time, indeed, and more
actively now than ever — the Government incessantly
intervenes in the landed evolution, experimenting
in the mode of tenure, leasing or selling it, allocating
or repurchasing on a small or a large scale. In the
early days its intervention was more personal and
arbitrary, and the apparitions of individuals on the
stage were moredr amatic and sometimes sensational.
In these encounters high, even heroic attributes —
sagacity, firmness, strenuous resolution, indomitable
persistence through the opposition of those in authority,
determined battling for the right — were brought into
collision with the ignoble spirits that gnaw at every
beneficent undertaking — petty malignity, mean jeal-
ousy, and dark insanity — and win out of the most
discouraging circumstances a genuine success — we might
say, a real triumph.

CHAPTER VI

THE CLERGY AS PASTORALISTS

In its revelation of the part played by the spiritual
power in the progress of colonisation Australia repeats,
though faintly and, as it were, perfunctorily, the
history of Europe. Chateaubriand has glorified the
initiation of agriculture in Gaul and Germany by the
monasteries, and Montalembert has told in eloquent
detail the story of the Monks of the West, There is
some difficulty in discerning, through the cloudy rhe-
toric of these two great writers, and their deliberate,
indeed unavoidable, omission of specific statements,
exactly what was the part played by the monks in the
clearing of the dense forests and their conversion into
pasture or agricultural land. We may suspect that
it has been somewhat exaggerated by the enthusiasts
who led the Cathohc reaction at the beginning and
in the middle of last century. The number of the
monks was limited, and among them the industrial
pioneers were few, while the forests were still extensive.
They were certainly not the initiators of either deforest-
ing or rearing or cultivation. The Roman proprietors
of Gaul held great domains, which consisted largely of
grassy meadows. The territorial princes who preceded
the Roman conquest, as we know from JuHus Csesar,
had thousands of serfs, who must have tended flocks
and herds over far-spreading lands.* But there was
much left to be done. The monks must have given an

* FusTEL DE CouLANGES, Lc Domaine rural chez les Romains,
I. iii.

3 33

34 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

impulse to the extension of settlement throughout
Northern and Western Europe. They were the fitting
accompaniments of the new race of colonists, and they
gave German colonisation its proper sanction as of
Divine ordering, or, as we now say, a necessary result
of natural laws.

Just such was the part played by the clergy in the
early days of New South Wales. If they were no more
the initiators of pastoral and agricultural settlement
than the monks were, they contributed to it in no small
degree ; and they gave it the consecration it has had
in all ages, if we may trust the myths of many countries,
and is all the better for having.

Of the Anghcan clergy in the far South-East a similar
tale has to be told. The Rev. Richard Johnson, first
chaplain to the new settlement in New South Wales,
was perhaps the earhest settler on a considerable scale
to breed cattle and sheep and sow grain. He owned
600 acres, on which he fed 150 sheep and some horses
and cattle, and he planted three acres with vines and
orange and other fruit-trees. According to Captain
Tench, he was the best farmer in the Colony. His
success as a saver of souls may have been doubtful,
but he initiated the pastoral industry of the Colonj',
and in twelve years, selling his land and stock, he went
back to England with " a large fortune." * He did not
sacrifice his religion to his Avorldly speculations, however,
but was faithful in teaching and preaching to a froward
and perverse generation, where the officers and the
soldiers were nearly as bad as the convicts. He was,

* Dean Kenny also states that he " returned to England
with a good fortune." If Johnson's own letters may be trusted,
the facts are very much otherwise. He went back to SJngland
in broken health, a mere skeleton ; yet, so far from being a
wealthy returned colonist, ho found himself, in his own words,
" under the painful necessity of serving as a curate." He had
to make repeated applications to the authorities for a measure of
relief. His healtii must have improved in later years, for he
lived to be seventy-four years old. (Bonwick, Auatralid'a
First Preacher, p. 252.)

THE CLE ROY AS PASTORALISTS 35

if not quite of saintly quality, a worthy man and an
estimable minister, the friend of Wilberforce and a
friend of humanity.

His successor and at first his assistant, Samuel Mars-
den, was of a more heroic type. He fought strenuously
against evil-doers in high places ; he was unwearied in
the exercise of his calling ; he was a philanthropist of
equal energy and success ; he was a missionary of the
Word and the founder of Christianity in New Zealand ;
and, to crown all — no mock croMii ! — he ^A'as, in the
judgment of the sagacious Governor King, " the best
practical farmer in the Colony."

Why did a minister of the gospel take to farming ?
If he may be himself beheved, Marsden seemingly had
no salary, and perhaps, Avhile Johnson remained in
New South Wales, he had none. He received fees,
however, but in fourteen years these amounted to only
£1 per annum. His farming was therefore not a matter
of choice. As he himself said, they had to grow cabbages,
potatoes, and wheat, or else starve. He consequently
grew rich in this world's goods. He added field to
field, flock to flock, and store to store, says Mr. Bon-
wick, " till he became a wealthy man." * He procured
experts in Yorkshire, then as still the chief seat of the
woollen industry, and in Warwickshire. From the
private stud flock of King George, through the agency
of the ever-helpful Sir Joseph Banks, he \vas given five
pure-bred merino sheep. From these he bred sue-
cessfull}^, and he sent to England fleeces of such
a high quality that they excited the belief that the
wool of Austraha would yet make Great Britain inde-
pendent of the Continent. (Many years afterwards,
Dr. Lang was shown, somewhere in the interior, flocks
that were bred from " Marsden's sheep.") It was a
great result, and yet these things were but the byplay
of a mind that was devoured with an enthusiasm of
humanity that led him to induce both ministers and
school-masters to emigrate to New South Wales, and
* BoNWiCK, Australia's First Preacher, pp. 228, 229.

36 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

to form large plans for the spread of missionary efifort
in the South Seas. It was in keeping with his efforts
for the improvement of the pastoral and agricultural
improvement of the Colony that he should conceive
a new missionar}^ ideal. He held that missionary zeal
should be accompanied with efforts for the promotion
of civilisation. It Avas the grand difference between
his view of the proper methods of missions and the
view of the orthodox missionary. We ma}'^ add that
Marsden's plan was the plan of Robert Moffat, David
Livingstone, " Mackay of Uganda," and many another
successful missionary.

These are good or splendid examples, and in later
years, in several colonies, clergymen have abandoned
their profession to become squatters ; ignoring Christ's
command, " Feed 3Iy sheep," they have fed their
own ; and almost reversed the Divine transformation
that had converted fishers of the deep into fishers of
men. During the stock-mania of 1826-7 clerg3'men
and ministers, reversing the transformation of the
prophet Amos, of the commentator, John Brown of
Haddington, and of the philosophically minded John
Cairns of Berwick, forsook the altar to become " herds-
men of cattle " and keepers of sheep. Others, again,
burning to be opulent in countries Avhere very many
are wealthy, have engaged in speculative land trans-
actions that have compromised their character as
ministers of the Gospel. Such men, we are assured by
an observer, never hesitated to acquire, on favourable
terms, landed estates that came \^'ithin their grasp, or
were to be seen, armed with carbine or pistol, making
their way where such properties were to be secured.*
Only a few years ago a Presbyterian minister in VVelhng-
ton. New Zealand, died bequeathing almost £30,000 —
not to charities. Yet his sole legitimate source of
income had been his modest ministerial stipend.

* Grant, Buah Life, ii. 172-3.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST GREAT PASTORALIST : JOHN MCARTHUR

The heroic figure by pre-eminence in the pastoral
history of New South Wales is that of John Mc Arthur.*
Superficially viewed, he might appear to be the stormy
petrel of early Australian history. Scrutinized more
closely, he shines through that murky dawn hke a hero
of Corneille. Mc Arthur's career as a colonist was almost
coeval with the existence of the Colony. His con-
nection with Australia may be said to have begun
in 1789, when he was appointed lieutenant in the New
South Wales Corps, or Botany Bay Rangers — a regiment
specially enrolled for service in New South Wales. On
January 17, 1790, he sailed with his detachment on
board the Neptune — a transport that conveyed also
D'Arcy Wentworth, Avho became the father of the

* The name of John McAi-thur is now always spelled, Mac-
arthur. It was not so spelled by himself. In an early document
published by Mr. Britten, History of New South Wales from
the Records, ii. 95, the signature of Mc Arthur is written, John
McArthur. In a volume ascribed to his son, James, produced
in London while he was there presenting petitions against the
Emancipist party — New South Wales : its present state and
future prospects — and published in 1837, the name is written
Mac Arthur, as the great Scots novelist writes his name, George
Mac Donald. In the Index it figures as Macarthur — John
McArthur, commandant at Port Essington, signs his name in
1843 as just printed. Hannibal Hawkins McArthur is written
of with the same orthography. On the other hand, in the same
year, Sir George Gipps writes the name of James Macarthur in
full. This probably fm-nishes the key to the change. Others
wTote it so, and the family adopted the changed spelling. (See
Mitchell MSS., vol. 42. passim.)

37

4

i_- C' ^f i

38 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

famous W. C. Wentworth, the author of the Constitu-
tion of New South Wales. The ship that carried Caesar
and his fortunes was scarcely more richly freighted.
McArthur must have been born under a tempestuous
star — say, Jupiter, with his storm-zones, and the
troubles that were to chequer his hfe in Australia began
before he set foot on the transport. He had already
quarrelled with Captain Nepean, commanding the
detachment, and the quarrel was revived after the
troops reached Sydney. While the Neptune was still
in British waters, the hot-headed lieutenant quarrelled
with the commander of the transport, and, on a trivial
pretext, fought a duel with him at Plymouth. After
sending a bullet tlirough Captain Gilbert's coat, and
having a second chance of assassinating the wearer of
it, McArthur declared that his honour was satisfied.
To all appearance McArthur was in the wrong, but
the gallant captain, Avho could not refuse the challenge,
was superseded, and another commander appointed.
McArthur did not gain by the change. Gilbert's suc-
cessor treated the fiery lieutenant, who must have
acquired the repute of being a mauvais sujet, Avith studied
discourtesy, and at his own request, McArthur was
transferred to the Scarborough — another transport of
the Second Fleet. Here again the boon was a question-
able favour ; McArthur was attacked by the fever
that beset the plague-stricken ships, and narrowly es-
caped with his life. The duelling phase in Mc Arthur's
history we may Mind up by stating that he afterwards
fought a duel with his commanding officer in Sydney
and another with the major of his regiment there ; if
he did not fight duels with two civilian officers of the
Government in New South Wales, it was not for lack
of challenging them in all but set form. Strife with his
fellows was a condition of his stormy existence or, at
least, a necessary consequence of his irascible character.
Such a nature was certain to find abundant oppor-
tunity for quarrelling in so very mixed a community as
the convict colony of New South Wales. Yet for ten

THE FIRST GREAT PASTORALIST 39

years he steadfastly combined the pursuit of farming
with his military functions and his public duties. By
March, 1791, as we learn from a letter of his wife, dis-
couraged by the comparative failure of his neighbours
and the Government, he had not yet embarked on the pur-
suits he was afterwards to carry on so vigorously. He
soon became emulous of their success. Two years later
he was granted by Lieutenant-Governor Grose 100 acres
at Parramatta, and there he carved out what he called,
after his admirable wife, Elizabeth Farm — a name
which the place, no longer rural, still bears. Grose did
still more for him. Finding the direct supervision of all
the settlements impracticable, he appointed McArthur,
still a lieutenant, his deputy at Parramatta, and at the
same time created for him the office of Inspector of
Works. A salary for the position was refused by the
Home Government, but it sanctioned additional grants
of land to him, with extra convict servants. Both were
doubtless conceded, and McArthur may have made
fresh acquisitions by purchase. In August, 1794, he
informed his brother that he owned as much as 250
acres at Parramatta, of which 100 were under culti-
vation, including 20 acres of " the very finest wheat,"
while 80 acres were about to be sown with maize and
planted with potatoes ; he had reaped the extraordinary
yield of 50 bushels of wheat to the acre, and had
1,800 bushels in his granaries. He was evidently a
successful farmer — perhaps the first highly successful
farmer in the Colony, for Johnson's and Marsden's
successes were not of earlier date. For the first time,
and quite naturally, an optimist tinge gilds the views
of the settlers. McArthur lauds the Colony, lately
so spurned ! and exults in his own success. It went on
increasing. Six years later (in September, 1800—
the very year in which Richard Johnson Avent Home
with a fortune made in pastoral and agricultural pur-
suits) McArthur was the fortunate owner of 50 cattle,
10 horses, and COO sheep ; and he valued his estate at
£4,000.

40 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Then, at this first height of success, came his first
check. Instead of loyally co-operating with the wise
and strong new ruler, Governor King, who had been
sent out to suppress the infamous trafficking in spirits
practised by the miUtary and some civil officers, he took
prompt action to show his disapproval of King's drastic
pohcy. He offered to sell his farm and stock to the
Government, and declared his intention of leaving the
Colony. He was to leave it, but under far less honour-
able circumstances than he designed. One Lieutenant
Marshall, unconnected with the New South Wales
Corps, had assaulted a captain of that corps and also
our friend McArthur. Marshall was tried by the officers
of that distinguished regiment, and sentenced to be
fined and imprisoned. King remitted the fine and
term of imprisonment, and sent the condemned officer
to England to be tried by a more legitimate tribunal.
This proceeding incensed the officers, who resolved to
make themselves offensive to the Governor. Their
colonel opposed the resolution, and thus incurred
McArthur's wrath. McArthur insulted Paterson, well
knowing that, according to the savage code of " honour "'
binding in those barbarous days, Paterson must demand
•" satisfaction." Our champion swashbuckler was more
nearly successful this time than he usually was in his
assassination-plots, and Paterson long lay between
life and death. Meanwhile, the impenitent McArthur
was arrested and imprisoned. When Paterson
recovered, McArthur, having a quixotic private, in
addition to the conventional public, code of honour,
refused to " quit his arrest," and the much-tried
Governor washed his hands of him by sending him to
England to be dealt with.

We need not follow him in chase of his brutal Dul-
cinea, but will confine our attention to the good fortune
that his contriving brain, and not his destructive sword,
hewed out by the way for himself and the Colony. In
June 1801 the Duke of Portland, the new ephemeral
Secretary of State, sternly censured the association of

THE CLERGY AS PASTORALISTS 41

fanning and trading with military duties by the officers,
and strongly disapproved of their doing so "at the
public cost " — that is, with the aid of convicts who
were provisioned out of the pubHc stores. The
condemnation doubtless concurred with the military
imbrogho to precipitate McArthur's decision to leave
the Army and adopt the profession of a grazier, as it
is now called. Other circumstances co-operated. One
of his fellow-officers, Col. Foveaux, who had been
appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island,
offered to sell his sheep to the Government, and while
the offer was still under consideration, the impetuous
McArthur struck in and purchased the whole large
flock. Lord Hobart, now Secretary of State, disap-
proved of the questionable transaction while the
Government was in treaty with Foveaux, but McArthur
recked little of that ; a bit of " sharp practice " was
apparently quite consistent with a high standard of
" honour." We resume his pastoral history, although
the course of it, as of more romantic things, does not
long run smoothly.

McArthur had evidently long ago withdrawn, in his
own mind, the proffer of his stock he had made to the
Government. He bought Colonel Foveaux's 1,200
sheep, and, before he departed for England, he pur-
chased many more. He informed the Governor that
further negotiations with him must be conducted in
England, but Governor King, who now estimated the
value of the accumulated stock at almost five times
the original amount (or £19,000) no longer advised
the purchase. The sentiments of both the Governor
and the Secretary of State were strongly opposed to
the engaging of the State in private industry. Posi-
tively and negatively, on the other hand, by purchases
and refusals, McArthur was, personally and officially,
dedicated to pastoral pursuits. Energy and enmity
and accident combined to determine the vocation of
the first AustraHan squatter.

If McArthur rebelled against King at first, described

42 THE PA8T0BAL AGE IN AUSTHALASIA

him as a tyrant, and sought to effect his overthrow,
he loyally stood by the Governor at a time when the
convicts were hatching plots against him, and sedition
threatened to wreck the young community ; in 1806
he was grateful to King for his aid, and would have
lamented his retirement ; and when King finally left
the Colony, Mc Arthur joined all the most reputable
citizens in flattering addresses of gratitude and regret.
Just once again was he to take a prominent part in
pubhc affairs, and suffer cruelly in consequence. The
story cannot be omitted from a sketch of his life, but
we must first record a peaceful interval of fruitful
activity.

McArthur's despatch to England was a fortunate
event, and lent itself to the promotion of his designs.
He was then by no means forgetful of his pastoral
ambitions. Questioned by Commissioner Bigge twenty
years afterwards, he modestly told the story of his
tentative efforts.

"In 1801 I took to England specimens of the wool of the pure
merino, and of the best of the cross-bred, and having submitted
them to the inspection of a committee of manufacturers, they
reported that the merino wool was equal to any Spanish wool,
and the cross-bred of considerable value. Thus encouraged, I
purchased nine rams and an ewe from the royal flock at Kew,
and returned to this country determined to devote my attention
to the improvement of the wool of my flocks. I only landed
here five rams and one ewe of the sheep purchased from the
royal flock."

Papers laid before the House of Commons in 1837 yield
evidence of his untiring perseverance. In July, 1803,
he addressed a memorandum to Lord Hobart, telling
the story of his efforts, his failures, and his successes,
and enlarging on the advisableness of cultivating such
an industry in Australia. He then applied for an
extensive grant of land, with its usual accompaniment
of convict servants.

Mc Arthur soon began to experiment in wool-growing.
Early surveyors — men so skilled as Grimes and Robbina
— disparaged the natural grasses of Australia, and did

THE CLERGY AS PA8T0BALI8TS 43

not believe that either sheep or cattle could be profitably
depastured on them. Mc Arthur knew better and saw
more truly. He had discerned the cattle that had
strayed from the Government domain in 1788 feeding
at Mount Taurus and seen them thrive. In 1794
he purchased from an officer, who had imported them
from Calcutta, 60 Bengal ewes and lambs, and soon
after he bought two Irish ewes and a young ram. They
were far from being promising progenitors of a good
stock. The Indian sheep grew mere hair ; the wool of
the Irish sheep was of coarse texture. The happy
thought of crossing the two breeds occurred to the
experimenter, and the blending of the two yielded a
mingled fleece of hair and fine wool. The problem was
solved ; the hair could be eradicated, and fine wool
grown.

McArthur was still not contented with the result,
and he looked for aid in another direction. He had
possibly heard that Spanish merinos throve at the Cape
of Good Hope, and he desired two officers of men-of-war
returning to England by the Cape to inquire whether
any of them were for sale. He had struck the " psy-
chological moment," and was fortunate beyond his
expectation. His agents arrived there at the very
time when a large flock of merinos was in the market.
The King of Spain had presented to the King of Holland
a number of pure-bred merinos selected from the Escorial
or private stud farm of the sovereign. These the
Dutch Government judiciously sent to its colony at the
Cape. There the flock was placed in charge of Colonel
Gordon, but the Colonial Government valued the gift
too lightly to care for it as they should. Gordon died,
and the flock, now reckoned as having been his private
property, was about to be sold. Mc Arthur's agents
bought only t^^'enty sheep — 12 for others and but
8 (3 rams and 5 ewes) for McArthur. This small
acquisition might seem to furnish few materials for
making a fresh start in a new industry, but it was
enough for McArthur. The other purchasers neglected

44 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

their acquisitions, and, mingling the pure merinos with
the commoner breeds, soon saw their finer strains
disappear. McArthur was wiser. He kept his
Spaniards apart from his Indians and his Irish, and
bred them successfully, increasing their numbers and
maintaining the fine quahty of the wool. It was the
foundation, not of the cultivation of wool — that was
almost coeval with the birth of the Colony — but of the
growth of the finest kind of it — the pure Spanish merino.
It was of vast importance to the future of the all-
Australia.

McAi'thur fought his battle as an ancient Hebrew
patriarch might have fought with a neighbouring sheikh,
his overlord. He addressed statements to the Secretary
of State. He pressed his views on the Treasury. Ho
presented memorials to the Privy Council. He proposed
to form a company for the breeding of sheep, and, to
preclude the charge of monopoly, he offered that a
stipulated portion of the stock bred should be annually
distributed among the settlers. He was even prepared
to conduct the undertaking single-handed, if he were
granted a large enough extent of land and a sufficient
number of convict shepherds.

His perseverance was rewarded. He was a man of
determined character, and he had influential friends,
although he seems also to have had to have excited
dangerous enmities. In July of the same year he
appeared before a special session of the Privy Council,
or before a committee of it. McArthur then stated his
case, disclosed his plans, and appealed — not for aid, but
— for a sj^here of action, where he could sow the begin-
nings of an industry that would emancipate England
from her dependence on a possibly closed Continent
for her chief staple. The Privy Council, realising that
England was then being throttled by the Napoleonic
blockade, listened witli interest, hesitatingly approved
of his proposals, and cautiously reconmiended the
Secretary of State to authorise the Governor to make
a conditional grant of land. It was all that McAi'thur

THE FIRST GREAT PA8T0RALIST 45

wanted — at least, it was all that he needed. Thus
fortified, he found Lord Camden still more sympathetic,
or less timid, than the Privy Council. That instructed
the Governor of New South Wales to convey to McArthur
in perpetuity 5,000 acres " fit for the pasture of sheep."
And he expressed a wish that the land should be selected
in the locality desired by McArthur. Among the many
evidences of official blundering connected with the
colonisation of AustraHa, we record Avith pleasure and
eulogy this just and beneficent act.

Mc Arthur's troubles Mere not therefore at an end.
Sagacious and upright though he was, Governor King
did not at once give effect to the instructions of the
Secretary of State. He demurred to McArthur 's
choice of a locality and recommended another. Mc-
Arthur was lo3'al, but found the proposed locality un-
suitable, and King properly yielded. Then McArthur
was placed in possession of 5,000 acres at Mount Taurus,
where his discerning eye perceived the pastoral possi-
bilities, because some cattle that had, many years
before, strayed away from the Government settlement
had there found a home and multiplied. He carved
out the noble estate to be known to all time as Camden
Park, having been named after the enlightened Secretary
of State Avho had granted the concession.

Even now his warfare over his estate was not over.
Governor King's successor, the half-insane Bhgh, had
evidently made up his mind that McArthur was a
dangerous man, M'ho must be kept within bounds. A
few days after he had entered on office Bligh showed a
strong animus against him. The story has been told
by McArthur, and has several times been repeated,
but it must be told over again.

Meeting with Bligh at Government House, Parramatta,
McArthur led the conversation to his all-absorbing
theme and gave Bligh an opportunity of acquainting
him with any wishes the Home Government had ex-
pressed. Then Bhgh, he relates, burst into a towering
rage. " Are you," he cried, " to have such flocks of

46 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

sheep and such herds of cattle as no man ever heard
of before ? No, sir ! I have heard of your concerns,
sir ; you have got 5,000 acres of land in the finest situa-
tion in the countrj^ but, by God, you shan't keep it ! "
McArthur truly replied that the Privy Council had re-
commended the Secretary of State to order the Gover-
nor of New South Wales to grant the land, and the Gov-
ernor had granted it. " Damn the Privy Council ! and
damn the Secretary of State, too ! What have they to
do with me ? You have made a number of false repre-
sentations respecting your wool by which you obtained
this land." Bhgh afterwards denied that he had used
such language, but he had used it in presence of
witnesses whose testimony could not be shaken, and
it was too perfectly in keeping with his character to
be doubted.*

" The day that dawns in fire will die in storm," and
Bligh's brief day as Governor of New South Wales was
tempestuous. The too-famous Mutiny of the Bounty
was the undress rehearsal of a less famous, but more
important mutiny. The story of the rebellion against
Bligh in Sydney in 1808 is the classical parallel to the
mutinous rising against oppressive sovereigns in English
history. Bligh was neither a Richard III. nor a
James II. ; he was simply a hot-headed and high-
handed official, who was driven into exile in consequence
of acts that strained the endurance of the military.
McArthur was the pivot of the revolt, and was in all

* A pamphlet entitled : An Accurate List of the Landholders
in the Colony of New South Wales ; corrected to 1813 and
published in 1814, has been shown me by Miss Windeyer, the
obliging and capable Chief Cataloguer in the Mitchell Library,
Sydney. In this List McArthur figures as having been granted
200 acres at Parramatta and 425 at the Field of Mars, near
Sydney ; but, at an evidently later date, he is shown to havo
been granted, first, 2,750 acres, and, next, 2,250 acres — both at
" the Cow Pastures." In all, 5,025 acres. It was probably the
last two largo grants that were in the mind of Governor Bligh
when he broke out against him in a fury. It was doubtless the
root of the animosity that afterwards cost both of them so
dear.

THE FIRST GREAT PASTORALIST 47

probability its inspirer. Ho had spurned a warrant
for his apprehension on account of his blameless con-
nection with a trading schooner, and asserted in writing
that he would never submit to " the horrid tyranny "
of Bligh till he was forced to submit, adding that he
looked upon it (the innocent warrant), as on the persons
directing its execution, " with scorn and contempt."
He was promptly lodged in gaol for his bold defiance
of the constituted authorities. The six military officers
composing the court urged that he should be re-admitted
to bail. As soon as he learned that this recommenda-
tion had been made, Bligh summoned the recalcitrant
officers to appear before him at Government House on
the following day (January 27), to answer charges of
" certain crimes," or on account of " practices which "
Bligh " considered treasonable." They never did
appear before the irate Governor. His last coup gave
the finishing stroke to the endurance of the long-suffering
officers and better class of settlers ; for we cannot yet
properly speak of the people. They appealed to their
commanders to place Bligh under immediate arrest.
It was feared that McArthur would be privily made
away with. Major Johnston then arrived at the
barracks on the afternoon of the 26th and at once
issued a warrant to the gaoler to dehver up McArthur,
who was brought to the security of the barracks. Then
McArthur, who was evidently the real leader, writing
on a gun in the square of the barracks, drafted a re-
quisition, calling on Johnston to place Bhgh under
arrest. The document was at once signed by McArthur
and other prominent colonists, and afterwards more
numerously. An angry mob surged towards Govern-
ment House. Stricken with mortal terror, Bligh, who
had played the man in far more dangerous crises, seems
to have shown the white feather, and Avas found under
circumstances that compromised his manhood, like
Claudius, elected Roman emperor ; but an angry mob
is said to be more terrible than an embattled host. His
heroic daughter fought more bravely for him than he

48 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

fought for himself. Johnston then left Bhgh under
arrest, proclaimed martial law, and purged the pubHc
service of unworthy officers. McArthur was re-tried
and acquitted, and next appointed Colonial Secretary.
So ended the first act of the tragi-comedy.

Such is the commonly accepted version of this strange
series of events. It is almost certainly biassed and
partial. Judge Barron Field and Judge- Advocate
Wjdde were no mere partizans, and they were McArthur's
contemporaries. Well, their account of " the Botany
Bay Mutiny " was uncompromising. They MTote of
" the rebellion which he John McArthur almost alone
caused." A writer of later date — certainly no friend
of McArthur — Dr. Lang, denominated the rising as
simply " rebellion." It is probably the opinion of most
readers now. Bligh's temper and manners were none
of the best, it is true. He screamed at McArthur as
if he were, like the majority of Bligh's subjects, a con-
victed felon. With an oath he blasphemously took
in vain the high name of the Secretary of State and
the still more august dignity of the Privy Council.
But it Avas chiefly the big men, the officers and the
leaders, who had cause to be offended. The evidence
offered (as by Rusden) to show that their resentment
was shared by the community is unconvincmg.

The free settlers, according to Lang, Avere for Bligh
and exerted themselves for him. They Avere not
numerous, it is true, but they existed, though they
were all along borne down by the military. All of
Mr. Rusden's attempts to diminish the magnitude
and importance of their sympathy strike one as being
in the nature of special pleading. Ho had a thesis to
maintain. He evidently believed Bligh to be either
an outrageous fool or a violent madman. He makes
no attempt to account for Bligh's unpopularity with
the military. The chief consideration he could have
adduced he was precluded from using. He had main-
tained that Governor King had completely suppressed
the military monopol}' and the trade in spirits. He

THE FIRST GREAT PAST0RALI8T 49

was therefore unable to contend that it was Governor
Bligh's endeavours to suppress this trade, which still
existed, that made Bligh an object of hatred to the
officers of the New South Wales Corps, which saw its
gainful privileges threatened. Why, otherwise, should
he have manifested so violent an animus against Mc-
Arthur ? He soon learnt that McArthur was the real
inspirer of all the opposition to the successive Governors.
He doubtless heard that McArthur boasted of having
" sent Home " three successive Governors, and he knew
that he had no favour to expect at the hands of the
truculent officer, if he trenched upon the prized military
monopoly. Is not this enough to account for Bhgh's
arrogant behaviour to McArthur ? Yet of all this
we read nothing in Mx. Rusden's animated pages.
There, Bligh's expletives and objurgations read like the
causeless ravings of a madman.

Bligh's arrest and expulsion were simply the consum-
mation of twenty years' latent rebellion on the part
of the military. The result of a mihtary conspiracy,
it was, in the proper sense, a mutiny, and was officially
described by the Commander-in-Chief as " the Botany
Bay Mutiny."

How would the Home Government view this extra-
ordinary rising ? Would it allow the defence of im-
perious necessity set up by the leaders ? For eighteen
months the whole Colony remained in suspense, and
perhaps was beginning to forget the peril that brooded
over it. The Home Government did not forget. With
the slow but sure advance of the avalanche the retri-
bution meted out by the authorities was sheeted home
to the leaders of the mutiny. With the last day of
1809 the new Governor, Colonel Lachlan Macquarie,
arrived, and a few months afterwards the principals
were sent to England to be judged. In 1811 the
court-martial gave its decision. Bligh was vindicated,
or at least his deposers were condemned. Major John-
ston was cashiered, but he returned as a private citizen
to the Colony his firmness had saved from the caprices

4

50 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

of a madman, and in Sydney his honoured name became
a household word, as it still is. ^IcArthur had retired
from the army and could not thus be tried, though his
part in what the Home officials called " the Mutiny at
Botany Bay " was only less conspicuous and really
more onerous. He was left severely alone, and in his
case the punishment was crushing. No one could
reside in the closed reservation of New South Wales
without the leave of the Governor or of the Home
Government, and to John McArthur that leave was
inexorably denied. For five years he seems to have
remained quiescent, exercising patience (a virtue
abhorred by him) and exerting firmness (a congenial
attribute), having left his stout-hearted wife to manage
his estate in his absence. He yet neither relinquished
the desire of returning to the Colony Mith which he,
like Johnston, had cast in his lot, nor discontinued his
efforts to smooth the Avay. In 1816 he first cherished
hopes that the wished-for boon would be no longer
withheld. His appeals to Lord Bathurst were frequent,
yet not pitiful, but earnest and manly. Why should
he be a " solitary victim " selected " from almost an
entire population " ? Why ? Because he was the
brain alike and the backbone of the rebellion. All his
acts in the " mutiny," he claimed, had been the off-
spring of " a fatal necessity." Should not an Act of
Oblivion be passed, wiping out all condemnation of
measures imperiously demanded by the safety and the
very existence of the Colony ? The Secretary of State
at last relented. Having been assured that McArthur
was sensible of " the impropriety of his conduct," Lord
Bathurst no longer objected to the return of so dangerous
a disturber of the peace.

It was now the turn of the high-spirited McArthur
to reveal the unyielding basis of his character. He
could not accept the proffered boon on the conditions
annexed to it. He felt no regret and admitted no
impropriety. Like the dying Prussian king, Frederick
William, who was besought by his chaplain to confess

THE FIRST GREAT PASTORALIST 51

his wrong-doing in certain public cases, he declared
that his acts were right and just. Rugged man though
he was, with features as if moulded of cast-iron, he was
a tenderly affectionate husband and father. But his
pride, and the morbid sense of honour that had led him
into most of his troubles, forbade him to " become a
party to his own dishonour." Like Dante, if he could
not return save on such terms, he would not return at
all. Still Lord Bathurst would not consent. He could
go no further than he had done. He even stated that
McArthur's unequivocal refusals raised an insuperable
barrier to his return.

Mc Arthur was a man fertile in resource, and now he
played his trump-card. If the Secretary of State
refused to let him return, he would appeal to the
Commons of England in ParHament assembled. He
would adduce such proofs of Bligh's peculations as
would scare the Government into releasing him, in
order to keep him quiet and preclude the exposure.

The bold step was successful. Li February, 1817,
he was able to announce that his " differences with
certain great people " were satisfactorily arranged. No
concessions were made on one side or admission on the
other. His honour was saved. Now he could face the
brave wife and the loved children from whom he had
been separated for seven years. His " tempest-
shattered bark " was within sight of its haven. At the
end of 1817 he returned to New South Wales. In due
time he was made a member of the newly created Legis-
lative Council, but thenceforth he played a secondary
part in the political history of the Colony. He was
still to be closely connected with its pastoral history.
Revenons d nos moutons.

McArthur had been granted his broad domains by
Governor King in 1804 ; twenty years later he was
not yet in full possession of them. For some occult
reason Governor Brisbane refused to .give him a legal
title to them. His son, John, with some of his father's
grit, was then in London, and he vigorously pushed

62 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

his father's claims. Lord Bathurst had long ago
dealt sternly with McArthur, but he had no mind to
see the pastoralist denied his rights. Sparing no
emphasis, he peremptorily required the Governor of
New South Wales to place McAi-thur in immediate
possession of 10,720 acres on pajniient of a sum of
£2,850, or of an annual quit-rent of £142 10s. An
extensive estate, it will be said, acquired on easy terms !
Yet it was far less extensive than many a more than
lordly domain 0A\Tied by the squatters of a later day,
and was well within the capacity of the first and most
capable of Australian breeders and squatters, while the
price paid was the conventional one of five shillings
the acre. Whoever in Australia may have acquired
land at " the price of an old song," it was not John
McArthur. The historic estate of Camden Park was
his at last, and it is his heirs' still.

He was now able to resume his efforts and experi-
ments. They were met with many discouragements
and general indifference. So late as 1818 he -wTote of
himself as pursuing in virtual isolation his " feeble
attempt to introduce merino sheep," which crept on
" almost unheeded and altogether unassisted." He was
not so completely unaided as he alleged. Governor
King had given him 100 of the best ewes belonging
to the Government, and convict labour had been as-
signed to him ungrudgingly ; though Mrs. McArthur,
in one of her letters, asserts that most of his servants
were paid by himself. Still, Government encouragement
was not, in the main, the kind that he either needed or
desired. Hunter recommended and King appreciated
his endeavours. King gladly allowed that the gradual
change of the fleece from hair to wool, largely due to
McArthur's experiments, " continues ameliorating be-
yond belief." Yet he would not apply public (or con-
vict) labour and the cost of its support to such an
object. It would thrive better in private hands, he
wisely beheved ; compulsion, said this disciple of Adam
Smith, would not be beneficial.

THE FIRST GREAT PASTORALIST 53

The aid McArthur desiderated was of another sort.
He proposed the creation of a new class of landholders.
These were to have estates of at least 10,000 acres,
with contiguous reserves of equal extent — evidently,
to be available for future occupation. Such a body
would accumulate wealth, and might develope into an
aristocracy. Such a pastoral class would oppose ever
multiplying and enlarging, an effectual barrier to the
threatening democracy.

Grantees of large estates, he held, should be com-
pelled to fulfil certain conditions, and should hold those
estates on the tenure of scientific breeding. Addressing
Governor Brisbane, McArthur undertook " to devise
methods by which the most respectable class of pro-
prietors might be excited to more strenuous exertions
to increase their flocks and improve the wool to the
utmost degree of fineness. . . ." He had still another
plan. He did, indeed, suggest to Commissioner Bigge
the employment of convicts in agricultural and pastoral
pursuits ; but the measure he most strongly urged was
the introduction of a large body of settlers. He con-
demned the class that had hitherto in good part immi-
grated to the unpopular Colony. " Adventurers without
capital," he maintained, " retard all improvement and
sink ever deeper into poverty and distress." All new
settlers should be " men of character," possessing both
skill and capital. Such men would soon become wealthy
and form an aristocracy. Years before Wakefield de-
vised means towards a like end McArthur aimed, by
arbitrarily hmiting Government grants of land, and
limiting also the assignment of convicts as servants,
to accompHsh the same result. His immediate success
was not encouraging, but he worked for the future.
Men of the stamp he desiderated dribbled rather than
flocked to New South Wales in later years, but they
came, and among them were not a few who would have
reflected honour on any State in Cliristendom.

McArthur's personal immediate success was not
small. For one bale of wool sent by him to England

54 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTBALASIA

in 1821 he received the extraordinary price of IO5. 4:d.
per lb., while the bulk of the Australian wool that
reached England brought no more than two shilhngs a
pound, and from one to two shilhngs was a common
price. His merits were recognised at Home. Early
in the twenties McArthur was presented by the Society
of Arts in London with two gold medals " for importing
into Great Britain wool, the produce of his flocks,
equal to the finest Saxony."

The real significance of the struggle between McArthur
and the Government, as embodied in Governors King,
Bhgh, and Macquarie and in successive Secretaries of
State, was the struggle between two ideals. The
Ministers and the Governors, who represented them,
stood for Australia as a convict settlement, with the
reformation of the convict for its final cause ; while
McArthur, violent and unreasonable though he often
might be, was the living embryo and anticipation of
the new Austraha, free, pastoralist, and patriarchal.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST RECLAIMER : ALEXANDER BERRY

Some of the more eminent pastoralists of those early
days we can briefly focus as the curtain rises on their
physiognomies, their adventures, or their activities.
The discoverer and reclaimer of one of the most fertile
districts in New South Wales has an enduring place in
the front rank of Australian pioneers. Alexander Berry
was a native of Cupar, in Fifeshire, and passed through
his curriculum in Arts at the neighbouring University of
St. Andrews. Having graduated at the medical school
of the University of Edinburgh, he entered the service of
the East India Company as a surgeon, and he made many
voyages to India and China in his professional capacity.
He was indirectly connected with some great events.
It contributes to give historical perspective to his life
when we learn that he medically accompanied back to
England the remnant of a regiment that had taken part
in the battle of Assaye under Sir Arthur Wellesley. In
later years, as a private citizen, he witnessed the bom-
bardment of Cadiz by Soult, and ever after he spoke of
the famous field-marshal's military capacity with
contempt. Abandoning the service of the Crown, in
September 1807 he went out to the Cape of Good Hope,
and there chartered a prize ship which he patriotically
named the City of Edinburgh. Never was a vessel
seemingly more doomed to disaster. SaiHng for New
South Wales with supphes for the famishing colonists,
who were threatened with starvation, within eight days
she lost her masts in a gale. The intrepid master

65

56 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

(Berry is now denominated " captain ") navigated her
to Sydney under jury masts. He next took her to New
Zealand, where she had to be completely re-sheathed.
While he was waiting, he nobly rescued (in 1810) the
survivors of the murdered crew of the Boyd, who had
been killed in revenge by the Maoris. These he brought
back to Austraha and ultimately settled in Shoalhaven.
For there, his unfortmiate ship having foundered, he
himself settled. Coasting up and down in another
Royal George than the man-of-war that Avent doAvn in
harbour, he discovered the Shoalhaven River and the
large extent of pastoral or arable land that lay on
each side of the well-named stream. Two years later
(in 1822) he entered Crookhaven River adjacent, and
there found a haven whence he could communicate
with Sydney at a time when there were no other possible
means of communication. There, or not too far from
it, he sohdly founded the settlement that has never
since ceased to grow. He took into partnership Edward
Wollstonecraft, a cousin of Mary Wollstonecraft, the
celebrated wife of William Godwin and the mother of
Mary Shelley. The two — Berry and Wollstonecraft —
were the meritorious recipients of the free grants of
land that were customary in those happy days. The
much-mahgned Governor Macquarie never did a better
thing for the Colony than when he presented the two
pioneers with 4,000 acres, of \\hich 3,500 acres were in
the district Berry had found, while Wollstonecraft
reserved the remaining 500 acres in the now populous
" North Shore " of Sydney, where one of the suburbs per-
petuates the name of the authoress of the Rights of Women.
The 3,500 acres at Shoalhaven were only the nucleus
of the great Berry Estate, which in 1889 had expanded
to over 60,000 acres. An additional tract of 10,000
acres was purchased from the Government for a sum
of £16,000 or its equivalent. Berry's brothers, John,
William, and David, with their two sisters, Janet and
Nancy, soon arrived to join their enterprising brother.
Doubtless, they too received tho usual free grants of

ALEXANDER BEERY.

p. 56]

THE FIRST RECLAIMER 57

land from a liberal-minded Governor, though this is
not stated, and by other purchases (some, it is stated,
by Mr. C. J. B. Watson, being at the rate of £21 per
acre) from the Government the remainder of the estate
was acquired. The acquisition was thought at the
time to have small value. The whole tract had so
often been overflowed by the adjacent waters, by
marine tides and periodical floods. The shipmaster had
forsaken the sea to settle on the land, but it was not
the dry land. Shoalhaven was a chain or a network of
swamps. The scholar Faust, in Goethe's classic, had
dedicated his last years to redeeming his sin-stained
soul and atoning for his deep offences.

" Let that high joy be mine for evermore,
To shut the lordly Ocean from the shore.
The watery waste to limit and to bar.
And push it back upon itself afar !

To many millions let mo furnish soil,
Though not secure, yet free to active toil ;
Green, fertile fields, where men and herds go forth
At once, with comfort, on the newest Earth,
And swiftly settled on the Earth's firm base.
Created by the bold, industrious race,
A land like Paradise here, round about."

Alexander Berry's achievement was not unlike Faust's
dream. His first business was to make his river navig-
able by clearing away the shoals that obstructed its
entrance. He cut the first canal in Austraha, thus
connecting the Shoalhaven River with the deeper
entrance to the Crookhaven River ; and the canal has
since then been so deepened and broadened that it is
now as deep and wide as the river. In so doing he
created a peninsula of 700 acres of alluvial soil, of which
the Government at once toolv possession. Had he not
earned the right to retain them ?

His gigantic task was only begun. These vast swamps
were to be drained. His labour and that of his partner,
with all that they could command, were endless, and,
as he himself stated, " it was at an expense unknown to

58 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the public that " they " gave a value to the swamps
of Shoalhaven that no one had expected." When
Alexander Berry died, his brother David succeeded
to the Fausthke and beneficent task. The work has
never since been pretermitted. Under the nominal
direction of the subsequent owners, but by the engineer-
ing skill and resource of Mr. Morton and his sons, some
10,000 acres have been pulled ashore from the sea or
lifted up out of the swamps, while 15,000 more on
hitherto-barren ridges have been made available for
pasturage. The whole estate, at first a sheep-walk,
has been converted into rich dairy-lands, where hundreds
of small dairy-farms have been carved out, yielding for
local consumption and export many thousands of tons
of butter yearly. In New South Wales, nay, in all
Australia, there is hardly another such example of the
conquest of nature by man.

Alexander Berry did the work of a Faust, but he can
have had few of Faust's sins to redeem, save possibly
some alleged hardness and miserhness ; and much of
the opulence he acquired served to raise out of honour-
able impoverishment an ancient Scottish university.
He was a man of strong character, cast in a Calvinistio
mould. His disposition may be inferred from his
account of interviews that he had with two leading
members of the Presbytery of Sydney, in connection
with some politico-ecclesiastical dispute. One of them
he found overflowing with a spirit of Christian forgive-
ness, while the other, the famous Dr. Lang, breathed
forth charges and recriminations. His sterling quaUtiea
were early appreciated by the authorities. He was
appointed a member of the Legislative Council, then
the solo legislative chamber, at a time (in the late
twenties) when there were only three non-official mem-
bers ; and he retained his seat after the Council was
reformed. Only in 1861 did he finally sever his con-
nection with public life. His portrait reveals the
Presbyterian elder of the old school, clad in the fine,
black broad-cloth of those days and a generation

THE FIRST RECLAIMER 59

later, and wearing a profuse white neckcloth, like the
old-time minister and doctor. A strict man, firm with
others, and not indulgent with himself, governed by
rules of action derived from the Bible, we may be sure,
but the Bible as read by the framers of the Westminster
Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Cate-
chisms. A God-fearing man, as he would have been
then called ; and, if not directly a lover of men, yet
doing more for their welfare than is often accomplished
by professed humanitarians. He aided in founding
and nurturing one of those Presbyterian communities
that form a large part of the backbone of Austraha
and New Zealand. Everywhere such men are the
salt of the Earth.

CHAPTER IX

THE GENESIS OF THE STATION

The first plan or system — and very unsystematic it
was — consisted in the free granting of Cro^\ai lands in
absolute possession. No otlier had been devised, or
even thought of. The conquering or annexing Power
had grasped and taken the fee -simple of, as the lawyers
would say — the absolute property in and rights over —
the whole territory of what was then denominated New
South Wales. Having taken it without any reserva-
tions, and kept it without incurring any other than
moral obhgations to the indigenous population, it felt
free to confer it on all of its subjects who seemed likely
to use it to advantage. This first stage of colonial
land-ownership did not repeat that stage in European
history, when a conquering Power possessed itself of
all the rights which the overlords already had. When
Norman William conquered England, he did not take
from the English farmers or landholders all their land.
He simply took from their overlords all the rights that
inhered in those who were afterwards called seigneurs.
It was consequently these that he granted. In New
South Wales, on the contrary, the English conquerors
acquired, of course, by force, the absolute possession
of the soil, and it was this kind of possession — with
necessary reservations on the part of the Crown — that
was now conceded to the grantees. No other was
practicable, for very few of the grantees were in a
position to pay for them. On no other terms would
the grantees have cultivated their allotments. All

60

THE GENESIS OF THE STATION 61

the circumstances were adverse. Only such rewards
as are attached to personal ownership would have
induced them to cultivate their patches in spite of
such discouragements.*

This period of the gratuitous concession of lands
lasted till well on in the twenties. Hesitatingly entered
upon by Governor Philhps, who doubted his power to
grant such lands, but was assured of it by the Secre-
tary of State after he had left the Colony, and con-
tinued by his successors, it may be considered to have
lasted till some years after the arrival of Governor
Darling. Under it all Governors, from Phillip to
Darling, were empowered to make grants of Crown lands
to individuals. Specific regulations seemed to limit
them, but in reality they exercised their personal
judgment without any limitations. As a consequence,
Dr. Lang informs us, " charges of partiality or of
injustice were urged against the Governors of the
Colony without intermission." To make an end of
such abuses. Governor Darling in 1825 instituted a
Land Board and issued regulations for the granting of
land. It was to be granted in proportion to the means
or the property of the applicant, and even then only
if there was reason to believe that the recipient was able

* A pamphlet in the Mitchell Library gives a corrected list
of landholders in New South Wales till 1813. They number
from 600 to 650, and hold possibly less than 100,000 acres of
land. About two dozen of them were granted from 1,000 to
3,000 acres. Governor Bligh granted more than 3,000 acres to
the wife and children of the retiring Governor King. He himself
■was granted, possibly by Governor Macquarie, 1,000 acres. It
is often stated that the military officers scooped large slices of
the public estate, and Captain McAi'thur was given 5,625 acres,
while Colonel Foveaux received 1,770 acres and Major Johnston
(if it is he who figures under the name of Johnson) 2,000 acres,
but few other officers appear for large amounts. Some of the
civilian officers comfortably feathered their nests. D'Arcy
Wentworth always knew how to look after " number one," and
he was successively granted 880, 1,900, and 100 acres, in all,
2,880 acres. The pastors of the flock were almost equally
Bolicitous for their own interests. Johnson, first chaplain,
received 600 acres, and Samuel Marsden 1,230.

62 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

and willing to improve it. Yet Lang gives instances
to show that the old system was not completely dis-
used. On his own representations 640 acres, or a
square mile, were granted by Darling to a well-doing
family, and he implies that there were many like cases.
The grants were often meritorious. Alexander Berry
discovered and explored the Shoalhaven district about
the year 1820. With the aid of assigned convict ser-
vants he cut a channel from the lower end of the Shoal-
haven River, which had terminated in a sand-bar, to
the Crookhaven River. He thus made the Shoalhaven
navigable. He was fittingly rewarded. A few years
later Henry Dan gar, who had discovered, through a
prospector, the district of Armidale, was granted 700
acres, which became the nucleus of his Neotsfield
property on the Hunter River. Grants were not lightly
made in the early days, even by Governor Macquarie.
One of the best of the old settlers, J. Blaxland, uncle of
the discoverer of a track across the Blue Mountains,
was granted 8,000 acres on condition of expending
£6,000 in clearing and cultivating them.* Sometimes
grants were made wdth large public objects. Thus,
when Macquarie's system of making grants to selected
persons was done away with, and Commissioner Bigge's
report had drawn attention to Austraha as a field for
colonisation, very large grants were sometimes conceded.
These earliest grants were usually coupled with con-
ditions. Residence was required ; cultivation was
enforced ; reservation was made of timber for naval
purposes ; and a quit-rent was exacted. The quit-
rent was, of course, a peppercorn rental, and was at
first sixpence per 30 acres to emancipists and two
shillings per 100 acres to free settlers, but in both cases
only after ten years' occupancy. Governor Macquarie
slightly varied the amounts. His successor, Governor
Brisbane, withdrew the clause requiring cultivation,
and annexed it as a condition of grants that so many

• See a despatch of Macquarie's to Lord Bathurst and a
letter of Blaxland, in the Mitchell MSS. vol. i.

THE GENESIS OF THE STATION 63

convict-servants should be employed by the settler,
who thus relieved the Treasury of the burden of their
maintenance ; and the amount of the grant was in
proportion to the number of convicts employed. This
method of disposing of lands by granting them on a
quit-rental was soon discovered to be illusory. As in
all countries where they have existed, such rents could
not always be collected. None were collected before
1822 ; on much of the four million acres of land aUenated
by 1831 they could not be collected at all. In 1836
the quit-rents in New South Wales and Van Diemen's
Land, though they were light — sometimes as low as an
eighth of a penny per acre — were in arrears. In 1840
Governor Gipps endeavoured to enforce the payment
of arrears, and he Avas accused of collecting them harshly.
Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Cowper prayed the stern
Governor to suspend the issue of distress warrants.
By December, 1843, these rents were in arrears to the
extent of £55,000. Yet it was on these terms that the
great landholders held their vast domains — the Aus-
tralian Agricultural Company (with its milhon acres),
the Van Diemen's Land Company, the Peel River
Company, and the princely occupants of the Liverpool
Plains, where eight pastoralists held 1,747,840 acres,
nine held 311,040, five held more than a million, and
one (Ben Boyd) held 381,000, paying an annual quit-
rent of £80.

These men and these companies were virtually OAvners
of their vast domains, as the fief-holders were in me-
dieval Europe, and the insignificant quit-rents they
paid were the equivalent of the peppercorn rental, the
various dues, and the militarj^ service the vassals owed
their suzerains. But not from these and their tenures,
of whatever nature, sprang the " runholders " — the
great pastoralists who eventually covered the larger
part of Australia with their flocks and herds.

With these the pastoral industry, indeed, originated.
There Marsden bred his sheep, and there McArthur
initiated the whole subsequent pastoral development.

64 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Yet between the Dividing Range and the sea, or even
within the limits of the nineteen counties to which
the Colony was extended, there was no sufficient scope.
If it was to become a national industry it must spread
out into the unkno"«^l wilds. Mc Arthur made, and
Commissioner Bigge supported, the proposal to form a
Joint-stock company that would seek unlimited range
for the flocks in the interior, " not approaching nearer
to the settled estates than five miles." The proposal
met with little encouragement from the Government,
and Bigge confessed that he found little eagerness on
the part of stockowners to leave their estates in the
settled districts and repair to those in remote locahties.
Against this we have the statement of W. C. Went worth,
made still earlier, in 1819, to the effect that local pastoral-
ists within the pale -were under the necessity of sending
out their flocks beyond the boundaries " in order to
preserve them in health," or rather, we should incline
to affirm, because there was no longer room for expan-
sion.

This was the real beginning of a new kind of landed
tenure — that by occupancy. After the pubUcation of
Commissioner Bigge's three masterly reports in 1822-3
an ever-increasing stream of superior immigrants flowed
over the boundaries of the settlement and gradually took
possession of that — the greater — portion of New South
Wales that lay outside of the pale, then of (the future)
Victoria, and in time of (what was to be) Queensland.
These it was who constituted the great body of the
pioneer pastoralists. These were the true " sqviatters "
in the later acceptation of the term, and they it was
who formed the haughty caste that long lorded it over
Australia. These built up the pastoralist system and
largely founded a commonwealtli of their own. They
acknowledged, indeed, the suzerainty of the Government
so far as to pay £10 a year for their license, though it
was not always paid, and several runs were lumped
together as one ; but, as happened with the feudal
vassals, the mere right of occupancy tended to harden,

THE GENESIS OF THE STATION 65

as we shall see, into a right of property. Around these
the early history of Australia revolves. These were
its chief makers, and from their rise between 1815 and
1825 till the gold-discoveries of 1851 the life of the
settled portions of the Australian colonies, if it does
not drop out of sight, as Mr. George Ranken affirms,*
becomes subsidiary and instrumental to its chief ac-
tivities beyond the pale of settlement.

These " makers " had no little difficulty in gaining
a footing in the country which they were to " make."
As the omnipotent British Government would allow
no one to emigrate to Austraha, save such as it ap-
proved of, its masterful representative there, Governor
Macquarie, permitted no one to depasture in " new
country " without special authority from himself. In
those days there was apparently a mortal dread of the
Colony getting out of hand. Imbued Avith the notion of
a country derived from the daily sight of a crowded
land like England, the authorities dreaded that the
population Avould get to be too Avidely scattered ; and
when we consider the materials of which it was largely
composed, we may believe that there were grounds for
the fear. Every hole and corner, every recess and
natural fastness, would harbour multitudes of rebels
or criminals, or those who could easily be converted
into such. Accordingly, squatters strayed across the
ever-expanding frontier, and built huts, planted gardens,
and kept a few cattle, Avhich had often been stolen. "f

A fresh step was taken by Macquarie's successor.
Sir Thomas Brisbane freely granted to reputable persons
licenses that Avere revocable at six months' notice.
The main object of these Avas to determine what persons
were alloAved to settle in remote places at a time when
all were to be under the eyes of the guardians of the
\aw.X The license was granted as a proof that the
squatter Avas reputable enough to reside beyond the

* Bush Essays, pp. 9-10.

t RusDEN, History of Australia, sec. ed., ii. 514.

: Ibid., ii. 517.

5

66 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

recognised boundaries of settlement. All unlicensed
squatting was henceforth to be suppressed.

That able Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, developed
the system. In common with previous Governors he
held all land beyond the recognised boundaries of
settlement as pubhc commons that Avere free to all
as pasture, so long as they were not wanted for settle-
ment. It was, as we know, the old German and the
old Aryan system, if, indeed, we should not carry it
still further back. Had these squatters been aUowed
to remain unhcensed, each endeavouring to hold his
own, and hold it by main force, against the aggressions
and encroachments of rivals, society in those parts
would soon have reverted to a state of nature. To
obviate disputes, Bourke required that each squatter
should take out a yearly license, for which the fee was,
and long remained, £10. In addition, a small assess-
ment on each head of sheep, cattle, or horses provided
for the maintenance of a border police for squatting
districts.

These proceedings were by no means taken with the
object of aiding the pastoral advance. On the contrary,
Acts were regular^ passed, year after year, perhaps for
the last time in 1845, to restrain unauthorised occupa-
tion. In the following year the customary annual
motion was introduced to re-enact the measure. It
was strenuously opposed by Robert Lowe and Dr.
Lang, James McArthur, Wentworth and Windeyer.
The high permanent officials and the nominee members
voted for it, but all tlie elective members voted against
it. On the motion of Richard Windeyer it was thrown
out, and by a majority of 19 to 10. Evidently, the
Government was still at heart opposed to the extension
of pastoralism. So it remained during the term of the
following Governor, Sir Charles FitzRoy. When flocks
were already being driven far to the north of the twenty-
sixth degree, FitzRoy desired to prevent the occupation
of the country " by private enterprise in opposition
to the rights of the Government." None the less, the

THE GENESIS OF THE STATION 67

squatters outside the pale, aided by the squatters
inside the pale, had won a legal triumph. The right
to form a station was at last assured, and it was con-
tinually being exercised. Not till 1846 did the Colony
realise in what numbers such stations had sprung up,
and how massive was the force, when they were puli
on their metal, they could exert.

To how large an extent the conquest of the soil was
made by the new squatting clement we have but to
turn to the figures sho\\'ing the quantity of stock and
the amount of land held without and within the pale
of settlement. At the beginning of 1846 the number
of cattle A\ithin these bounds in New South Wales was
417,000, and of sheep 1,891,000; while the cattle
•without them numbered 698,000, and of sheep, 2,518,000.
The disparity is still more sharply accentuated in what
was for some time known as the Port Phillip province,
or Victoria. There only 30,000 cattle and 351,000
sheep were inside the settlement, while 200,973 cattle
and 1,430,914 sheep grazed outside of it. The dispropor-
tion was far greater still in Queensland. There the great
mass of the grazing runs long lay outside of the settled
districts. In 1884, at the time of the passing of the
Dutton Land Act, only 334 runs, held by a far smaller
number of lessees, containing 7,440,000 acres, were
within the settled portion of the Colony ; while 9,208
runs, again held by a much smaller number of tenants,
and embracing no less than 308,669,026 acres, lay
outside of the occupied and settled districts. Evidently,
in Queensland as in New South Wales, and indeed in
all the colonies, the pioneer squatter has been the
author of its chief and most prominent advance. He
has rough-hcAved the path that others have trod, and
which others still have converted into a highway. He
is one of those social variants who are the authors of aU
social progress, as Darwin has taught us to see in
physiological variations the agencies of all organic
evolution. He is by pre-eminence, the " maker of
Australasia."

CHAPTER X

THE EVOLUTION OF THE STATION

The arrangements for taking up new land in districts
" beyond the boundaries of settled occupation " were
in those daj^s primitive. Onty one thing was needful :
official application had to be made to the Commissioner
of Crown Lands of the district for a license to occupy.
This license did not necessarily — indeed, it did not
usually — define the boundaries of the contemplated
" run." These were provisionally and amicablj' settled
in conference with neighbours, who were only too glad
to have good neighbours.* The license permitted the
grazier (the name was already in use in 1836) to de-
pasture stock for one year, and the grazier had to
produce evidence that he possessed real or personal
estate sufficient to serve for visible lawful means of
support. It looked no further than the end of the
next ensuing year. No hint is there of that fixity of
tenure or right of pre-emption that were afterwards to
be bones of contention between the squatters and the
agricultural farmers. "j"

The extent of the country taken up was often a
matter of free choice. One individual, like Mr. Brod-
ribb, might take up only 100 square miles ; but it was
no vincommon thing for squatters to claim 200 or 300
square miles. Land was a drug in the market ; it was
free as the air to all who had the means of stocking it ;

* Brodkibb, W.A., Recollections of an Australian Squatter,
Sydney, 1883, p. 12.

t Ibid., p. 12. Mr. Brodribb reprints the license, pp. 213-4.

68

THE EVOLUTION OF THE STATION 69

and worthy applicants were readily granted one or
more stations.

The pioneer squatters, in fact, helped themselves to
as many acres as they had a mind to, none at first
disputing their claims. Other pioneer squatters would
then arrive and sit down among a group of squatters,
" taking part from each, but most from me," says the
narrator in one instance.

Of course, they quarrelled about their boundaries,
and awaited the arrival of the Crown Lands Commis-
sioner. One might content himself with a trifle of
12,000 acres, there being around them " a sort of
natural boundary." When the Commissioner appeared,
he " was left with less than 2,000 acres." He was not
so easily to be defrauded of his broad domains. " Know-
ing some little of human nature," he invited the Com-
missioner to his station, and there attended to " the
man as well as his horses," with the result that he
" was put in possession of his original boundary." *

Disputes about the boundaries of runs were frequent.
One settler relates that, after taking up a run and
remaining there with his sheep for some years, other
settlers arrived, and then contentions began. The
consequence was that he left his station, with the
improvements he had made, to those who liked to
occupy it, and travelled elsewhere. Another took up
part of a run already in occupation, and a battle-royal
ensued, when each runholder led his men. A lawsuit
displaced the invader. f

The vicissitudes of runs or stations would form an
interesting — perhaps a painfully interesting — chapter.
The station of Tartha, in Queensland, was formed by
Beck and Brown in the late fifties. It was sold to Dr.
Nelson in 1862. He soon tired of it, and sold it in 1864
to Forbes and Pettigrew. They, again, were no more
successful than the doctor, and Brown bought it back
from them in 1866. He, too, found it unprofitable, and
parted with it to a man who had been his horse-driver

♦ Victorian Pioneers, pp. 23. f Ibid., pp. 165, 147.

70 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

and shearer, one Dockrill. A saying current in New
Zealand is to the eifect that the first man who goes on
the land breaks his heart ; the second goes into the
bankruptcy court ; and the third makes a fortune.

The vicissitudes of runs can be adequately shown
only in detail. The manager of a company or firm
oflcn stepped into the place of the runholder. Thus,
Alfred Crowder, a manager for the Lochinvar, Rosenthal,
and St. Ruth Company, formed Weranga station. His
brother, John, stocked it. He put J. Miller in charge
of it. Then Hook bought it, when it was sold to Mort
and Laidley. Manager J. Miller formed Dulacca, which
had been taken up by another manager, J. Crowder,
but MiUer formed it in 1855. miler held it till 1857,
when he took Miles as a partner, who subsequently
bought Miles out.

The average station went through four different
stages. First, it was a fattening station, with a choice
herd of cattle ; for all its improvements, a stock-yard
and a hut. It was valued at £30. Next, it was adver-
tised as fully improved, fenced, and subdivided sheep-
property. Thirdly, it was a valuable pastoral estate
of 35,000 acres freehold. Finally, it consisted of rich
agricultural land, divided to suit intending farmers.

The early pastoralists are long in dying out. When
these denizens of the past are extinct in Victoria and
New South Wales, they are but coming into being in
Southern Queensland and, after\\ards in Northern
Queensland, and when they are passing away in Queens-
land, they are re-incarnating themselves in the squatters
of Western Queensland, the Northern Territory and
the north of Western AustraHa. There, if no longer
elsewhere, are still to be found the great cattle-runs,
the Gaucholike stockmen, the trained camp-horses, the
wild scrub cattle ; and there life is as rough as it was
of old in the tracts where sheep have long ago supplanted
cattle, or wheat-growing has supplanted sheep-breeding.
There the comparatively small runs of the more southerly
regions are unknown. Scattered sparsely over vast

THE EVOLUTION OF THE STATION 71

spaces, these western, northern, and north-western runs
range in area from 1,000 to 9,000 square miles ; they are
separated from one another by great stretches of un-
trodden bush-land that may be from 20 to 100 miles in
breadth, marked by a faint track that leads from one
to another. They may thus be compared with the
vast estancias of South America, where a single in-
dividual (like General Rosas) may be lord of seventy -four
square leagues of land. The South American, however,
may own as many as 300,000 head of cattle," * while the
Australian stations are credited with only some 70,000
cattle, which produce 20,000 calves a year. All of these
runs are still fenceless, like the early runs, and their
boundaries are creeks, rivers, and mountains.!

* Darwin, Voyage of the Adventure, chs. iv. viii.

f General Rosas's estancia seems to have been exceptional
in its extent. Another that was seen by Darwin was only two
and a half square leagues in extent, and had only 3,000 cattle.
Its boundaries were the river Plata and two impassable brooks.
Sydney Morning Herald, April 30, 1910.

CHAPTER XI

THE PIONEER SQUATTER

After the middle twenties many young men pushed
out into the wild, sometimes 200 miles to the westward,
to a new country on the banks of an intermittent stream.
They had no choice. The only land remaining in the
nineteen counties was inferior land that could not be
purchased but at a prohibitive figure. Their single
alternative was to push on into the far interior and take
up land under an annual hcense for pastoral occupation.
They had come out with capital for the purpose of
setting up as gentleman-farmers, but for that the
country was not yet sufficiently advanced, and the
would-be agriculturists sank back a degree in the scale
and became pastorahsts or squatters perforce.

Some of the immigrants had themselves been gentle-
man-farmers, or were the sons of landholders. Others
had been unfortunate in mercantile speculations or felt
the pressure of hard times (for it was in the decade that
followed the great European war), and had decided to
risk the remains of their fortune in a new country, while
others still were doubtless actuated by a spirit of
adventure.

At what time did these new pastoralists receive the
name of ' squatters ' ? They never assumed it, but
when they wanted a name, they called themselves, like
the migrants from Van Diemen's Land, "adventurers."
The term, squatter, had in New South Wales originally
the same signification as in the United States. Travel-
ling to Bathurst in the year 1836, Darwin passed " a

72

THE PIONEER SQUATTER 73

few squatters' huts." Either because such squatters
were among the earHcst unauthorised settlers, or because
some of the new, but still unauthorised, pastoralists
belonged to a similar class, the name was gradually
appropriated to the new pastoralists.

Mr. H. S. Russell asserts that the term, ' squatter,'
(for runholder), was not in use till 1842. There is
evidence to show that this is an error. Writing to Lord
John Russell in December, 1840, Governor Sir George
Gipps remarked that the licensed occupiers or squatters
must not be confounded with persons assuming the
same name in the United States. Among them, he
stated, were young men belonging to the wealthiest
families in England, not a few of them graduates of the
older universities.

The famous traveller, Dr. Leichhardt, who was well
acquainted with the squatters of the Darling Downs,
describes the class as " principally composed of young
men of good education, gentlemanly habits, and high
principles."

Squatters and overlanders, in those years, were
almost convertible terms ; the overlander was a mi-
gratory squatter, as the squatter was an overlander
who had settled down. Well, of the overlanders Sir
George Grey wrote in similar terms. They were young
men of good family and were often Etonians or Oxonians.
Lady Barker describes a young squatter, fresh from his
university, of refined tastes and culture, who had bought
at Mount Ida, for £1,000, "the worst and bleakest bit
of the worst and bleakest run " in Canterbury, New
Zealand. There he led the life of a boor. He had not
even the reward of success. He went out of it three
years afterwards with the loss of half his capital.*

We have only to trace the routes of the pioneer
squatters on the maps to realise that their toils, diffi-
culties, and dangers were, in sum, not fewer or smaller
than those of explorers. Their path was through
untrodden wastes, and the terrors that environed the
* Station Life, ch. iv.

74 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTBALASIA

explorer for a comparatively brief space surrounded the
pioneer squatter for long years.

" It is the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain ; "

and the task of the pioneer squatter to make head
against both natural obstacles and the acquired obstacles
arising out of his occupancy of the new ground was
often more arduous, as it was always continuously more
exacting, than that of the discoverer who left his natural
enemies behind him. As the work of the explorer on
a large scale was the necessary forerunner of pioneermg,
so was the pioneer squatter the indispensable precursor
of the grazier m ho reaped where he had not sown, and
so was his function again the inevitable preparation for
agricultural settlement.

Even in the early days the men who took up a station
were not always the men who formed it ; in later days,
of covnse, prospecting for stations, and immediate sale
of them, became a business. Thus, to give a single
example where many could be given, all the country
for hundreds of miles from Dogwood Creek, in Southern
Queensland, was taken up in 1849, but none was occu-
pied save Narrandoo, which was taken up by the Halls
of Dartbrook, who stocked both it and Weribone. Yet
in this comparatively safe country occupation was not
long delayed. Talavera and Yamboogle were soon after-
wards formed.

The vicissitudes of individuals are as numerous as
those of runs. Lord John Russell's suggestion (it
hardly amounted to a proposal) to raise the license-fee
from £10 to perhaps £50 was doubtless made in ignorance
of the real circumstances of many of the squatters,
especially in Queensland, or it would not have been
made. At this very time many of them actually lost
their stations through being so impoverished as to be
unable to feed their shepherds and stockmen. No
wonder they were filled with consternation. " Johnny
had " again " upset the coach ! " A drought was

TEE PIONEER SQUATTER 76

drying up their resources, and the " banks " were
pressing them. Some of the runs had to be sold in order
to escape impending ruin. The venture, perhaps, hke
Murray Prior's station of Naraigin, had originally been
extravagant, and had been made practicable only
through heavily mortgaging the run. Its owner was
almost penniless. In his sore need he declared : "I
will boil down 1,500 wethers as a sop to the bank."
A debt of £10,000, at 10 per cent, interest, hung round
his neck hke a millstone. " I have reaped the covetous
man's reward." * We may think that such men were
ground to powder by " the bank." Yet 10 per cent,
was, in those days, the ordinary bank-rate of interest.
In New Zealand, in 1887 and 1889, 10 per cent, was
still, more than thirty years later, the customary rate
of the colonial Shy lock. The safest investment then
in Queensland should have returned 12 per cent, interest.

After a few weeks' tour tlirough the squatting districts
a sheep-station would be selected, often on the spot
where a future township was to stand ; 1,200 ewes in
lamb would be bougl\t ; in due time lambing would take
place, and a great increase would be the result. Un-
avoidably, a great deal of hard work was involved on
the part of the owner. He was often his own shearer
and washer, with but little aid. House and station
buildings were at first of a rude description. Run-
holders, having no fixity of tenure, were reluctant to
expend money on structures or other improvements
that might soon pass out of their hands. The " new
era " for squatters lay yet ten or twelve years ahead.

The life of the pioneer squatter was at times hazardous
and often abounded in adventure. It was assuredly
never monotonous. There was a constant advance,
almost always into the Unknown. There were long and
stubborn conflicts with drought and flood, snowstorms
and heat-waves, disease in their flocks and herds,
disappointment and loss, death at the hands of the blacks
— often incurred, Ernest Favenc tells us, by the most
♦ Campbell Peaed, My Australian Girlhood, p. 109.

76 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

kindly-disposed of the settlers — or frora thirst or hunger,
or from the wasting sickness that came of hope deferred.
Some died victorious, rich in ever-increasing flocks and
herds, in broad acres, in well-grassed paddocks, sometimes
in yellowing fields of corn. Others fell defeated, " not
having received the promise," leaving their bones to
bleach under the Western sun, or in their homes, ruined
by financial distress. All such men, the vanquished no
less than the victors, have merited well of the country
whose prosperity they founded ; and their much-
enduring, often heroic wives and daughters deserve to
be included in the honourable muster-roll.

CHAPTER XII

TYPES OF SQUATTER

Australian history has no more picturesque figure than
that of the pioneer squatter. Rarely a native, almost
always a gentleman immigrant, often a man of educa-
tion and culture, " Glover of Corpus," accidentally
forgathering with " Hallett of Oriel," merry-hearted and
of undaunted courage, he was partly driven, and partly
he set himself, to find out unconquered pasture-lands
in the wild.

Portraits of typical squatters have been limned for us
by various hands. Mr. Nehemiah Bartley, Mr. A. C.
Grant, Mrs. Campbell Praed and dozens of others have
left luminous silhouettes. He was unique and sui
generis, according to Mr. Bartley. Generally, tall and
sinewy, -with iron-gray hair and often hard eyes, he had
a strong, concentrated, purposeful, earnest gaze. Edu-
cated and intelligent, he possessed ample savoir-faire
and knowledge of the world. Frank and hospitable
on his station, he showed abundant aplomb in his city
club. A born leader, he had a commanding eye, and
had many a time directed a dangerous wild ride on a
mountain-side to hinder the escape of wild cattle. No
coward he, nor his wife either, for they had fought the
blacks in their barricaded cottage for seven hours on
end, a hundred miles from all possible aid. Each firing
and loading alternately, they at length drove off the
blacks with heavy loss. We are not surprised that the
daughter of such a couple should have " a look of
resolution " on her face. (Bartley, pp. 341-2.)

77

78 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Other such figures nieet us as we pass along. One is
that of " a big bronzed man, with a fair beard and a
bright laughing eye " ; he too kindly and hospitable
(Grant, i. 47). Another was a pleasant, frank country-
gentleman-looking squatter, with a kind word for
everybody, and a keen eye for sheep, cattle, and horses
(ch. X.). Still another was an ex-officer, who was short
and very stout. A young native Australian, on the
other hand, was a tall, fine-looking young fellow, with
a short glossy black beard and moustache. He was
simple, frank, cheery, and open-hearted ; and manliness
was imprinted on his honest, open face. He was a
skilled horseman and a thorough bushman. The son
of a pioneer he had grown up on the station ; every spot
was familiar to him and was associated Avith some early
memory.

Sometimes a very slight difference of geography
engendered two distinct types. In 1858 the Victorian
squatter was dressed in a plaid jumper, or guernsey,
while the New South Wales squatter was clad in a
fawn-coloured tweed of Parramatta make. They looked
as distinct from one another as if they were denizens
of two different countries, and the difference was
apparent as soon as the Murraj^ v.as crossed.

" ^Vhat a lot of splendid fellows ! " writes Rolf
Boldrewood of his associates in the Western division of
Victoria. " All gentlemen by birth and education."
The two Aplins, OAvners of a cattle-station near Belfast,
were " cultured and refined people, not long from
England, of whom the elder was afterwards Government
Geologist in Queensland, and the younger was a poet.
The holders of another such station Avcre " men of high
principle, great energy, early culture, and refined
habits." Culture, assuredly, was not lacking. One of
the three Just mentioned, Charles Macknight, was a
pohtical and social essayist of repute. Authorship,
indeed, was not uncommon among them. James
Dawson, situated twenty miles to the east, was the
author of a volume on the aborigines, derived exclu-

TYPES OF SQUATTER 79

sively from personal observation of the blacks. Rolf
Boldrewood himself has been a voluminous and success-
ful author. While Fred Burchett was "a well-read
man and a fair scholar," and Robert Craufurd, a younger
brother of the Scots judge, Lord Ardmillan, was a " fair
scholar " (Rolf is somewhat exacting on the score of
" scholarship " — in the bush !), a Avriter of jeux d'esjrrit,
a thorough sportsman, and an inveterate practical joker.

The moral lineage of most of the squatters of Rolf
Boldrewood's acquaintance was unmistakable. They
were gentlemen by birth and education, and by their
pedigree belonged to the EngHsh country gentry. The
Cox family has, perhaps, *' furnished more pattern
country-gentlemen to Australia than any other."
Another fine family was that of the Hentys, three in
number, the pioneer squatters of Portland Bay. They
were explorers, sailors, squatters, farmers, merchants,
and politicians, but as Carlyle saj^s, they are " all
vanished now, all vanished ! " The squatters, stalwart
and steadfast, yet genial and hilarious, massed them-
selves there, as elsewhere, in family groups. There
were, in that Western Division of Victoria, three Winters,
two Jamieson brothers, three Allans, three Burchetts,
and four Hunters. The majority of the " Mount
Gambier mob " " had attained to social distinction."
Evelyn Sturt was aristocratic, athletic, adventurous
• — the Bayard of squatters.

Another was " a man of remarkable intellect," and
still another, apparently of foreign origin, was " a man
of brains and method, culture and knowledge of the
world." One of the most successful was " tall, slight,
deHcate in frame and constitution — cultured and ar-
tistic."

One Victorian squatter was " a stalwart Australian "
six feet four in his socks. Another was " small of
stature and not stalwart," but yet held his own \vith
his fellow-squatters. A third was tall and soldierly-
looking and portly. Rank sometimes was not lacking,
even among foreign nationalities. A hereditary Prince

80 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

of Augustenburg once squatted in Western Victoria,
and a German baron married the daughter of a
station-OT;^Tier.

All the historians unite in lauding " the splendid type
of men " who were the pioneer squatters of Queensland.
They were " a brave, reckless band," says Mrs. Campbell
Praed.* " Quick to love, quick to hate, full of pluck
and endurance, dauntless before danger, iron in phy-
sique and nerve, and ready for any difficult or dare-devil
feat — their adventures, escapes, and jokes would
have furnished rich material for an Australian Lever
or Fenimore Cooper." Here is a pen-and-ink portrait
of one of them, and he one of the best, thovigh not
the most successful — Colonel Murray-Prior, dra^^'n by
the hand of his accomplished daughter, Mrs. Campbell
Praed. He was full-bearded (a new thing in the fifties
and sixties), a wild man of the woods, and wore a
bushman's dress — a blue shirt and blue-and-white
guernsey, a pair of trowsers of his daughter's making,
and enormous leggings. Yet this " bushman," not long
after, was a cabinet minister and figured at Government
House balls. Patrick Leslie was a lion-hearted man.

The squatter of North Australia, on a cattle-station
in the tropics, as sketched by Mrs. Dominic Daly, who
knew him well, wore the ordinarj^ toilette of the bush-
man — a flannel shirt, a broad leather belt, knee-
breeches and long boots, and sombrero. On the
Esplanade at Palmerston the same man appeared in a
white linen suit and a starched collar.

Such men are scattered all over the Australian bush.
David Carnegie found in the sandy desert of Western
Australia two individuals owning a cattle station. In
such an out-of-the-world place these men must have
been coarse and uncouth, if not savage ? Not at all.
One of them was the brother of a bishop, and the other
had an equally creditable origin, with both talent and
culture.

* My Australian Oirlhood, and also in Sketches of Australian
Life, pp. 3-4.

TYPES OF SQUATTER 81

While the proportion of Scottish settlers in the popu-
lation of the United States during the first years of
independence hardly exceeded six per cent., the number
of Scots among the early squatters of Now South Wales
was considerable. There were many, Mr. Bartley tells
us, settled on the Lower Darling, They Avere among
the first to push in advance. The three pioneer squatters
of (what is now) Queensland were Scots — John Campbell
and the brothers Leslie. About 1850 two Scots ex-
plored the comparatively unwatered country above the
Darling and eventually stocked it. One of these settled
at Memindie with sheep and the other at Pooncaree
with cattle. It has been said, with pardonable exag-
geration that the Scots own all the land in Australia,
while the Irish own all the pubHc-houses. In Northern
and in other parts of Southern Queensland the same
ethnical feature is found. In Western Victoria Rolf
Boldrewood found them preponderant, " I wish I had
been a Scotchman, Rolf," said one of his squatting
associates to the genial author of Old Melbourne Me-
mories. " I should have had a good run and 20,000
sheep by this time." Yes, replied his friend, and kept
them too. They figure not unfrequently, and not to
their disadvantage, in the gossipy writer's reminiscences
of his old squatting days.

In all parts of Australia squatters have risen from the
ranks. Some of them known in West Victoria to the
Crown Lands Commissioner, Captain Fyans, were of a
very low class and lived in hovels. Another class
consisted of old shepherds, many of whom had become
wealthy and behaved with discretion ; but most of
them, he considered, should have remained shepherds.*

Dr. Lang relates that he had met with many squatters
of humble origin. One, in particular, from lowly
beginnings, had come to possess one of the largest
pastoral establishments in the country. f

Most of the squatters on the great cattle-runs of

* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 120-1. See also pp, 180-L
t Account, i. 268.

6

82 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

North Australia were originally stockmen, and are still
addressed by their stockmen as " Jack " or " Bill."
They seem to command the respect of those who know
of their strenuous lives and brave deeds.

One of the first Victorian pioneers had been a cabin-
boy and had risen to the position of ship-master. A
long list of superintendents, managers, and overseers
have risen to owning the stations on which they were
employed.* It may be only a poet's jest, but is far
more likely to be the truth, that servants of the lowest
rank have climbed up so high. A country lout named
Andy was " Middleton's rouseabout," who Avorked on
Middleton's station for " a pound a week and his keep."

" Tj-pe of a careless nation.

Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was ; — and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout." t

Some, like the finder of the Eacott pearl, have suddenly
come into the possession of wealth, and bought a run.
Or the overworked head-master, the disenchanted
politician, or the newspaper-editor manqui, has retired
from the turmoil, and escaped to a station. Men who
have made a fortune in trade — city grocers who Icnew
nothing of pastoral life — sometimes men who have
dropped into one — desire to gild it by sitting down on a
station, only to find, like the retired poulterer from New
Bond Street, or the widow of a member of Parliament
who has unfortunately been " in trade," the daughter,
she, of one of the greatest of British shipbuilders, that
the neighbouring gentry refuse to recognise him.

* See Letters of Victorian Pioneers.
t Lawson, In Days, etc.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ROUTE OF THE PASTORALIST

In picturesque and now, thanks to a host of special
researches, tolerably exact detail the story of the
Teutonic conquest of England has been told. It reads
like a narrative of the settlement of Australia. We
learn how the Etigles, Jutes, and Saxons advanced
along this great river and up that, how they spread
over the quiet, open meadows of a third, how they
marched through valley and by estuary, and crossed
the heights from one river to another, or went along a
ridge of hills, Avhere there were breaks in the dense
line of forests.*

The advance of pastoral pioneering in AustraHa
followed the line of least resistance, and, like the English,
crept up the estuaries, the rivers, and their tributaries.
In New South Wales it first made its way up the Parra-
matta River and occupied the Cow-Pastures, while simul-
taneously it moved up the neighbouring Hawkesbury
River to the rich agricultural soil of the adjacent valley.
For a quarter of a century settlement was cooped up
within the narrow strip of land, some thirtj'' or forty
miles in breadth, between the Blue Mountains and the
Sea. That great Barrier once surmounted, the wide
country of the plains was thrown open. Then followed
the first great pastoral exodus. The owners of stock,
who were feeling themselves cramped after a recent
drought, climbed the devious and difificult track of

* Geeen, Making of England, passim.
83

84 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Gregory Blaxland, in 1813, across the Dividing Range,
and accomplished the toilsome feat of driving their
stock to the western slopes of the Blue Mountains.
Then they inundated the plains of Bathurst and stocked
the heads of some of the rivers and creeks. There they
settled and fought their first fierce battles with the
blacks. The quiet Hunter River, easily approached
from the sea, was stocked in these same early years.
The easy ascent of the Liverpool Range in the following
decade threw open the inexhaustible soil of the famed
Liverpool Plains, where Boyd, Wentworth, and other
rich pastoralists were the kings and princes of the
region.

Each great discovery initiated a wave of settlement.
Thus, Sir T. Mitchell's tracking-down of the Darling
opened up the vast country to the westward, and
determined a large number of stock-holders in New
South Wales to migrate from a drought-stricken country,
to one that was more highly favoured. On his way
back in 1835 Sir T. Mitchell found stockmen in occupa-
tion of a cattle station on a country discovered by him
in 1832. A settler from Bathurst followed Mitchell in
those years. So early as February, 1838, a migrant
relates, a large number of squatters, Avith their flocks
and herds, were on the line of march to the South-West.
It was the same as late as August, 1840, when it was
said that there were 20,000 cattle on the road between
Yass and IMelbourne. None tarried by the way or
turned either to the right hand or to the left. All
hastened towards the Land of Promise discovered by
Major Mitchell. The intermediate district, through
which the road lay, was, it appears, still very thinly
stocked and settled, but (and this must have deterred
occupation) it was all nominally taken up. The mi-
grating hosts followed " the Major's line," which
apparently was " the line of least resistance." *

On the back of discovery came settlement. The
publication in 1837 of Hume's Journal of exploration
* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 150-1, 210-1.

SIE T. IMITCHELL.

p. S4]

THE ROUTE OF THE PA8T0RALIST 85

led (Brodribb believes *) to the settlement of Victoria,
not only by the Tasmanians, but by the Australians
also. Many settlers who had thus formed stations on
the Upper Hume in 1836-8 moved on to Port Phillip
country. Large sheep and cattle stations were formed
there ; over 100,000 sheep crossed the Murrumbidgee
in three months. f

After Melbourne had been settled in 1836 by a band
of daring adventurers from Launceston, two streams of
pioneers concentrated themselves upon Victoria. Re-
ports of the new-found country spread from Launceston
to Hobart, and from many parts of Van Diemen's Land,
where both stock and stations had risen to exorbitant
prices, settlers crowded over the narrow Straits.

The squatters came with their flocks and herds and
their ripe experience, and in a very few years as much
progress was made as might otherwise have been made
in a quarter of a century. Within two years, it was
authoritatively stated, no fewer than 250,000 sheep
had been transported, chiefly from Tasmania, and
perhaps half-a-hundred stations formed ; and the
greater part of Western Victoria taken up. J Geelong
was the first centre of settlement, and about thirty
stations were, in 1837, formed along the banks of the
Moorabool, Barwon, and Leigh rivers. In the following
year other stations were made higher up the same
rivers. At almost the same times Melbourne and
Portland were the initial points of further settlement.
In 1837 four Tasmanian squatters occupied the Colac
country, finding already one pioneer there. Early in
1838 eight more took up unoccupied land round about
Lake Colac. Others stretched out westwards, and
towards the end of 1838 and the beginning of 1839
Tasmanian squatters spread rapidly over Western
Victoria.

* Brodbibb, Recollectiona, pp. 13-5,
t Ibid.

% Victorian Pioneers, p. 272. See map in the same volume,
p. 39.

86 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

The Tasmanian stream was soon augmented by a
smaller stream from New South Wales. It was led by
the first overland expedition, with Joseph Hawdon and
John Hepburn at its head ; they formed, near the
Yarra, the first cattle station in Victoria. A few sheep
stations were already in existence. In 1838 the pioneers
took up the first run connecting the line of squatters
from Sydney-side who had crossed the Goulburn
River, with the pioneers from Van Diemen's Land. The
station was formed by a Mr. Howey, and was near the
township of Gisborne. Others followed. In 1839-40
a long series of other stations was formed.*

Almost all the pioneer squatters discovered the runs
they afterwards occupied. Thus (to take here one or
two instances) G. D. Mercer relates how he and two
others went out beyond the boundaries of settlement
in the plains, in May, 1838, and folio-wing up the creeks,
discovered the country now occupied as stations by four
squatters, and themselves took up five runs on it.
Messrs. Manifold " discovered their present run." A
squatter and an overseer, prospecting away from the
rivers, discovered the Mount Talbot country — one of
the finest runs in the country. Hunter and Campbell
discovered the station on the Upper Goulburn River
that Hunter afterwards occupied. We cease to wonder
that the pioneers claimed their stations by right of
" discovery and conquest." f

The earher pioneers in Victoria confined themselves
to the coastline, but not for long. Two or three years
after the later squatters pushed inland, and settled on
the creeks forming the river Wannon. Next, they
formed stations on the west and on the east bank of
the Glenelg. Others, on creeks, as Bryant's, or on
rivers, as the Wando. Others, later still, on both shores
of the Glenelg, lower down or higher up. In the early
days very little of the country that had no frontage
to rivers or creeks was considered available for settle-

* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 46-55.
t Ibid., pp. 156, 179-80, 154.

THE ROUTE OF THE PASTOBALIST 87

merit. Not till 1844, in Victoria, were stations taken
up in the back country. Then a party took possession
of the Mount Talbot country. In 1847 a tract of
pastoral country, forming a bay on the edge of the large
sandy desert through which the boundary-hne of
South Australia and Victoria runs, was taken up as a
run.*

Only the richer portions of each colony were at first
settled by graziers. When melting down began to be
practised, and gave a value to lean stock (which were
wanted to replace the " fats " taken from the richer
runs and boiled down), " country till then despised
was greedily taken up." The northern plains of Vic-
toria, and the parts watered by the Wimmera and its
tributaries, were then settled. Tracts that were barren
in summer from lack of water had a pecuUar value in
winter, says a good observer. " In fact, it gradually
became apparent that they were second to no district
in their cajDacity for producing fat stock, the fattening
seasons, however, being different." Stations thus
formed, for a temporary purpose, remained permanent.
A general rush, in fact, was made to the plains lying
to the north, f

Another pioneering wave was that which flowed over
Gippsland in 1842. Mr. McMillan, overseer to Mr.
Macalister, in 1839, discovered the new province and
returned to form a station, as did also others. Then it
was rediscovered by Count Strzelecki, and the pamphlet
he published, with his map of the route to the new land,
came into the hands of squatters in different parts of
New South Wales that were scourged with drought.
Some 15 licensed, and 7 unhcens^, squatters soon
occupied the fertile country. J

In the following years settlement advanced, less like
the waves of the sea, than hke a tidal wave, which
rises insensibly. The pastoral advance was continuous,

* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 162, 164, 177, 108-9.
t Ibid., pp. 213-4, 185.
; Ibid., pp. 254-9, 130-4.

88 TBE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

gradually " enveloping the upper tributaries of the
Darhng in its folds/' says Rlr. Favenc, " till they
gradually united above Fort Bourke." Eastern New
South Wales was, for the most part, taken up ; pioneers
had to look outside of it for further conquests. An
inborn restlessness possessed them and urged them as
the gadfly urged Europa from land to land. " Where
shall we go ? " was Arthur Hodgson's daily and nightly
vigil, we are told, in (Austrahan) New England, about
1840. Circumstances co-operated with the inward
impetus. The cold winters of the highlands hindered
the breeding of merino sheep and the production of fine
wool. They soon found out whither to go. Patrick
Leshe was no Columbus of Southern Queensland ; he
was rather the Cortez or Pizarro of a new Mexico or
Peru, who conquered new lands and, he too, made head
against hostile natives. He had in his mind the report
of Allan Cunningham, who, thirteen years before, in
1827, had been the first white man to descry and explore
the afterwards far-famed Darhng Downs. From Cun-
ningham's hands he received helpful notes of his journey,
but a promised map of the district never arrived, and
Leslie had to feel his way. His portrait has been
sympathetically drawn by men of his o%^ti type, who
followed in his tracks and received a portion of his
spirit. They describe him as a man of restless activity,
overflowing with energy, " the prince of bushmen and
good fellows." An educated man, we judge from the
chastened diction of his diary,* as also in after-yeara
from the wording of his vigorous protests against the
questionable Dr. Lang. Of Scottish origin, he must
have been a scion of those " bonnie Lesleys " who, in
Scottish ballad, " gaed ower the Border " — namely,
between Scotland and England, and this was exactly
what the pioneer squatter of Queensland did when he
crossed over into the future colony.

He had a long journey before him and took just one
companion — a convict named Murphy, sentenced to be
* In Bussell's Qenesia of Queensland, pp. 164-71.

TEE ROUTE OF THE PAST0RALI8T 89

transported for life, but granted a ticket-of-leave. He
was " as good a servant as ever a man had " — so de-
voted, indeed, that, at a critical point, when danger
threatened, he declared, in answer to a question, that
he " would go to Hell with " Leslie. The migrating
squatter was bound for warmer quarters certainly than
the highlands of New England, but still to comparatively
cool uplands. A month afterwards he travelled over
the Darling Downs from end to end. That was only a
preliminary trip, however, but it was enough and more
than enough. As soon as Leslie realised that here was
the place he sought, the grass, the soil, the skies, he
returned to the neighbourhood of a station at Collaroi,
near Cassilis, in New England, and prepared to remove
his whole stock. Driving before him 4,000 breeding
ewes in lamb, 100 ewe hoggets, 1,000 wedder hoggets,
100 rams, and 500 old wedders, with teams of horses
and bullocks, and 10 saddle horses, and accompanied
by 22 ticket-of-leave men, of whom he could hardly
speak too highly ("as good and game a lot of men
as ever existed "), the heroic pioneer, little conscious
of being a hero, migrated from the cold heights of
New England to the plateaux of Southern Queensland.
It was hke the migration of Abraham from the plains
of Mamre to the land flowing with milk and honey
beyond the Jordan, and the call was doubtless as
" divine " in the one case as in the other. Marking
trees and blazing his track, he at length arrived at the
Condamine river. There he formed his head station
and his out-stations, and distributed his sheep among
them. Finding afterwards that he had taken up too
great an extent of country, Leslie sold parts of hia
gigantic " run " to various individuals and a company.
He had successfully founded the pastoral industry of
Queensland.

The first squatter in a new province may be such by
accident. Patrick Leshe is commonly spoken of as the
first pioneer squatter in Queensland, but he had a pre-
decessor. In January, 1840, John Campbell set out

90 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTJRALA8IA

in search of a run, leaving Dight's station on the Lower
Mclntyre, M'ith two servants. He settled on the
Gwydir, but his right to be there was disputed. There-
fore he sat down at Bebo, and built huts there, while
he made his cattle-camps on the other side of the river.
Thus, by accident, he became the first stockoMner in
Avhat was to be Queensland. Two months later Patrick
Leslie passed his station on his way to the Darhng
Downs.*

A pioneer squatter inspired others to emulate and
follow him. The more successful of these were variants
on their leader, took different routes, and worked
different districts. Where so many are conspicuous it
is hard to select, but almost all the names that distin-
guish those early days are notable. Not a few of them
were heroes. David Cannon McConnel was the fii^st
settler on the head-Avaters of the Brisbane. He had
been exploring as far south as Moruj'a, 200 miles south
of Sydney, but resolved to try the northern country,
and he went to New England, where he seems to have
squatted for a time. There he heard of Patrick Leslie
and his adventurous journey still further north —
indeed, Leslie had started from that very district — and
he resolved to push on in the same direction. Following
the track of the Leslies as far as the Severn, he there
diverged from their route. He passed by Tenterfield
and Stanhope, and looked for suitable country near the
heads of the Clarence or Logan districts. He found
the country disappointingly broken and untempting.
Then, traversing the tableland to the Upper Condamine,
he crossed the Great Dividing Range and settled on
Cessbrook Creek, a tributary of the Upper Brisbane
River, in 1841 ; he was the fu'st, Mr. Bartley tells us,
to settle with stock on a run to the east of the main
range in Queensland. There he bought pedigree short-
horn bulls from the Austrahan Agricultural Company,
and imported others from England. The herd thus
bred still exists.

♦ J- J. Kniqht, In tJie Early Days, pp. 75ff.

THE ROUTE OF THE PA8T0BALIST 91

Others speedily followed. In 1841 a succession of
pioneer squatters settled on the Darling Downs. " Joe "
King and Sibley sat down on another affluent of the
Condamine, and formed King's Creek station. Hodgson
and Elliot were the next, and they settled Etonvale.
Hughs and Isaac took up Gowiie, Henry Stuart Russell
Cecil Plains, Dennis the small, but rich, Jondaryan,
while he also took up Dathy, on Myall Creek, for Charles
Coxen and Warra for Irving. Henry Dennis found for
R. Scougall " the huge Jimbour run and three others."
The Gores occupied Yandalla and Tummavillc — two
large principalities that were as big as English counties.
So that by 1844 as many as thirty stations had been
formed on the Darling Downs.*

All through the forties, in the fifties, and early sixties,
successive waves of occupation flowed over Queensland,
floMdng past existing stations and pressing on into
unoccupied country, settling great tracts of it and
necessitating the opening of fresh ports further north
on the east coast and in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Leaving his partner Taylor on Cecil Plains, H. S.
Russell pushed further on and was in 1843 the first to
settle — he and Glover — on the Brisbane River ; they
were soon followed by others. Then John Eales, from
the Hunter River, was the first to settle in Wide Bay.
The Joneses, afterwards well-loiown in the soft-goods
line in Sydney, were among the first to cross over the
Brisbane Range. f

When pack bullocks wended their way through
Cunningham's Gap with supplies for the squatters,
settlement began below the range. Two former super-
intendents of convicts took up Grantham and Tenthill
\ni\\ Helidon. A dozen pioneers settled on the Upper
Brisbane. Settlement on the Lower Brisbane, or on the
Logan, was precluded by the Government prohibition to
settle within fifty miles of the penal station, at Moreton

* Babtley, Pioneering, pp. 203-4 and ch. viii. Edwaud
Palmer, Early Days.
I Palmer, ibid.

92 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Bay. After the Darling Downs the Northern Rivers
were consequently the first to receive their tale of
colonisation. Stimulated by the discoveries of Andrew
Petrie and Henry Stuart Russell, settlement advanced
rapidly in the North. The Burnett was the earliest
to be settled. The Healeys were attracted to its upper
reaches, while John Eales, coming ^vitll stock from the
Hunter River (the chief supplier of Northern Queens-
land), was the first to plant himself down in Wide Bay.
The Joneses of Sydney were the first to pass the range,
nearer Nanango ; while the middle and Upper Burnett
were attacked from various points.

No family shines with a brighter lustre in the colonisa-
tion of Northern Queensland than that of the Archers.
In 1853 the seven famous Norwegian brothers were
squatting on the Burnett. A thirst for new conquests,
a longing to push into the Unknown, drove them further
afield. In the year named they started from Eidsvold,
endeared by its name to all who have travelled in Nor-
way. Travelling from Dalgangal to Rawbelle, they
found at the foot of Mount Rannes the outmost station
in that direction, occupied by the Leith-Hays. Moving
towards the river which they descried in the distance,
they came up with that magnificent sheet of water,
Gracemere Lake. Next, they saw the picturesque
lagoon which they named the Pink Lily. Then they
pushed on to the river, which, having reached it, they
called (after the Governor) the Fitzroy. Two years
afterwards they placed their head-station by Gracemere
Lake, and there they have ever since remained, giving
it a repute of the first order for its breeds of stock and
its modern methods. The whole neighbouring country
was by them explored and marked out in blocks, which
were rapidly taken up. They were the pioneers of the
district, and their lead was followed by many others.
Some of them earmarked their runs without at the time
stocking them — a thing then practicable under the land
regulations. Some sat down in the neighbourhood of
Gladstone, like the Landsboroughs of Raglan — one of

THE ROUTE OF THE PASTORALIST 93

them famous as an explorer — who had moved up from
Wide Bay. Blackman and Young were other followers
of the Archers, and on their report in 1855 these
Blackman s tendered for four separate stations, and
held a fifth till recent years. Young led the way north-
ward and aided in opening the country between Glad-
stone and Rockhampton. A dozen others followed
Young.

The high price of wool raised the value of all the
pastures, and there was a constant push to the great
unoccupied tracts of the far north and Avest from the
southern parts of Queensland and the southern colonies.
After Leichhardt made his discoveries individuals
pushed out towards Peak Downs. Among the first
was Stuart, Avho in 1861 overlanded his sheep from
Victoria all the way, while the first mob of cattle Avas
brought for two new stations on the Thomson. After
these, " runs Avere taken up with astonishing rapidity "
in both north and west. James Gibson was the pioneer
in the Burke district and was the first on the Flinders,
where he stocked a number of runs. In 1863 Rule
arrived at Aramac Creek and formed a station there.
In 1864 Gibson settled two more stations. Another
squatter, N. Buchanan, who had been one of the first
on the Thomson, crossed the Albert and sat down on
Beames Brook station. Not content with this, he took
up another run, twelve miles in length, along the banks
of the Landsborough, at a place Avhere the river was a
mere waterhole. J. G. Macdonald, who had explored
the country years before, now set up at Floraville and
afterwards on Gregory Downs, close by the river
Gregory. Two brothers named Brodie came from Ncav
South Wales, and settled Donor's Hill. Two or three
squatters from Wide Bay- — Atticus Tooth, EdAvard
Palmer, and W. SheAA^ing — sat down on Conobie in
1865. Others advanced by BoAA^en River and Cape
River, and settled on the junction of the Cloncurry
and the Flinders.

Another AAave of occupation flowed past the runs

94 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

formed by the pioneers in 1865-6, and found unsettled
country further on. They, like their predecessors in
1864-5, followed the course of the rivers. Two names
stand out still more conspicuously than most of these.
Captain John Macka}^ was navigator and explorer before
he became a pioneer squatter, and he continued his
navigation and exploration after he became, or in order
to become, a pioneer squatter. Setting out from
Armidale in 1860, he tracked to the coast the river
named Mackay, and decided to tender for the fertile
valley it watered. Having been successful, he set out
from Armidale in the following year Avith 1,200 or 1,400
head of cattle, 50 horses, and two bullock teams. In
1862, after overcoming crushing diificulties, he formed
his station. Still living (1910), he was one of the
ockists of Northern Queensland.

Another was named Jardine. Canying into effect
an idea of Sir George BoMen, the first Governor of
Queensland, Jardine travelled a mob of cattle from
Bowen to Somerset, and there established a refuge and
a coaling station. It was a journe}^ of 1,600 miles, and
it took the heroic pioneer, with his two sons, six months
to accomplish one of the most thrilling of early expedi-
tions. They cut their way through the bush, swam
their horses across rivers and creeks, and performed the
last 300 miles on foot. The year of their success was
1864.

Discoveries of new country suitable for stations were
sometimes made, in a manner, by accident. An
assigned convict servant, Richard Craig by name, in
the employ of Dr. Dobie, of New England, wandered
away with the intention of escaping from his servitude,
or else, as he professed, losing his way in the mountain
ranges while he was shepherding. He Avas carried
down to the low country by the blacks, with whom he
for a time resided. Getting tired of their company, he
came back to his employer, to whom he told his story
of a great river, a mile broad, flowing between banks
where grew the cedar in abundance, and behind them

THE ROUTE OF THE PASTORALIST 95

were well-grassed ridges, copiously watered by streams.
This was news indeed, especially at a time Avhen New
England was in the throes of a long drought. The
doctor at once forgave his deserting servant and sent
him down with a flock of sheep to the district he had
discovered. Then he sat down on country close to the
present township of Grafton, which may be said to have
been founded on his station. Others soon followed.
The Ogilvies broke through the difficult mountain
ranges between the Clarence and the Upper Hunter,
and settled at Yulgilba.*

Blacks sometimes guided pioneers in quest of runs
to a good situation for a station. In 1852 Messrs. Beck
and Brown were led by them to " the beautiful, open
blue-grass country " on the Moonee, which had escaped
the observation of exploring parties through being
hidden behind a scrubby and sandy frontage. There
they took up 1,100 square miles. f

Sir George Bowen might well find " something
sublime in the steady, silent flow of pastoral occupation
over North-Eastern Austraha." With some leaps and
gaps it was spreading from Moreton Bay to the Gulf of
Carpentaria. Had he lived longer in Queensland, he
would have seen it spread over a far more difficult
and dangerous country — North and North-Western
Australia.

A pioneering wave that had, more than anj'^ of its
predecessors, a large speculative and commercial
element within or at the back of it was that which
set, in the seventies, towards the Plains of Promise
discovered and christened by Captain Stokes, In the
early forties it fell to the lot of Stokes to expose the
hoUowness of the dazzling visions conjured up by Sir
George Grey on the sandy foundations of his imaginary
discoveries in Western Australia. By a singular
nemesis he was himself to make discoveries that proved
as illusory. Rowing up the Albert River in the Gulf

* Baetley, Australian Pioneers, p. 41.
t Ibid., pp. 175-6.

96 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

of Carpentaria, his imagination, rather than his eyes,
saw stretching before him Made plains of verdure.
Excited by his reports, and spurred Mith the prospect
of huge financial gains, a large number of capitalists
(Sir John Robertson among them) spread over them
and towards the Queensland portion of the Gulf. It
was soon realised that they had not the pastoral value
they appeared to possess. The stock was brought back
and the stations abandoned. Sir John Robertson
might well say that his farms brought him in " infinitely
more than his stations." A substantial profit is infi-
nitely more valuable than a minus quantity.

The settlement of the Northern Territory recapitulates
the settlement of the Southern provinces. The new
province was settled from Northern Queensland. The
first overlanders to arrive were D'Arcy Uhr with cattle,
and Dillon Cox with horses, both in 1872. Next came
Nelson and Giles — the four of them by the Roper
River ; then Wiltshire ; all of them taking up rich
land. Not a few died of starvation en route. Mobs
of cattle followed these pioneer squatters. By 1877
more than half of the land suitable was taken up, but,
as in Queensland, many of the runs were never, or not
for a long time, developed. Pastoral occupation ad-
vanced, and pastoral associations, like that of the
Musgrave Range, held immense areas all over the
Northern Territory. All the pastoral land, from Port
Dar\\dn east to the Roper River and the Gulf country,
was taken up and stocked. Some runs were 6,000
miles square, and carried 2,000 head of " fats." Fat
cattle were shipped, already in the eighties, from
Glencoe to Batavia and Singapore.*

The pastoral advance follows the twofold line of
least resistance and most allurement. At first clinging
to the coast or creeping up the coastal rivers, it gradually
pushed inland and settled on the larger rivers or their
tributary creeks. Sometimes, and oftener than once,
it leapt over rich intervening country in order to gain
• Daly, Northern Territory, pp. 219-22, 2C3, 274-6.

THE ROUTE OF THE PA8T0RALI8T 97

a more distant objective. Thus, the tide of settlement
that had flowed down the Murrumbidgee and the
Murray to below Gundagai and Howlong evaded the
stockman's paradise drained by the Wakool and the
Edwards. It made the same unobservant blunder in
pioneering to Adelaide. And (as is noted by Mr.
Favenc, to whom I owe these instances) it made a
similar irrational leap on the Darling Downs and left
long unoccupied the country between the Lower Con-
damine and the Darling. Next it proceeded from the
river-frontages to the back country and even skirted
the edges of the sandy deserts. A later stage was
reached when land that had been despised was perceived
to have value for producing fat stock in the winter
and spring seasons. A discovery of equal importance
was made when it was found that artesian or other
springs (for the propriety of the name is disputed by
geologists) could correct the niggardliness of Nature
and supply her deficiencies. Then rich, but waterless,
regions in the interior were taken up. With the opening
up of the country by means of railways the wavy or
intermittent settlement of it was superseded by a
continuous occupation. Examined closely, it might
still disclose sUght and swift rhythmical movements,
and that " rhythm of motion," which Emerson first
enounced and a great philosopher erected into a cosmic
principle, would be found exhibited by the pastoral
advance throughout Australia.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PASTOBALIST AND THE CONVICT

If the courtezan is the ghastUest female figure that
human society has to show, the felon is perhaps its
most repulsive male figure. Sequestered from his
family, his old associates, the active community of his
fellows, and sometimes even his companions in crime,
banded only with that awful brotherhood that stretches
back to the first murderer, with the brand of Cain on
his forehead, shut within bare, narrow, dark cell, heavy
doors securely locked upon him to the clank of ponderous
keys, still heavier high gates and high walls closing him
in, blest only with that light which brought cold cheer
to Persephone when she entered Hades, fed on meagre
fare, clad in prison garb, sometimes chained to gangs,
and always working with others as in a band of slaves,
seen never by those of his own kindred, or only through
gratings, lying under the condemnation of his fellow-
men, his freedom to move from place to place severely
restricted, warders looking at him sternly and treating
him brutally, he toils through enforced ungenial labours
that will not end for years and, under the old regime,
may never end !

It must have appeared at first an aggravation of his
fate when the convicted felon was sentenced to be
transported to a distant country. It is hard for all to
wrench themselves from a happy home and go out to
a land where they will meet with friends or relatives,
will enjoy comfort or luxury, may re-establish or regain
health, and may find a career, with profit and dia-

98

THE PASTORALIST AND THE CONVICT 99

tinction behind it, open up to them. Far harder it
must appear to the transported convict, who knew not
what fresh horrors awaited him when he was sent on a
six months' voyage to Austraha a century and more
ago. His worst anticipations were at first more than
reahsed. Through the judicious and energetic prior
supervision of Captain Philhp comparatively few deaths
occurred during the voyage of the First Fleet, but the
voyages of the Second and Third Fleets were funeral
processions across two oceans. The filthy persons and
clothes of the convicts, and the diseases thus engendered
in the crowded ships, carried off scores of convicts and
not a few free immigrants. The accounts given of the
arrival of these fleets at Sydney are sickening and
harrowing, and the sufTering experienced during the
voyages must have been immeasurable. Things doubt-
less improved in later years, but the voyage to Australia
can never, under such circumstances, have been any-
thing but a horror.

^'Vhen the first convicts arrived in Australia, experi-
ences of a new sort broke on them. Their food in an
English gaol had been prison fare, but it was sufficient ;
in the newly -founded settlement grim and gaunt Famine
was an ever-threatening visitor, and the allowance of
food was often reduced to a point at which the bodily
strength could not be maintained. The Colony was
governed like a prison, even by the humane Phillip,
and the crack of the lash was ever heard. They were
soon set to till the soil and engage in mechanical occu-
pations ; and this alone greatly improved the situation
of the convict. They reared buildings of many descrip-
tions, and the sombre architecture of some old struc-
tures survives to tell its origin. A still more durable
monument to the memory of the convict has been laid
in the roads. To the north, south, and west of Sydney
and across the Blue Mountains the massive roads re-
semble the mighty highways which the iron genius of
the Romans formed for the legions.

Worse things almost than foul conditions and m.ortal

100 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

diseases made many of the later voyages unique in the
sin-stained annals of mankind. Honest women, trans-
ported for a bagatelle or a point of honour, -were con-
strained to prostitute themselves, and not a few of the
ships were arenas of promiscuous sexual intercourse,
therein resembling some ancient heathen temples on
occasion of the worship of certain deities.

The numbers of the convicts Mere considerable for a
new colon5^ The historical First Fleet brought out
565 men and 192 women, and tM^o or three subsequent
" fleets," together with a large number of single vessels,
swelled the convict-population. In 1828, when he
introduced a bill to amend the constitution, Mr. Huskis-
son stated that there were only 18,000 free settlers in a
total population of 49,000, showing that New South
Wales was still predominantly a convict-settlement.
On the other hand, Sir James Mackintosh, supported
by Joseph Hume, claimed that there Avere in the Colony
55,000 free settlers — an obvious and gross exaggeration.

In 1833 the convicts in New South Wales numbered
28,000. That was a large proportion in a population
of hardly 65,000, and it conclusively proved that the
Colony was still a convict settlement. But of the 37,000
free only 21,000 had been originally free ; 15,000 or
16,000 were freedmen, expiree or pardoned convicts,
emancipates or emancipists, as they were euphoniously
styled. Only 30 per cent, of the population consisted
of free citizens. In the same year there were in Van
Diemen's Land as many as 15,000 convicts. Governor
Sir J. Eardley Wilmot stated that 16,000 persons in
less than four years were transported to that Colony.
On the whole, it may be roughly computed that, when
transportation to New South Wales ceased in 1851,
some 90,000 convicts had been transported thither.

It has often been said, in well-meant deprecation of
the possible evil consequences arising from the founding
of a community on a convict base, that most of the
convicts transported to New South Wales were guilty
only of minor offences, which the savage criminal code

THE PA8T0RALIST AND THE CONVICT 101

of that harsli day annexed severe punishments. Others
have affirmed that the majority of the convicts were
poHtical offenders. It would be hard to say which of
the two assertions is the more incorrect. Contemporary
narratives like Collins's, the despatches of the Governors,
the known histories of certain of the convicts, the
evidence given before English Parliamentary com-
mittees, the observations of travellers, and the mere
existence of such convict-hells as Parramatta, Port
Arthur, and Norfolk Island, are there to prove the
contrary. Some of the convicts transported to New
South Wales in its first and second decades were cer-
tainly criminals of a venial type, Avhoni the starvation
too common in those dark days of the European war
drove of necessity to crime, and whose nature was
not criminal. Others, like the Scottish political
" martyrs," were men of unblemished character. These
last were, indeed, allowed to live in comparative free-
dom. Still others, like Dr. Redfern, were transported
for actively sympathising with the mutineers of the
Nore. Two were gentlemen who were transported for
killing in duels. Some Mere women who were sent
out for concealing, or conniving at the escape of, their
lovers, French officers on parole. But the bulk of
the convicts were men and women of undeniably bad
character, and, with one striking exception, they were
often the more irredeemably bad because they had a
taking exterior and a plausible address.

What was to be done with such materials as these ?
What kind of a community could be built up out of
them ? The reformation of the convicts and the
foundation of a new system of colonisation — that of
" colonising-transportation," as it was called, were the
chief objects of the settlement. Both were in large
measure attained, but not in virtue of the means used
to attain them. Numbers of the convicts were re-
formed, but not by transportation only and participa-
tion in public works, but as the instruments of a new
form of rural industry, as servants of the pastoralists.

102 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

And the colonising of Eastern Australia was a success,
but only because the existence of convict labourers
enabled and facilitated the pastoral occupation of the
country.

The convicts thus figured in a capacity that directly
concerns us here. The majority of them were assigned
to settlers who desired servants in their homes and on
their farms, and were distributed all over the Colony.
In 1835 over 20,000 convicts were thus assigned. There
was romance in the assignment system, and there was
tragedy. The convict might be assigned to his wife,
who evinced her devotedness by following her convict
husband oversea.

One of the largest pastoralists, John McArthur, had
from 90 to 100 ; William Cox had as many as 120,
besides free labourers, while D'Arcy Wentworth and a
wealthy emancipist named Terry, who held the two
most extensive estates in New South Wales, had more
still. Sometimes the whole of the servants on a run
were convicts or ticket-of -leave men. One pastoralist at
Tumut in 1839 had twenty " Government men " and
about 1,200 head of cattle. Another sent sheep from
Tasmania in 1835 with, successively, six, five, and
seven freedmen as shepherds. We observe their
numbers gradually diminish. Eight years later there
were 49 ex-convicls on the 40 stations in newly dis-
covered Gippsland, among 327 of a population. As
free immigrants arrived, runholders replaced their
convict-servants by freemen.*

Fustel de Coulanges has spelled out, imperfectly and
with difficulty the status and conditions of the unfree
workers on the large Roman domains. We are more
happily situated with respect to the convict servants
assigned to the great landowners in the early days of
Australia. The elaborate reports of Chief -Commissioner
Bigge, the evidence given before him, the letters ad-
dressed to him, together with innumerable pubUcations

♦ Victorian Pioneers, pp. 169, 11, 12, 199.

THE PASTORALIST AND THE CONVICT 103

of the time, throw a flood of light on all the problems
connected with them.

The conditions of servitude were minutely regulated
by the Colonial Government in a succession of ordinances,
chiefly in 1804, 1814, and 1816. A master was required
to feed and clothe his servant in a suitable manner, and
similarly to a Government servant. The convict-servant
was, moreover (and this is a feature of the institution
that differentiates it from slavery), given a wage of
£10 a year, on the assumption that this sum was paid
for work done after three o'clock p.m., when, in theory,
the servant was supposed to be " on his own hands " ;
and the money was generally to be paid in coin, not in
kind. If he was assigned to one of the smaller settlers,
he sat at his master's table and partook of the same
food (the origin, possibly, of the practice of the colonial
Boniface to sit always at the head of his own table) ;
and compared with the English peasant of the period,
who seldom saw butcher-meat, the Australian convict-
servant, who had a pound of meat and a pound of
flour, with tea, sugar, and spirits, daily given him, was
handsomely bestowed. He associated with his master's
family, and often married his master's daughter.*
Evidently, the absorption of the convict-element began
early in the history of the Colony.

When convicts began to be assigned as servants to
settlers, their labour was regulated in an order issued
by Governor Hunter in 1798-9, and in 1804, at the
instance of Governor King, an indenture was made
out. The working-day ended at 3 p.m. — a limit that
had its origin in a kind of accident. During the times
of famine that occurred so frequently in the early days
convicts were often ph3^sically unable to labour till
sunset. Hence, they were released at 3 p.m., and the
practice hardened into a rule. If an amount of labour
additional to that required by the Order or stated in
the Indenture was exacted of them, they were to be
paid at a rate fixed by Governor King, which remained
* BiGQE, Beport, 1822, pp. 75-8.

104 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

unaltered till 1816, when Governor Macquarie settled
it at £10, preferably paid in money.* The indenture-
system, we may add, was maintained to the last.

When the convict had gained a ticket-of-leave, he
could work for wages ; the slave had risen to be a serf.
Many of them were mechanics, and in that capacity
they often erected the w^hole of a station buildings. Dr.
Lang tells of a house where all the brickmaking and
bricklaying, the carpentry and joinery, the plastering
and shinghng, and perhaps the cabinet-making and
upholster}^, had been executed by assigned convict
servants, f The assigned convicts were also largely and
for long shepherds. Probably, most of the shepherds
in New South Wales during its first half-century were
convicts, and as late as 1852, in Van Diemen's Land,
Governor Sir W. Denison, a great believer in trans-
portation, asked : to whom but to convicts could
colonists look to cultivate their lands, tend their flocks,
and reap their harvest ?

Yet the convict shepherds of the early days were
the chief agents in breeding trouble with the natives.
They drove their masters' flocks into locations where
their rights to encroach were, sometimes fiercely, dis-
puted by the blacks. It was not only aggressions on
the land that they committed. The reports of settlers
(communicated to Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe and
now reprinted) assert that the real cause of the quarrels
between blacks and whites was always the same. The
convict servants or shepherds trafficked with the jins,
and, having made a bargain, failed to give the articles
promised. Or, " they were over-familiar with " the
blacks, " for the sole purpose of getting their women."
Hut-keepers and stock-keepers took lubras from their
camp and brought them to their own huts, and then
shot the husbands. Sometimes they shot the blacks
for sport. A ticket-of-leave man was not content
with shooting blacks on his employer's station. He

* BiGOE, Report, 1822, pp. 74-7.
t Account, etc., i. 248.

THE PASTORALIST AND THE CONVICT 105

invaded a neighbouring station and shot the blacks
there.

In 1837-8 the Commissioner in New South Wales for
the assignment of convicts had assigned 5,454 as do-
mestic servants and from 10,000 to 12,000 convicts as
shepherds, stockmen, or rural labourers. So large
did the demand for convict servants become that, at
one time, under Governor Darling, 2,000 applications
lay unsatisfied. It was unequally and partially dealt
with. Dr. Lang observed that one settler, who was in
favour with the Government, would have many convict
servants, while a neighbour, who was more under a
cloud, was absolutely denied them. Did the reverend
doctor, Avho knew so well how to look after his own
interests and those of his family, forget, what he had
elsewhere stated, that his brother, with only 1,500
acres, had no fewer than 40 convict servants ?

The treatment of such servants was various and un-
equal. By an Act passed through the Legislative Council
that able Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, decreed that
magistrates sitting in Petty Sessions should not have
it in their power to order a penalty of more than 50
lashes. This humane measure, according to Lang,
raised a howl of indignation in squatting circles, where
it was reprobated as ill-judged lenity and an encourage-
ment to, or an evidence of, general insubordination on
the part of the convicts ; indeed, the squatters pro-
fessed to dread an insurrection and a servile war.*
Yet Lang says that he knew that, on the best-managed
stations, punishment by flogging was scarcely ever used.
On the other hand, where it was used, the legal 50
lashes were often inflicted " for insolence, laziness, or
disobedience, or for any of the many constructive crimes
and misdemeanours of the old convict code." f

Difficult problems arose in connection •with the assign-
ment of convict labour. In the time of Governor
Darling, in the year 1827, the convict servants were
withdrawn from a certain individual by a bench of
* Account, i. 246-7. t ^bid., i. 357.

106 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

magistrates. A strong protest was made. The Gover-
nor replied that he had an absolute right to assign or
withdraw convicts, as justice might require, and he
could at any time modify the status by issuing rules
regulating it. If convicts were insufficiently fed or
clothed, or were suffered to work abroad or at large,
their employers were liable to lose them. About the
same time Sir George Arthur, Governor of Van Diemen's
Land (1824-36), admitted that all of his tasks together
were less embarrassing than the " anxious duty " of
apportioning public lands among the settlers and assign-
ing convict servants.

The assignment-system was denounced by a select
committee of the House of Commons in 1838 as unequal
in its incidence, radically vicious, and surrounded by
abuses. The assignment of convicts to their wives
and to other relatives seems to have been a fact as
well as a theme of fiction. Yet it was shown by evidence
before that committee that on the whole it had worked
well. In respectable and well-conducted families the
condition of such servants was similar to that of servants
in England. They were employed as teachers and
domestic tutors, often imposing, it appears, on anxious
mothers the necessity of their frequent presence and
constant vigilance.

Two measures aided in stripping the assignment
system of its abuses. Governor Bourke drafted a code
of regulations for the assignment of convict servants.
It limited the number of such servants and made it
proportional to the extent of land and especially of
land in cultivation. Not more than 70 convicts could
be assigned to one proprietor or runholder. Governor
Darling created an Assignment Board to correct the
abuses arising out of the system, which, it was notorious,
had often been a source of patronage. The result was,
in some measure, to equalise the distribution of con-
victs among the settlers. Yet Dr. Lang gives instances
of great inequality under Darling.*
* Account, i. 248.

THE PA8T0RALIST AND THE CONVICT 107

Convicts were the stand-by of prospecting squatters.
A pioneer squatter would give his men the choice. He
would tell them that he was going into the interior.
If any of them jibbed (did not like the job or the ex-
pedition), they were to let him know, and he would
dismiss them and procure others, but if they stuck to
him, he would stick to them, and give them good rations
and £20 a year. Very few of them did jib, and most of
them behaved so well that many of them got tickets,
while some, like Patrick Murphy, Patrick Leslie's chief
henchman, got conditional pardons.*

Ambitiously and daringly advancing into the wilds,
and spreading themselves out in all directions as pioneers,
immigrants discovered sites suited for new pastoral
stations, and, " biting off more than they could chew,"
often earmarked them (as they could legally do), before
they could stock them and, still more, before they could
man them. The cry for labour was the cry of the fam-
ished and the despairing throughout pastoral Australia.
Labour was dear and bad when it could be found, but
most commonly it was not to be had. At their wits'
end for it, the Northern squatters, in full sympathy with
the squatters in Southern parts, petitioned the Secretary
of State for more convicts. " What has " Patrick
Leslie " ever done for the country," cried Dr. Lang,
" beyond assisting in putting up public prayers to the
' god ' Grey for more convicts ? " The pioneer squatter
of Queensland had done much more than that ; but,
at all events, he did petition for more "exiles." And
one of the class that he adorned stated, when he moved
a resolution at Ipswich in 1850 in favour of the intro-
duction of convicts, that he " would rather have the
pick of the gaols than the refuse of the workhouses."

As Cairnes and the economists have proved, slave
labour is dear. So was the labour of those convicts
who were the true equivalents of the ancient slaves.
Governor King shall tell us why. The Governor wrote
that they were perverse, and that their labour could
* Campbell Peaed, My Australian Oirlhood, p. 8.

108 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

be made profitable only through constant vigilance,
inspection and the exercise of authority. Their over-
seers belonged to the same class, and they needed strong
incentives — the assignment to them of convict servants,
better rations, and the prospect of being pardoned —
to induce them to perform their duty. One of the
pastoralists writes of the " uselessness of most of the
convict servants," and John McArthur's account of
them is mainly adverse.*

On the other hand, it is stated that the ex-convicts
imported into South Australia by Robert Gouger in
1838 were more skilful workers in the various classes
of labour needed in a young colony than British work-
men. In splitting timber, fencing, and putting up
rough wooden buildings, they already had the ex-
pertness that nearly all colonists soon acquire.

Like the Jew or the peasant who understates his
wealth in order to escape the rapacity of the tax-
gatherer, the squatters, too, sometimes sought to disarm
opposition by depreciating the labour of their slaves.
Convict labour, they alleged, was not cheap labour.
They did not always assume the dearness of convict
labour, Wlien it suited their purpose, they could profess
that it was cheap labour. The members of an associa-
tion formed in 1843 — the Association for Obtaining Per-
mission to Import Coolies (what a title !) — alleged that
*' the abundance and cheapness of convict labour had
created their former land-fund." (This was truly to
magnify the convicts and the services they had rendered ! )
And they declared that the introduction of coolies was
the only measure " calculated to avert the ruin with
which they were threatened." f The sagacious Gover-
nor, tSir George Gipps, admitted the scarcity of labour
in the Colony, but evidently doubted the wisdom of
the proposed step. The proposal came to nothing, but
it left an unsavoury odour around the persons of the

* Victorian Pioneers, p. 169 ; nnd appendix to Bioge's Re-
ports.

t Mitchell Library MSS., vol. xlii.

THE PASTORALIST AND THE CONVICT 109

squatters. One of the many reproaches that were
flung in the teeth of Wentworth during his last con-
tested elections Avas that he belonged to a class which
had favoured the importation of coolies. ' Coolies/
or kanakas, have since then been imported in thousands
into Australia, though for another class of labour than
the pastoral ; yet that very importation of slave labour
reveals the true character of the coolie labour proposed
to be imported and of the convict labour already
utilised. All alike were forms of slavery.

The squatters fought hard for the continuance of
transportation, but it was a new kind of transportation
they contended for. It was denominated exihsm,
because it was the transportation of con\acts who
were to be free to act as assigned servants to the squat-
ters, and who were known as " free exiles." The
" exile " had passed through a term of probation in an
English convict prison, and was to be permitted to
live in rural districts for not less than a year. Sent
out to New South Wales and Victoria, such individuals,
it was expected, would be absorbed by the labour
market. They were " sent out with conditional par-
dons. When hired, they were under no direct control
as convicts." *

This was the expansion of the penal system designed
by Earl Grey in 1848. He did not invent it. Four
years earlier a public meeting held in Melbourne,
clamouring for labourers and yet dreading the influx
of expiree convicts from Van Diemen's Land, favoured
the receiving of exiles. In that very year of 1844 an
initiative in the same direction was taken in England.
In 1844 Lord Stanley suggested that the Governors of
these colonies should devise measures " to provide for
the reception and employment of exiles from " England.
This was possibly the first use of the term, at least in
England, though we may suspect that it was in Aus-
traha that this softening of a harsh designation origin-
ated. As an experiment, 345 such exiles were sent out
* RusDEN, History of Australia, ii. 466 (sec. ed.).

110 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

to Hobart, and in the following year 174 more exiles
were despatched to Geelong. Simultaneously -with this
importation of exiles from England an importation of
them went on within the Australasian colonies, in
Victoria. The fact was discovered in this wise.

A despatch written in May, and received in Sydney
in October, 1846, revived the question of transportation.
In 1839 Sir John Jamieson, Wentworth, and Dr. Bland
— president and vice-presidents of the Patriotic Associa-
tion— urged that transportation should be continued,
but coupled with the importation of immigrants, and
associated with the old assignment system. They were
unsuccessful, but Mr. Gladstone's despatch seemed to
reopen a way to the accompUshment of their designs.
Mr. Gladstone, then for a brief period Secretary of
State, suggested that transportation, discontinued since
1839, should be revived under a " modified and carefully
regulated " system. A committee of the Legislative
Council was appointed to inquire into the subject.
It was then found that private individuals had taken
the matter into their own hands. As always, anticipat-
ing the action of Government and supplying it with a
model, employers of labour in Port-Philhp had imported
from Van Diemen's Land more than 1,800 emancipated
convicts. Employers in New South Wales had fur-
nished themselves with labour from the same source.
Other ex-convicts, whether expirees or pardoned, had
also immigrated to Australia. The Governor of Van
Diemen's Land had facilitated the process. He had
issued pardons that Avere to be held valid throughout
the Australian colonies. These pardons had been
granted with the sanction of the Crown. Governor
Gipps nevertheless informed Lieutenant-Governor La-
trobe that such introduction of pardoned convicts was
" absolutely illegal," and he warned Lord Stanley of
the evils that might arise from the influx of such pass-
holders. Governor Grey in South Australia no less
protested against such a violation of the spirit of the
Acts under which South Australia was founded.

THE PAST0RALI8T AND THE CONVICT 111

In 1850-1 the 570 convicts brought to Moreton Bay
by three ships were " quickly snapped up," we are told,
by the pastoral tenants as * assigned servants,' but
many of these, it is stated, '* deserted their hired service
almost before the ink on their agreements was dry."

The early squatters of Queensland were almost un-
conditionally in favour of the importation of convicts.
They might be for separation from New South Wales,
but only on the understanding that it should be accom-
panied by the continuance of convict-labour. Forming
a Northern Districts Association Separation in 1851,
they passed a resolution to that effect. They had three
million sheep, they said, and they had only 1,200 " ex-
iles " and Chinamen, while they needed 3,000 shepherds
and hut-keepers. There was an absolute dearth of
free labour. Give us that, they cried. A few weeks
later, with the arrival of the Bangalore in 1851, trans-
portation for ever ceased, at least in Eastern Australia.

Convictism had another aspect than its primary or
industrial feature. It bred a social and political move-
ment. This surprising new complexion it owed to
Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who reigned for the long
period between 1809 and 1821. Macquarie is an inter-
esting figure in Australian history. His dry, contracted
visage, as of wrinkled parchment, the thin, tight lips,
the aquihne nose, the high, arched eyebrows, raised
as if in mute surprise that anyone should presume to
dispute his authority, a lofty sense of his own import-
ance, and an unswerving resolution — such is the physical
man who looks out on you from his portrait. The
physiognomy was true to his inner nature. Shall we
say that his social ideal was low ? It was, at all events,
not that of a mean nature, but that of one who dreamt
of lifting up to a higher plane the sin-stained souls
whom he so sympathetically governed.

He came out to the Colony with no other thought
than to govern the convicts by the methods hitherto
customary. Only after he had entered on office did
he entertain the happy thought that no retrospective

112 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

inquiry should be held into the antecedents of pardoned
or expiree convicts, but that, due regard being had of
their rank and character, they should be placed on
the same footing ^vith freemen. He it was gave definite
shape to the scheme of the Home Government, and, in
formulating it, developed it. He made of it the con-
scious end and deliberate policy of the Government.
By his own confession he " saw the necessity and justice
of adopting a plan on a general basis, which had always
been practically acted on, towards those people " —
the convicts. The error lay in the formulation. He
almost necessarily blundered. As Dr. Marion PhiUips
has clearly perceived, this is the key to all the collisions
and all the discontent under Macquarie.

It was well that the policy should be distinctly shaped
and systematically acted on. Perhaps in no other way
could its futility have been discovered. Yet it served
an end. Macquarie could not raise the convicts to the
level of freemen, or give them the status of free la-
bourers, but he improved their position, and did some-
thing to wipe away the stain from meritorious emanci-
pists. Throughout his entire term he set himself to exalt
the convict class and their sympathizers, while he de-
pressed and endeavoured to abase the free settlers. Under
his rule gi-ew up the emancipist party. Upon D'Arcy
Wentworth he heaped favours, and the Wentworths,
both father and son, became thorough emancipists. They
were naturally devoted to Macquarie. D'Arcy did not
hesitate, at Macquarie's instance, to accept a trusteeship
that Marsden had refused, because it involved the
trusteeship of two ex-convicts. In his father's house
young Wentworth met with his father's friends, and
these were ex-convicts. A Dr. Bland (whose name was
afterwards given to a suburb of Sydney), who had been
transported to Australia from India for there killing
a man in a duel, warmly took up the convict cause, and
contributed to its respectability. Dr. Wardell, who
immigrated to Sydney as a barrister, taking up the
emancipist cause as he would take up any cause at the

GREGORY BLAXLAND.

p. 112]

THE PASTORALIST AND THE CONVICT 113

bar, or because of the spice of rebellion that is often
like the iron in a young lawyer's blood, associated himself
with Wentworth. They were appointed editors of official
journals, and they controlled the Government Gazette.
Swelling in importance, they soon formed a party in
the State, or a political party gathered round them.
In 1838 it was described by Sir W. Molesworth as "a
powerful political party," whose object was to gain
for old convicts the status and privileges of free citizens,
including the right to sit on juries. The party consisted,
not only of ex-convicts and those members of the free
class who naturally sympathized with them, but also
of persons of high respectability, who adhered to it
" on the ground of political principle." Wlien it is
mentioned that the first great statesman of Australia,
W. C. Wentworth, and his henchman, Dr. Bland, were
among the leaders of the party, its character and im-
portance will be appreciated. It formed an Australian
Patriotic Association, which had Sir John Jamison as
its president and the two public men just named as
its vice-presidents.

It was strong enough to influence the government
of Australia and even the policy of the Motherland
towards its Avistralian colonies. GvTided by it, aided
by the Chief-Justice, and in spite of the veiled protest
of one of the puisne judges. Governor Sir Richard
Bourke threw open the civil jury to the emancipists,
namely, to men who had been convicted of crime,
transported, and had served a term of imprisonment.
Allied with a kindred party in England, of which Arch-
bishop Whately was the leader, it was potent to bring
the whole system of transportation to an end. The
assignment of convicts to service in towns ceased in
1838 ; in 1839 assignment in rural districts ceased.

While Macquarie reigned, the emancipists were in
the ascendant. " In our present state," wrote John
McArthur in 1820, the Governor's " distinguished
friends are in the majority, and their voices preponderate
in every public question." Macquarie treated the

8

114 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

enemies of the con\act class with studied harshness.
Marsden, in particular, he used with signal injustice.
He banished him from Government House. After
Marsden had resigned his position as a magistrate,
Macquarie, who had ignored the letter of resignation,
arbitrarily removed him from the bench. He refused
Marsden leave to visit New Zealand, where he was
doing a noble civilising work. And after he had left
the Colony he levelled grave accusations against the
chaplain. Did Bligh treat Mc Arthur Avorse than
Macquarie used Marsden ? Yet Marsden submitted for
the sake of peace, while McArthur raised the mihtary
in rebellion against Bhgh and had him deposed.

Then the British Government, ill at ease in conse-
quence of persistent rumours about Macquarie's eccen-
tric methods of governing New South Wales, sent out
Commissioner Bigge with instructions to probe to the
bottom his management of affairs and the state of the
Colony. His mission resembled the strict inquest that
was made into the administration of the Spanish
viceroys of South America before they could be allowed
to return to Spain. He censured the building-craze
of the Governor. He inquired minutely into the rela-
tions of the Governor ^v'ith the convict-class. He
condemned the favour shown to the ex-convicts and
their enforced patronage. He disapproved of the
Governor's ideal of the Colony as primarily a convict
settlement, and he recommended that its gates should
be thrown open to free immigrants, whose advent
should be encouraged.

His recommendations soon bore fruit. The Royal
Instructions to the Governor accompanying the Con-
stitution Act of 1823, directed that the pampering of
the ex-convict class was to cease. Convictions for
forgery, mutiny, and rebellion were no longer to be
passports to political privileges. Such injunctions
could not very well be put into a statute, but they
were express and explicit.
They were not therefore implicitly obeyed. Certain

THE PAST0RAL18T AND THE CONVICT 115

of them were, indeed, carried into effect. In 1822
Newcastle was abandoned as a convict settlement, and
rapidly overflowed with free pastoralist settlers. Its
convicts were sent to Port Macquarie, and thence to
Moreton Bay — that is, stationed outside of what is
now New South Wales. The Colony was slowly getting
rid of its convicts, who were being expelled to an ever
greater distance from the free settlers. Meanwhile,
they were gaining ground in other directions. Chief-
Justice Forbes, who was appointed under the new
Constitution Act, apparently came out to Australia
resolved to treat the ex-convicts as Macquarie had
treated them, and especially to give them a place on
the jury-Hst. He is hypothetically described (by
Mr. Rusden, surely in error) as the draftsman of the
Act, and his friend, Sir James Mackintosh, unsuccess-
fully endeavoured to mould the bill in this sense on its
passage through the House of Commons. By a trick of
interpretation the Chief-Justice thought to admit
ex-convicts to juries that sat at Quarter Sessions, but
was foiled by the magistrates of Sydney, guided by
Saxe-Bannister, the Attorney-General. At a public
meeting held on Anniversary Day in 1827 the leader
of the Emancipists, Wentworth, admitted that ex-
convicts were not yet held eligible for juries, and still,
as he reluctantly confessed, justice was done. Never-
theless, both he and his ally. Dr. Wardell, clamoured
for their inclusion. A new opportunity arose in the
discussion on the amended Constitution Act of 1828.

ThAvarted on this line, the Emancipist leaders fed
the flames of a constant agitation that was designed
to procure for all freedmen the complete possession of
political privileges. For many years it was ardently
maintained. At last, as he perceived that his con-
tention for the rights of the freedmen would injure his
agitation for representative government to the Colony,
Wentworth insensibly dropped the earlier and lesser
cause, or let it merge itself in the greater. But things
had not yet come to this pass.

116 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Meanwhile, the agitation continued. The Emancipists
sent Home petitions in one sense, and the Exclusives
carried Home petitions in the opposite sense. To give
these latter weight, and spread an atmosphere about the
whole question, James McArthur pubHshed a volume
in London in 1837 that was an able piece of special
pleading on the subject. He strongly disclaimed all
sympathy with the " slave-masters," and he repudiated
the association habitually made between convictism
and slavery. The parallel between even American
negro -slavery — at all events, between ancient Greek
and Roman slavery — ^is too close to be lightly denied.
The power of the master to flog the convict, and his
right to keep him in confinement, are two identifying
features that cannot be mistaken. Was even Went-
worth, the great champion of the unfortunate class,
quite devoid of the sentiments of the slave-driver ?
A once well-known person in New South Wales, a
squatter and a magistrate, James Mudie, published in
London an exceedingly bitter and almost scurrilous
volume on The Felonry of New South Wales. It abounds
in pointed descriptions and pungent anecdotes, which
sometimes throw a turbid light on the state of the Colony.

The marriage, or other sexual relationship, of the
convicts with one another or with the free, and the
consequent proportion of convict blood in the existing
population of Australia, are subjects so disagreeable as
to be habitually shunned. Writers like Father Tenison
Woods and Professor Gregory minimise both, and a third
has said, in a lovely phrase, that the convicts failed
to " achieve domesticity," or to leave offspring. But
" facts are chiels that winna ding," and here the facts
are dead against the rash gcneralisers. When Com-
missioner Bigge visited Australia in 1819-20, he found
a very different state of things. He aflEirms that the
marriage of male convicts with freed women, and with
young white native women, was " very frequent."
So common was it that regulations had to be made in
connection with it ; in such cases application had to be

THE PASTOR ALIST AND THE CONVICT 117

made to the chaplains. On the other hand, the mar-
riage of male white natives with female convicts or
emancipists was rare ; the yomig fellows naturally looked
down on them.*

It does not follow that they had no intercourse with
them. On the contrary, promiscuous interbreeding
was general. Illicit relationships were common, and
there are many references to them ; while the frequent
prohibitions for an unmarried settler to accept female
assigned servants tell their own tale. They were the mis-
tresses of the unmarried settlers. It could not have
been otherwise. Sexual relationships, whether legal
or illicit, could not have been hindered. Comparatively
few free unmarried women came to the Colony before
Governor Macquarie left it in 1821 ; the mass of the
emancipists therefore could have married few others.

In later years we find frequent references to convict
menages. Even if it could not be proved that the
transported felons begot children, it remains a fact
that, there being few free women in the Colony for the
first thirty years of its existence, the mothers of a
large proportion of the first generation of Austrahan-
born children were, or had been, convicts. But of
course it can be proved that the male convicts had
offspring. The total absence of charges of infanticide
in early Australia would, negatively, suffice to prove
that the children who must have been born in large
numbers survived.

A writer whose exhaustive researches clothe her
utterances with authority ascribes even the charac-
teristic Australian ethnical type to its convict origin.
The type of the " cornstalks " was created. In a
single generation they were already differentiated from
their parents not by the growth of new traits, but by
the reversion of the children of the convicts to the older
Anglo-Saxon strain that had disappeared in their
parents. Tall, loose-limbed, and fair, they were the
lathers and mothers of the " cornstalks " to be. Daring
* Bigqe's Fiest Beport, p. 105.

118 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

equestrians, skilful and trusty sailors, quick to learn all
trades without needing to serve an apprenticeship,
they were evidently the ancestors of the typical Aus-
tralians of to-day. More than this : the same writer
boldly affirms that the characteristic Austrahan senti-
ment-— self-suflficingness and independence — is an in-
heritance from the early convicts. This is doubtless
an error. The origin of moral quahties can seldom be
ascertained with certainty, but it is maintained in the
present volume that that high inheritance — the ideal
of the elder Humboldt — is a necessary result of the free
pastoral life.

Every aspect of convictism in New South Wales and
Tasmania reveals its consanguinity "vvith ancient slavery.
The Australian convict was a slave for life or a long
term. He worked in chain-gangs on the roads or in
ergastula at Parramatta or Port Arthur, in Tasmania,
and in New South Wales they were near to raising such
a slave-war as led in ancient Rome. The convicts
were, in fact, the first form of the labouring class in the
new colony, and to some extent, by no means wholly,
its real progenitor. The class they gave birth to had
the great career I have depicted. It became a party in
the State, and had for its leader the greatest among
early Austrahan statesmen. It grew and grew — until it
vanished, when the convicts were lost in the crowd of
free workmen. That crowd is now the dominant
Labour party in the world. It manipulates, as in New
Zealand, ministries to govern in its interests and legis-
latures to make laws to its advantage, and, when its
time comes, it quietly takes possession of all the powers
of government, as happened in Western Austraha, or
has thrice happened in the Commonwealth of Australia,
still more recently in South Australia, and within the
last few months in New South Wales.

CHAPTER XV

THE PASTORALIST AND THE NATIVE

In almost every country where members of a white
race have visited or settled they have been received
by the indigenes with cordiality and without suspicion.
Where unfriendliness has been shown, it is because
previous visitors had acted unworthily and prejudiced
the natives against foreigners. Only in rare instances
does this idyllic state continue. It is quickly succeeded
by a state of open warfare or veiled hostility. This
may linger through years. Or it may be ended by a
decisive defeat. Then the tribe may submit, and in
due time come in and work peaceably and usefully
for the squatters, who, during this period, may lose
numbers of their sheep and cattle and some of their
shepherds.

The Australian natives rendered essential services
to the pioneer colonists, such as few savage peoples have
rendered to their conquerors and the invaders of their
country. This was doubtless due in large measure to
the nature of the pioneers' pursuits. The blacks could
have given little aid to the agriculturalist or the in-
dustrialist, but they could and did abundantly help
the pastoralists, whose occupations, moreover, did not
collide directly with the activities of the blacks. Several
blackboys were employed on every run, especially in
Northern Queensland ; on Naraigin station, occupied
by Murray Prior, there were three, his daughter tells us.
As stockmen they were invaluable. Herds were kept
together by their untiring skiU in tracking, and the

119

120 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

success of the Queensland pioneers may be ascribed
chiefly to the interest they took in their work. So, at
least, affirms an unusually competent judge.* They
were armed in high measure with the passive virtues
not uncommon in savage races. They cheerfully bore
suffering and privation. They were hilarious around
their camp-fii'e, and constant corroborees afforded an
outlet for their sociabihty.

The relations betAveen whites and blacks in the more
unsettled districts were often hostile, but where the
whites were just and humane, a beautiful harmony not
seldom prevailed. In the late thirties, IVIr. Bartley
relates, two squatters in the district of Armidale by
the kindness they showed induced a small tribe of
blacks to remain almost constantly near their station,
employing the young men as stockmen, shepherds,
and domestic servants. In Queensland, says ]\Iis.
Praed, recalling her childhood (and the writer has been
furnished \vith similar evidence about the interior of
New South Wales), they were nurses to the cliildren,
and carried them on their backs across creeks, or when
they climbed trees in search of opossums ; Mi's. Camp-
bell Praed, when she was a little girl, was taken by them
to a corroboree. The children went to (not into)
the gunyahs and played with the blacks. Young Rose
Murray Prior loved a half-caste boy, and Ringo taught
her to find grubs, iguanas, and the eggs of the black
snake. At the camps of the blacks she learnt to plait
dilly-bags, chop hives out of trees, and make drinking-
cups out of gourds. I

The state of things that prevailed in the southern
colonies in the thirties, forties, and fifties, and in
Northern Queensland in the fifties and sixties, is still
to be found in the Northern Territory and the North-
West. The stations from the Gascoyne River right
through the country and round the coast to Port Darwin,
says a well-informed writer, " are practically run by

* Grant, Bush Life in Queensland, ii. 155-61.

I Campbell Pbaed, My Australian Girlhood, pp. 64-8.

THE PA8T0RALI8T AND THE NATIVE 121

Native labour." Natives used to shear on all the
stations in the North- West, and on some they do it
still. They are fencers, shepherds, rabbiters, gardeners.
The men plant and tend ornamental trees, such as the
oleanders. The women " can be trained to make
excellent housemaids and nurses," and they are said,
by their patient ministrations to make the life of the
white woman in these sohtudes endurable. But they
must be treated according to their dispositions. They
must be left a good deal of their freedom, and they
must not be too much interfered with.* What was
said about them in more southern districts in the
forties is true of them still. Mr. Brown, of the famous
Queensland runholding firm of Beck and Brown, " always
found them reliable, if rehance was placed on them,
and if they were kindly, though firmly, used." They
did their work well, he admitted. "f

The relationship had its darker side. The blacks,
writes Mrs. Campbell Praed, who knew the sunny side
of them so well, " were a vague terror of my childhood."
Nightly she listened to blood-curdling stories of murder
by the vindictive and treacherous natives, and again
to tales of pursuit and wholesale massacre by the
infuriated whites. That very night when she was
taken to the corroboree she witnessed the rehearsal of
a deed of blood, and she ever afterwards reproached
herself with not having betrayed to her father the wild
things she saw, believing that she might thus have
prevented the terrible tragedy that followed, when
venerable mother and marriageable daughters, men
and boys were slain under their own roof. News would
come that several hands had been murdered at Young's
station, near Gladstone, or that Folsom, of Balloo
Creek, had been speared on the verandah of his house,
and that another squatter had been tomahawked while
camping under his dray. After a succession of such
outrages, or after one that was more than ordinarily

* Sydney Morning Herald, May 14, 1910.
f Baetley, Beminiscetices, p. 185.

122 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

hideous, when the passions of the whites were roused
to fury, a war of retahation, fierce and deadly, would
be entered upon, and might last for months. Stockmen
and trusted blackboys would be armed, and a foray
made. The far-famed and ill-famed black poHce might
be summoned. The fighting blacks would almost all
get killed, and the rest of the tribe be driven further
northwards. But the lesson would be only too well
learned. A spirit of distrust would grow up on both
sides. Refined women would learn to shoot with the
revolver and become deadly shots.*

Nevertheless, these same women were not blind to
the blood-guiltiness of the whites. " We should have
had no murders," said one of them, " had we con-
sistently appealed to the generosity of the blacks."
After telling the story of the Myall Creek murders, when
Attorney-General Plunkett was determined to procure
the conviction of the leaders, Mrs. Praed adds : " Had
there been more like Plunkett, the national conscience
would have had less cause for self-reproach." f It was
terror or a desire for revenge that drove the blacks to
commit their worst atrocities. The abuse of fire-arms
by convict servants was a frequent source of strife.
Countless hundreds of blacks, a police magistrate
testified, had been slaughtered away in the back country,
where high-handed wrong-doers were equally free from
protection, as they complained, and secure against
detection, as they felt, if they did not boast of it. J
All the histories and most contemporary narratives
abound in such tales. The case of the Myall Creek
murders is almost classic, but it needs to be told again
because, unhappily, it is typical of this class of crimes,
if it is far from being typical of the punishment meted
out to them.

In 1838 some 40 or 50 migratory natives, more than
half of them women and children, were temporarily

♦ Praed, op. cit., pp. 74, 100.

t Op. cit., p. 17.

J RusDEN, History of Australia, ii.

THE PASTORALIST AND THE NATIVE 123

encamped near a station that was situated on Myall
Creek, close by a tributary of the Darling River in the
far north of New South Wales. They are described
as being, all of them, " inoffensive and friendly."
Returning to his station after a short absence, the
superintendent missed the natives. Riding about the
run, he soon found the charred and blackened remains
of about 30 of them. A ghastly narrative was elicited
from Mr. Hobbs's stockmen. One day, he related,
a band of armed whites had come from a distance to
the station with the avowed object of taking vengeance
on the blacks for some alleged wrongs they had com-
mitted. The stockman, a convict, as were most mem-
bers of the band, at once joined it, and together they
attacked and destroyed the greater number of the
natives. Ten or twelve of them were said to have
escaped, but these were next day chased by the whites
and to all appearance made away with. The only
provocation alleged was that the blacks had speared
some cattle twenty or thirty miles further down, and
it was not proven that they were the same blacks.
Sternly natural means, yet such as in elder days would
have been regarded as supernatural proofs, led to the
finding of the remains of the victims. As " the Cranes
of Ibycus " in Schiller's impressive poem sheeted home
a murderer's guilt, so hundreds of birds of prey soaring
over the spot guided the searchers. Seven men — not
squatters, as, I think, Mrs. Campbell Praed calls them,
but convict servants — were tried for the crime, found
guilty, and promptly hanged. Need we say that the
resolute Sir George Gipps was then Governor ? What
other Governor that New South Wales has had would
have dared to outrage the sensibilities of the colonists
by hanging white men for the murder of mere blacks ?
A " most wise judge — a Daniel come to judgment,"
Sir W. W. Burton, long afterwards that President of
the Legislative Council who, with nineteen members
resigned their seats and solemnly left the Council
chamber because the Council had been swamped with

124 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

new appointees to carry the Free Selection Act — tried
the case, and in sternly comminatory language gave a
narrative of the facts that was itself damning. What
made his condemnation all the more necessary was the
confession of the murderers, who avowed the com-
mission of the offence charged. They " were not
aware that in killing blacks they were breaking the law."
The admission is itself a condemnation of the state of
society in which such a sentiment could be cherished.
The inflexible judge and the unsparing Governor were
savagely vilified, while the condemned criminals met
with sympathy.

The case against the settlers can be very strongly
stated, as it has been by Mr. Rusden, who holds a brief
for the defence of the poor blacks, as he did for the
Maoris. Lust, fear, hatred, and revenge, he energetically
says were the motives actuating the settlers in their
relations with the blacks. He had access to the letters
from Victorian pioneers addressed to Lieutenant-
Governor Latrobe while they were still unpublished, and
he extracts passages that tell strongly against the
whites. One told how women and children were killed ;
another of the " impudent and cruel conduct of some
of our people." He also cites expressions of opinion
by Governor Darling, who in 1826 " apprehended "
that certain memorialists, complaining of the " incur-
sions of numerous tribes of black natives " and their
" threats and murderous designs," were themselves
responsible for the Native disorders because they did
not reside on their properties, and also because irregu-
larities had been committed by some of their own
people. He adds on his own account that the atrocities
perpetrated by the whites can be but faintly imagined
by those unacquainted with the convicts, who were the
servants of the squatters. We must take a broader
view of the subject than his sympathies permitted Mr.
Rusden to take.

Li all parts of Australia the advance of the white
settlers was in the nature of an invasion, and was

THE PA8T0RALIST AND THE NATIVE 125

resisted by the blacks as invasions are resisted. Wave
after wave of settlement flowed along the shores of
rivers and the banks of creeks, and occupied ground
where the nomadic blacks dwelt, and drove away the
game on which they fed. Can we be surprised that
the plundered and expelled natives had recourse to
acts of war ? All the records are full of such facts and
events as belong to a state of war. Open that very
collection of letters from Victorian pioneers, and what
do we find ? On almost every page there are accounts
of depredations by the blacks, injuries inflicted on
cattle, and murders committed by them. Open it,
then, at page 190. Thus, in 1844, on one station, a
flock of sheep was driven away, and all the winter
"the natives were very troublesome." At another
station 1,000 sheep were lost, and a shepherd badly
speared. At another, the blacks stole, during the
winter, 800 sheep ; and there thefts of sheep were
continual. A fourth firm of squatters had 200 sheep
stolen, and in one winter lost in all about 900 sheep.
Next year the losses of the settlers by robberies were
considerable, and one firm lost 1,000 sheep. But we
need not continue the monotonous record. A long
list of stations could be given in several provinces,
whence the runholders were driven away by the per-
sistent hostility of the blacks.

Real and deep provocation there doubtless often was.
Thus, a settler on the Glenelg River, Victoria, reports
a " fearful loss of life " on the part of the " poor natives
by tAvo heartless young vagabonds " left as overseers.*
There is abundant evidence, again, to show that the
black women were taken and kept, their husbands being
sometimes murdered to facilitate the rape. On the
other hand, the settlers asserted that the women either
voluntarily offered themselves or were offered by their
relatives in exchange for presents. f

Cupidity on the part of the blacks was doubtless

* Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 30.
t Ibid.

126 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

another source of trouble. They had hitherto lived
on the few mammals, nearly all marsupials, that were
natives of the country, and the few A^dngless birds ;
but when they came to know the flavour of beef and
mutton, they keenly rehshed them. They therefore
stole sheep and cattle for food. Yet all observers state
that those they killed for food were few to the numbers
they killed in revenge.

As the pioneer flits from place to place, driven north-
ward, westward, and north-westward by the pressure
of population, precisely the same phenomena haunt his
steps. In the desert, on his way to the Northern
Territory, the overlander may come upon a lonely
grave, and, close by the remains of an old gunyah,
find another — the graves of victims of the blacks.
Elsewhere another opened grave is found under an iron-
wood tree, on the bark of which may be read the
words, rudely cut : " Travis — speared b}'^ the blacks,"
with the date of his death. The blacks had dug up
and scattered the bones, and tried to obliterate the
inscription.*

In the new country — the western side of the Northern
Territory and the Kimberley district of Western Aus-
tralia— the blacks continue the troubles they have
created everywhere else that the white man follows
them. They still do great damage among the cattle,
still more by those they scare than by those they kill.
The chroniclers of to-day tell the same tale as the his-
torians of a past generation — that cattle are easily
frightened or maddened by the scent of the blacks, and,
when they have been once scared, they groAV wild and
unmanageable. Yet the number of cattle destroyed
by the blacks in the Kimberley district alone is very
great : it is estimated at 4,000 head a year. There are
always, we are told, from 40 to 100 cattle-spearing
blacks in the gaols of Wyndham and Derby, f and there,

* Mbs. Dominic D. Daly, Northern Territory, pp. 332, 334,
337.

t Sydney Herald, April 30, 1910.

THE PAST0RALI8T AND THE NATIVE 127

another relates, the blacks who come from the interior
with the drovers cast contemptuous glances at their
brethren in chains. In the vast North-West, where
the white man found both goldfields and grassy prairies
to reward his discovery, alone in all Australia, the
blacks are able to hold their own with the invading
whites.

The young pioneer squatters in the Northern Terri-
tory cheerfully encountered hardships and perils. Some
lay down and died of starvation. Others, and these
also not a few, died of thirst, and men have been found
lying face downwards in a dry creek, though they had
wealth in their pockets. Very many, alas ! were
murdered by the natives. We hear of the long list of
brave men who paved the way for future squatters and
planters. Page after page of Mrs. Daly's otherwise bright
volume on the Northern Territory is chilled with the
ghastly narratives of the crimes of the blacks, such as
the Daly River outrages in 1882, and again those
committed in 1886. In the latter year the newspapers
teemed with the " murderous outrages " committed by
the blacks, not only on the coast, but all over the back
blocks, or in the interior. The squatters took stern
reprisals. They learnt, the amiable lady informs us,
that summary jurisdiction (or massacre without investi-
gation and without trial) was " the most efficient and
humane " way of dealing with these outbreaks. As a
detail, blacks were obliged to disarm before they ap-
proached a settlement.*

One of the most distinctive uses that have been made
of the lower races by immigrant peoples is to treat
them as what they really are — beings raised some
degrees above the animals, but retaining animal char-
acteristics. Darwin tells us that the Pampas Indians
are employed by the Spaniards as bloodhounds have
been employed in Cuba — to track out persons who
endeavoured surreptitiously to pass by the custom-
house stations in the mountains. The Australian blacks

• Daly, Northern Territory, pp. 324r-5, 219-22, 226-7, 294-6-

128 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

have for ninety years been employed in a similar manner.
In the early days, whenever (as was constantly happen-
ing) convicts tried to escape, they were instantly fol-
lowed into the bush by the black tracker, who had a
wonderful facility in tracking them, and, being armed,
seldom failed to bring them back, dead or ahve.

The too-famous Black Police has been the theme of
both history and fiction. It naturally arose from the
employment of the blacks as trackers — first of cattle,
and next of robbers and murderers. It was the almost
necessary counterpart of the earlier white mounted
police raised by Governor Brisbane in 1825. That
consisted of picked British troops, and it is described
as having been valuable and efficient. For five and
twenty years it did much to ensure the safety of the
settlers and guard their stock. Some writers have
deplored its disbandment in 1850, but though it might
doubtless have been effective in hindering the rise or
the spread of bushranging, it had accomplished its
primary task. By 1850 the blacks of New South Wales,
at least, had ceased to be formidable.

The Black Police was first formed in Victoria in
February, 1842, and the men were induced to join the
force through the influence of a leading chief. So, at
all events, states Mr. Thomas, a Protector of the Abori-
gines.* Another account affirms, doubtless of another
district, that the brothers, Pulteney Dana, were its
organizers and chiefs. The first-mentioned were re-
cruited from the Yarra tribe ; the second from beyond
the Murray and in Gippsland. The blacks composing
the force were selected for their physique and intelli-
gence, and they were well disciplined. The troopers,
with their white commanding officer, rode up in uniform,
on serviceable, well-conditioned horses, with their
carbines slung, their swords dangling and jingling.
They had a smart, serviceable look.

Their way of setting to work has been described by

* Letters from Victorian Pioneers, pp. 70 ff. Boldrewood,
Old Melbourne Memories.

I

THE PA8T0RALI8T AND THE NATIVE 129

a close observer. Suddenly, as they ride, one dismounts
and picks up a small piece of bark that had lately been
ignited. The other troopers gather round him. They
next examine every foot of the way. They then find
a tree whence a branch has been cut by a tomahawk.
The trail has been found. Patiently, for hours, they
follow it up, and soon they discover fresh signs of a
body of blacks having passed that way. A yell is
heard from one of the troopers, and all of them gallop
up at full speed and disappear in the scrub. A black is
stationed at each corner, and \\\i\\ two troopers they
charge the centre of the black tribe that has been
found. They soon make short Avork. In a few minutes
the resistance is broken. — From Victoria the institution
passed to New South Wales and Queensland.

The gradual destruction of the aboriginal blacks was
the greatest of the negative changes that the settlement
of Australia produced. The last of the continents was
converted from a black to a white. With the dis-
appearance of the indigenous dark race and the advent
of the most robust of the fair races it was definitely
launched on its career as a rival and leader of other
continental peoples. This great obstacle to the complete
colonisation of Australia had necessarily to be removed.
Much injustice and many wrongs were doubtless in-
flicted in the course of it. All such acts must be
branded ; and all have been bitterly expiated. They
do not affect the justness of the process. Landed
reserves have been made and aids to soothe the sufferings
of a dying race. But the natives had no longer a place
in countries where all the conditions of existence, even
the climatic, had been radically changed.

There can be no question of right or wrong in such a
case. The only right is that of superiority of race, and
the greater inherent capability on the part of the whites ;
the only real Avrong on the part of the blacks is their
all-round inferiority and their inability to till the ground
or even make use of its natural pastures. All other
wrongs were incidental and, in comparison, trivial.

9

130 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

This was the capital offence, and it was irredeemable.
Let their usefulness as shepherds and stockmen be
admitted, fully let it be allowed that, when the gold-
fever broke out, many a station was completely de-
serted by its hands, and the case for the blacks and
against the whites is not really bettered. They could
work as servants of the white immigrant ; as Darwin
already found in the thirties, they could not work for
themselves. They were not industrial units. The
Maoris learnt to farm ; the Australian blacks never
learnt to keep sheep or carry on a cattle-run.

Their disappearance was a natural necessity. It
came about in obedience to a natural law. It was
effected by natural processes, and folloMed on the lines
of the substitution of vegetal and animal species all
over the world.

CHAPTER XVI

THE squatters' BATTLE

The squatter was engendered by the excess of individual
energy and enterprise over the inertness and routine
of Government. Finding himself cramped \\ithin the
settled boundaries of the Colony, he pushed out in
search, not of " fresh woods," but of pastures new. To
regularise his occupancy of such lands " beyond the
boundaries of location," he Avas granted an annual
license at a moderate rate, with additional stock-money
on his head of cattle or sheep. Then, for a quarter of
a century, ensued a keen contest between the squatters
and the local Government, sometimes aided, sometimes
thwarted, by the Home Government. For, by the
Orders in Council of March 9, 1847, the squatters gained
from the Colonial Office under Earl Grey, a long-de-
manded and bitterly denied " recognition of their claim
to become, by mere occupation, entitled to the ultimate
freehold " of vast territorial tracts. At least, so it was
in New South Wales and, with more uncertainty, in
Victoria. South Australia, wisely guided by Edward
Gibbon Wakefield, and New Zealand, judiciously go-
verned by Sir George Grey, escaped the scourge. Wake-
field, indeed, always protested against the creation of a
Crown title to the users of natural pasturage. His
protest had little weight with the able and conscientious,
but wrong-headed and crotchety Secretary for the
Colonies. With this exorbitant acquisition, the run-
holder, now definitively known as the very lordly
squatter, the patriarch of his county or his district and

131

132 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the patrician of the State, became the chief collective
power in New South Wales. Such was the outcome of
a mere claim to a constructive title or pre-emptive right
in respect of pastures held under license.

The making and the conceding of the claim were the
beginning of woes. The battle resembled the struggle
between the great fief-holders of England and the
Cro^vll ; and the steps by which the feudal chieftains
emancipated themselves from their obligations to their
suzerains and acquired an absolute property (as absolute
as ever British law allows it to be made) in their granted
and their hereditary estates, was a rehearsal of the
struggle between the run-holders of Ncav South Wales,
claiming property in their runs, and the Government and
the people.

Towards the end (December 19) of 1840 Governor Sir
George Gipps luminously explained the situation to
Lord John Russcl, then Secretary for the Colonics. He
described the licensed occupiers, or squatters, and
plainly differentiated them from the American squatters.
They were often gentlemen of good family, officers of
the army or navy, or graduates of Oxford or Cambridge,
and they had always some means, while some of them
were wealthy. They did not yet claim (if Gipps was
right) to have a secure possession of their stations, nor
did they assert any right of pre-emption. They knew
that their lands would eventually be taken from them,
or that they would have to pay an advanced price to
purchase them, but they believed that, as the country
was gradually thrown open to occupation, one district
after another, in the scramble they would have at least
an equal chance with other buyers at auction. On
one point especially he doubted the M'isdom of the
regulations made earlier in the year. One of these
regulations permitted individuals to select special
surveys of 5,120 acres. Had it been perpetuated, it
would have definitively legalised the large runholder.
Now, it was decided that no more special surveys of
5,000 acres, equal to eight square miles, like some near

SIR GEORGE GIPPS.

p. 132]

THE SQUATTERS' BATTLE 133

Melbourne, should be allowed. In February, 1841, the
regulations were rescinded. Gipps, strong and capable,
had prevailed. Lord John Russell, who had seemed
to favour the big squatter, now scared him by a pro-
posal to raise both the licenses and the assesf-ment on
stock. He thought " the license might be raised to
five or six times its present amount " (from £10 to £50
or £60). The proposal threw them into a panic, for
times were bad then. Then came a new bill carried by
Lord Stanley, who decided that no more gratuitous
grants should be made (a superfluous decision), and
provided, instead, that land should be sold by auction
at a minimum price of £1 per acre, while special blocks
of 20,000 acres might be sold. Evidently, there was an
uncomfortable oscillation between large and medium-
sized domains. Governor Gipps was still against the
large squatters, but had not yet influenced Lord Stanley
as he influenced Lord John. He took measures to
heighten the panic Russell had created. He aimed at
limiting runs, say, to an amount that would suffice for
500 head of cattle or 5,000 sheep. The license for each
run (many of the squatters held a number of runs) was
to be separate. Improvement or cultivation would give
the occupier " a kind of right to purchase a portion of
his run, or otherwise to obtain secure possession for a
term of years after occupation as a tenant-at-will."

After making official inquiries through 1843-44, Gipps
issued his Regulations for the Occupation of Crown
Lands. They do not now appear specially onerous.
He merely proposed to limit the extent of runs and to
exact contributions according to the area occupied and
the number of stock depastured. The right of the
Government to oust the squatter was to remain absolute,
and runs were to be resumable without compensation.
The whole colony rose against the new regulations like one
man. But it was by no means a rising on the side of the
squatters. Little sympathy was felt for the would-be
aristocracy, though much might be somewhat hypo-
critically expressed. It was a rising against arbitrary

134 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AU8TBALASIA

taxation, without the assent of the semi-elective Legis-
lative Council that then represented alike the governors
and the governed. The squatters skilfully made ^^•hat
was really their cause appear to be the popular cause,
A question of tea lighted up a national insurrection in
North America, and a question of land-tenure gave
birth in Australia to a quasi-national rising ; for it
was as passionately urged in Victoria and the future
Queensland as in New South Wales. For once, and
once only, the three most potent personalities in the
Mother-Colony made common cause and banded them-
selves together against the action of the Governor.
Wentworth opposed them, and endeavoured to stamp
out what he called " the leprosy of the beautiful Squatter
Regulations," because he had quarrelled with Gipps,
and because he belonged to the threatened class and
saw his personal interests endargcied ; but he opposed
them on larger and more creditable grounds as invasions
of that British fetish — the liberty of the subject. Robert
Lowe opposed them, it is said, because he too had quar-
relled on pitiful personal grounds with his former patron
Sir George Gipps, but far more, we may hope and be-
lieve, because the regulations were in collision with
those Liberal principles of which he was all his days
the convinced exponent. Finally, Dr. Lang opposed
them, partly (we may suspect) because Gipps had
thwarted the repayment of a large sum to the Scots
Church — that is, to Dr. Lang — vhich Lang had ex-
pended in its name ; but again, we are fully assured,
because they constituted — or appeared to constitute —
an attempt at taxation by the Executive without the
indisjoensable sanction of the Legislature.

The squatters saw their supremacy threatened, their
very existence endangered, and they fought as men
fight jyro uris et pro focis. Not only the squatters, but
merchants and tradeis, A\ho however must have been
largely dependent on the squattciocracy, united to op-
pose the new encroachments on the privileges of the
Legislative Council (whose prerogative of legislation

THE SQUATTERS' BATTLE 135

seemed menaced) and the rights of the people. Meetings
were held in Melbourne and Sydney and elsewhere.
The storm, for such small communities, was loud and
threatening.

Though of iron mould, Gipps bent before the blast.
He privily communicated to a member of the Council
certain modified, indeed new proposals. Settlers buying
their homesteads would secure thereby undisturbed
possession of their runs for eight years. A second
purchase would secure another eight years' tenancy,
and so on. Rights of the Crown over the runs, he ad-
mitted, were still absolute, but he laid stress on the
security derived from the character of the British
Government, which would not arbitrarily deprive any
squatter of his run.

This concession but slightly appeased the rage of the
great landholders. Ben Boyd, holding 388,000 acres,
and paying as a quit-rent what Mr. Mantalini would
have termed " the ridiculous sum " of £80, presided
over a protesting meeting. Robert Lowe, who at one
time was a henchman and nominee of the Governor,
strongly opposed the Regulations, doubtless finding
in the squatters his most remunerative clients. Lord
Stanley loyally stood by the Governor. He refused
to acknowledge the doctrine that an absolute pro-
perty in their runs inhered in the occupiers. Still, he
would communicate to the runholders a feeling of
security by granting them leases for an eight-years'
occupation of their runs.

Not only did the combatants win their cause ; they
accomplished a far greater result. They succeeded
in annulling the regulations of Sir George Gipps, but
they also made the triumph of the squatters' cause a
certainty. It was largely through the influence of
Lowe, Wentworth modestly said, that the pastoralists
were granted fixity of tenure and rights of pre-emption.
Lowe and Lang aided in bringing about that reign of
the shepherd kings they were the first to deplore.

CHAPTER XVII

THE squatters' VICTORY

The squatters en masse, with such great leaders and
such powerful allies, had defeated the Anti-Squatting
Governor. They were not therefore satisfied. The
concessions that had been made to them had only
whetted their appetite. They were now organized
and grown conscious of the unity of their interests and
the menace of their strength.

Circumstances favoured them. Their neglect to seek
the annual renewal of the license, and the failure to
demand payment of the annual fee, laid the foundations
of their subsequent claims. They began to look upon
their runs as their oAvn. The permission to sell them —
that is, to sell their grazing rights in them — confirmed
this feeling of ownership. What a man can sell belongs
to him. With every improvement made — the building
of a house, the equipment of a stockj^ard, the stocking
of the run — the sense of proprietorship was strengthened.
They " formed " the station, it was said. Was a station
taken up and abandoned without being formed ? It
was no-man's-land and lay open to all-comers.

The mood of the squatters was well expressed in some
doggrel lines of the time. When A. Boyd was supposed
to be asked by Earl Grey whether the squatters would
accept leases of their runs, lie mimicked the famous
rhyming despatch of Canning, and replied : —

" My lord.
It sounds more clever,
' To me and to my lioira for over 1 ' "

86

THE SQUATTERS' VICTORY 137

That was their ambition, and their habitual feeling
was one of possession.

Rolf Boldrewood, in one of those very years (1844),
has well expressed the exultation of the runholder : —

" Pride and successful ambition swelled my breast on that
first morning as I looked round on my run. My run ! my own
station ! How fine a sound it had, and how fine a thing it was
that I should have the sole occupancy— almost ownership — of
about 50,000 acres of ' wood and wold,' mere and marshland,
hill and dale. It was all my own — after a fashion — that is ;
I had but to receive my squatting license, under the hand of the
Governor of the Australias,* for which I paid ten pounds, and
no white man could in any way disturb, harass, or dispossess
me." t

Their case had its strong points. It seemed a ter-
rible thing that men who occupied thousands of acres
with thousands of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep,
should be at the mercy of an outcry for the sale of any
portion of their land, and lack security of tenure. Fixity
of tenure, convertible into freehold by means of a right
of pre-emption, was their aim and their war-cry. They
scouted the rights of the Crown. They demanded that
the annual license-fee should be abolished or made
nominal ; that quit-rents should be waived or reduced ;
and that the control of the Crown lands should pass
into the hands of the Governor and the Legislative
Council, which should frame such leases as would give
security to occupiers.

The clamour for security on the part of the squatters
was incessant. They asked that it should be made
impracticable for selectors to buy their runs, or any
considerable portion of them, over their heads. Was
it unreasonable ? Does not every tenant of a house,
in London, Sydney, or Christchurcli, solicit an assurance
that some mean, grasping, or (it may be) vindictive
individual does not successfully tempt the cupidity or
unwisdom of his landlord by taking his house from him
by offering a higher rent ? And does he not desire

* Sir C. FitzRoy was the first Governor-General of Australia,
f Old Melbourne Memories, ch. v.

138 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the same security against the result of a sale ? Both
claims appeared nothing more than reasonable to the
mass of the people in Australia, as to the few in Great
Britain who felt any curiosity on the subject. In 1845
associations were formed in both England and Scotland,
where the runholders had many influential connections,
to protect the special " interests of the squatters and
the general interests of New South Wales," as if, for
once at least, the interests of the individual and the
community were identical. The head of an ancient
Scottish noble family. Lord Polwarth, supported the
claims of the pastoralists and the granting of long
leases. His son, Henry Scott, pleaded their cause in
the House of Commons. A meeting was held in London,
where a motion was carried proposing the granting of
leases for twenty-one years. (All the proposals were
for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, and it is curious
to observe that State terms are so often multiples of
seven.) Lord Stanley, Secretary of State, was evi-
dently moved — as deeply, perhaps, by his now confirmed
Toryism as by the plaints of the big squatters or the
remarkable and rare consensus of public opinion. He
was now inclined to favour the granting of leases. He
referred the matter to " his man, Friday," as Dr. Lang
coarsely named the masterful Governor, and plainly
with the desire that the Governor should supply him
with the necessary encouragement. Gipps Mas no
weakling, and he was reluctant to yield to the demands
of the pastoralists. He still held that " to allow the
large squatters to seize on all the waste lands of the
Crown would be to ruin the Colony." To the last he
clung to quit-rents. He still objected to leases for more
than a year. He opposed the right of pre-emption.
Yet he felt that the drift of opinion, official as well as
public, was all in the direction of making the concessions
demanded. Struggling vainly against the same current.
Lord Stanley brought in a bill granting leases for seven
years in place of the annual licenses, which had insen-
sibly merged in virtual leases. The subject was still

THE SQUATTERS' VICTORY 139

under discussion in official circles when the thoughts
of all were absorbed in the vital question of protection
versus free-trade. Lord Stanley disappeared from
office with the fall of the Peel ministry, and, in England
at least, the question went to sleep for a time.

But not for long. A new Secretary of State, Lord
Howick, soon to become Earl Grey, succeeded to Lord
Stanley. He too was masterful, even perverse, and ill
to deal with. He quickly discerned the way the wind
was blowing. In his very first year of office, 184G, he
already expressed his willingness to grant leases. He
said, quite incorrectly, that Governor Gipps had re-
commended the granting of eight years' leases. He
could not but perceive that English opinion was steadily
growing favourable to the concession. He confessed
that it was thought by his predecessors and himself that
such a change should be made as would prevent the
squatters from continuing in a state of barbarism. A
bill was introduced in 1846, and Orders-in-Council
of 1847 gave effect to it, which provided for the granting
of leases for a maximum term of fourteen years, with
an average term of eight years. The right of pre-
emption was conceded. The squatters had gained all
that they asked for, and far more than they can ever
have hoped to obtain.

The effect was immediate. Possessed with a feeling
of security they had never before known, the squatters
everywhere began to make " improvements." They
fenced, and were the better able to cope with the ravages
of disease in their flocks and herds. They built stock-
yards and commodious woolsheds, and were in a posi-
tion to perfect their breeds and accurately class their
wool. They built houses and could now, in most cases,
first offer a home to women of their own class, who
introduced the elegancies of life where rudeness had
prevailed, brought civilisation into the midst of bar-
barism, and refined the manners of the men who had
already sunk some degrees in the social scale and were
in danger of sinking further. They had lived from

140 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

hand to mouth ; they might now plan and build and
breed for a decade or (as in their intoxication they be-
lieved) for all time. The squatters had triumphed.

A strange reaction in public opinion ensued. The
Colony appeared to wake up to a sense of what it had
done, and realised that it had bartered away its birth-
right, for no visible equivalent. By the admission of the
squatters' historian, G. W. Rusden, Earl Grey's bill,
with the Orders-in-Council that gave effect to it, ex-
asperated the community against them, because it
locked up the land, squandered a magnificent inheri-
tance, and led to corruption in the Government de-
partments by favouring intrigues to obtain land. A
profound jealousy of the great pastoralists sprang up
and bore bitter fruit for many years. Their very friends
turned against them. Robert Lowe had fought hard
for them, and when — largely through his agency, we
are assured on the high authority of Wentworth — they
had got all that they claimed, this ardent advocate of
their rights wheeled round and became the squatters*
implacable foe. None had more strenuously battled
against the proposed squatting regulations of 1844 than
Dr. Lang, but from the moment the Orders-in-Council
of 1847 were issued, he reprobated the squatters as the
natural enemies of the rest of the Colony. The popu-
lace even lifted up its heel against the man who had
long been its idol, and when Wentworth stood for re-
election in 1851, he had to make a passionate personal
appeal to the electors of Sydney, who were bent on
driving him out, and who relented so far as to place
him at the bottom of a poll where Dr. Lang, his sworn
foe, was at the top. The democracy at last realised
that the squatters were its natural enemies.

In New South Wales the great extent of the land
that remained in the possession of tlie Crown, which
was still available to make provision for new selectors
without infringing on the integrity of the runs held
by the squatters, hindered the question from becoming
a matter of life and death. It was otherwifce with more

THE SQUATTERS' VICTORY 141

limited Victoria. There the demand for agricultural
land or land for townships was keener and less easily
satisfied, and the resentment against the Orders-in-
Council was stronger. Mr, Fawkner, one of the founders
of Victoria, and (as Mr. Rusden would say) a squatter
manqui, denounced the squatters as robbers, Lieu-
tenant-Governor Latrobe took the same side, though
he, of course, did not use the same language. He was
more argumentative. In 1851 he was still opposed to
making any concessions to the pastoralist occupiers.
He warned the Government of New South Wales against
the impohcy of recognising the claims of the squatters
to the fee-simple or to the right of pre-emption over
them. He advised the revision of the Orders-in-Council
and, especially, the rescission of the acknowledgment
of the squatters' pre-emptive rights. Sir Charles
FitzRoy, the squatters' Governor, considered the ex-
tinction of these rights, or even the qualification of them,
as "incompatible with the preservation of the faith
of the Crown pledged by the Orders-in-Council." The
subject was referred to that solvent, or confuser, of all
colonial political problems — the Colonial Office, which
on this occasion thoroughly earned the title of the
Circumlocution Office. The Duke of Newcastle was
then at the head of the hybrid department of War and
the Colonies — and in those days there Avas apt to be a
wonderfully close connection between war and the
colonies. The Duke took ample time to consider the
many knotty questions submitted to him. He thought
to shelve the question by referring the decision on it
to the law-officers of the Crown. Their opinion, or that
of one of them, would have settled the matter, could
any legal opinion have settled it. So high an authority
as Sir Roundell Palmer held that the occupants had
" a clear and indisputable right to leases." The Colonial
Office, somewhat scared doubtless by so positive a de-
liverance, did not venture to ask the opinion of the
other law-officer, Sir Alexander Cockburn. In a quan-
dary, the Duke of Newcastle refused to lay down any

142 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

principle, but authorised Governor FitzRoy to sell land
that was required for public purposes, even though it
was wdthin the boundaries of a run. But it was ap-
parently by annexing private conditions to the sale.
On the other hand, he was authorised to grant leases,
and for the maximum term, if the pastoral tenants were
content to receive them exempt from those conditions
which are at once injurious to the community and useless
for merely pastoral purposes."

At this point, as far as New South Wales or Victoria
was concerned, the matter remained, and the outbreak
of the Crimean war drew the thoughts of IMinisters in
England in a different direction.

In South Australia there was never any collision
between the pastoralists and the agriculturalists, and
there the Orders-in-Council were successfully applied.

The judgments passed on the Orders-in-Council,
framed to give effect to the famous Waste Lands Act
of 1846, were various. That of Robert Lowe was the
most trenchant in expression. As against a fellow-
subject, he held, they gave the squatter " every muni-
ment that can give permanence to possession." As
against the Crown, they " left him defenceless." As a
sale was impracticable, the squatters' temporary occu-
pation was equivalent to permanent alienation. Their
terms, indeed, seem to leave no doubt on the subject.
According to cap. 2, sec. 6, the land in occupation by a
runholder could not be sold during the continuance of
the lease. They could still be sold to such lessee. But
the power given to a Governor to dispose of lands for
public purposes, implied the absolute dependence of
the squatter on the Government. A difference was
made according as the lands occupied ^A'ere in settled
or unsettled districts. A new local Order, permitting
the short leasing of lands in settled districts, also per-
mitted such lands to be sold, but in the unsettled dis-
tricts— that is to say, over the greater part of all the
colonies — land was held under leases that ran for four-
teen years, with a prior right to purchase inhering in

THE SQUATTERS' VICTORY 143

the leaseholder. The character of the Orders seems
beyond cavil. They granted practical temporary pos-
session to all holders and permanent possession to all
men of adequate means.

It was a squatters' victory, and was on all grounds
defensible. For that longer or shorter period in the
history of every Australasian colonj^while the pastoral
age endured, such a hold on their tracts of pasture-land
was acquired as would enable that age to be lived out
to the fullest measure of the colony's capacity. Nothing
less than a degree of possession while it lasted would
have sufficed to treat those pastures and breed those
sheep and cattle that have formed far greater stores
of wealth than have been dug out from the bowels of
the earth. Nothing less would have reared the men —
grazier, stockman, drover, carrier, shepherd and shearer
— who solidly laid the human base of the pastoral age.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE squatters' TRIBUNE : W. C. WENTWOKTH

It is altogether fitting that one of the greatest Austra-
lians should trace his ancestry back to famous historical
individuals, Wentworth claimed to have sprung from
the most celebrated of all the Wentworths — that Earl
of Strafford, whose motto and practice of " Thorough "
assured for him an immortality of glory or infamy by
the side of the master whom he served only too faith-
fully ; and the present head of the family, who main-
tains the pretension, possesses a pedigree drawn up by
Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King-at-Arms, which upholds
the claim. Unfortunately for the patrician pride of
the founder, the claim is not allowed by the unofficial
heralds who open or close at will, on due cause being
shown, the rigid circles of aristocracy. The conscien-
tious Mr. Ashworth Burke professes to show that the
Australian patriot belonged to an old Irish family which
traces its ancestry back to D'Arcy Wentworth of Athlone,
in Roscommon County. The Irish family was, none the
less, of Enghsh origin. Wentworth of Athlone was the
son of Michael Wentworth of York, mIio was himself
the scion of a distinguished family. Wealth did not
accompany the immigrant to Ireland, or did not remain
in his family. Our statesman's father is described as
"an impoverished Irish gentleman," who emigrated
to New South Wales, as his ancestor had done to Ireland,
to improve his fortunes, and in this re.'spcct he was more
successful than his ancestor. Speaking in Sydney in
1848, W. C. Wentworth said : " It is on my native soil

144

p. 144]

■'ii

WILLIAM CHARLES WENTWORTH.

THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 145

that I here stand." The expression was a figure of
speech. He was born at Norfolk Island, and that
island, it is true, was then a dependency of New South
Wales, but it was only by a forced construction that he
could call himself a native of New South Wales. A
native of Gibraltar or of Malta might properly describe
himself as an Englishman ; he certainly could not speak
of England as his natal soil. Like most men of his
commanding stamp, however, WentM^orth was taken
at his own valuation, and in those years, while they
were still friends, Robert Lowe spoke of him as " the
great son of the soil." It was morally, if not physically,
true.

He was not the first member of his family who played
a part in the history of New South Wales. On a memor-
able occasion he declared that " the best blood " in his
veins flowed to him from his father. D'Arcy Went-
worth came out to Australia in the same ship of the
Second Fleet in which the still more famous John
Mc Arthur at first sailed. Had it contained no others
of note, that fleet would have been well freighted.
Having some medical education, D'Arcy was early
sent to Norfolk Island as a Government surgeon, and
there his record was not quite unblemished. In later
days he was publicly reprimanded by Lieutenant-
Governor Johnston for disobedience to orders, and
soon after he was suspended from his office as Assistant-
Surgeon by Governor Bligh. He must have grown
wealthy, but not, we may feel sure, as a medical prac-
titioner. Under Governor Macquarie D'Arcy Went-
worth and two others undertook to erect a hospital
in Sydney, provided they were allowed to purchase
and retail annually 15,000 gallons of spirits for a
period of four years ; for the Colony was still in the
bad days of the infamous traffic in spirits, which a
succession of Governors had endeavoured to sup-
press. According to Dr. Lang, who is not an impartial
authority on the subject, the arrangement was a
highly gainful one to the contractors ; the building

10

146 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

was equivocally known thereafter as the Rum Hospital.*
Some adjacent public-houses were owned by the
syndicate.

With his high connections young Wentworth readily
found official employment in a colony of officials. In
1811, at the age of eighteen years, he M'as appointed
Deputy Provost-Marshal. But also, with his great
talents, he soon found employment for himself, and in
1813, when only twenty, he accompanied Gregory Blax-
land and Lieutenant Lawson in the first successful
escalade of the Blue Mountains, when the plains of
Bathurst and the valleys of the Murrumbidgee and its
tributaries were thrown open to an invading army of
pastoralists.

The younger Wentworth was destined to greatness.
While still an undergraduate at Cambridge he unsuc-
cessfully competed for the prize for a poem on Australia,
which equalled most prize poems in the splendour of
its versification, and surpassed them all in reality and
in passion bred of an intimate acquaintance ^^^th the
things described. Returning to his native land, he
soon began to take an active interest in public affairs.
We shall see how prominent and how glorious was the
part that he played on certain great public questions,
while his policy on others gradually alienated from him
the popularity he had honourably ^^•on.

In 1819, while he still resided in England, he published
his great work on Australia, which long held a place
as the first book adequate to the subject that had been
published. There a diatribe against Chaplain Samuel
Marsden was reheved by an eulogium of Governor Mac-
quarie for his behaviour to the Emancipists. In 1824
he returned to New South Wales in company with Dr.
Wardell, where they practised as barristers — the only
ones in the Colony, and they enjoyed a lucrative practice.
He started a newspaper, which was a scourge of offi-
cialism. He set up as the leader of the Emancipists,
and plotted the overthrow of Governor Darling ; and,
* Account, i. 141-2.'

THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 147

when Darling was leaving the Colony, he organized a
disgraceful orgy at his home of Vaucluse and under
the cabin-windows of the ship in which the anti-emanci-
pist Governor was to sail.

With his innate distinction and his squatter's habits
and surroundings, Wentworth can never have been a
democrat. Yet it is notable that, unlike James Mc-
Arthur, Charles Cowper, and other squatters, or Robert
Lowe, M^ho was the squatters' friend, he never sat for a
county in the Legislative Council. As if he were too
great to belong to a party or a class, he habitually pre-
sented himself to the electors of Sydney, even after he
had lost much of their confidence. Indeed, he professed
to be a tribune of the people. He showered contempt
on the nominee members of the Legislative Council.
He asked the 'pUhs if it would tamely submit to an in-
tolerable form of government. He urged it to demand
the common-law rights of every subject, which an un-
reformed Parliament had for forty-five years withheld
from it. He denounced financial arrangements —
namely, the fixing by the Government of the permanent
officers in its emploj^ment — made without the know-
ledge of the Council. He claimed for the Council the
right to control the proceeds of the sale and leasing of
Crown Lands. It was their industry, he told his hearers,
that raised the revenue ; would they endure taxation
M^thout representation ? If they did, they were " a
conquered, an abject, a degraded people." All this
was in 1833, and he aided in forming a Patriotic Asso-
ciation to demand a reformed constitution. He led
the patriots, but he also led the Emancipists, and it was
on this ground that most of the squatters deserted him
for a time.

His temper was autocratic. He browbeat a sheriff
who, presiding at a political meeting, ruled a point
of order against Wentworth's party. " I will neither
be curbed myself nor suffer any friend of mine to be
curbed," he haughtily cried. It was not justice for
others that he sought, but justice for himself. Like

148 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

some of the advocates of laissez-faire, he was resolute
to assert his own rights, but less eager to defend the
rights of others.

Wentworth's political career did not hinder him from
eagerly pursuing his own interests. Dr. Lang described
him as " one of the largest speculators in land and stock
in New South Wales." He was a wealthy land-owner
in Australia, but land-hunger is not easily sated, and,
shortly before the annexation of New Zealand, Went-
worth and other members of Avhat we should now call
a syndicate concluded, with some nine Maori chiefs who
had lately visited Sydney for the purpose, a treaty,
duly signed and sealed, for the cession of the greater
part of the South Island of New Zealand ! According
to the veracious Dr. Lang, the syndicate bartered for
the twenty million acres thus easily acquired some
coarse blankets, some cheap English muskets, some kegs
of gunpowder, and other such articles.

Such is the perverted account of the transaction sup-
plied by Dr. Lang's distorting imagination. The true
account of it varies considerably. (1) Instead of 20
million acres in the South Island, only ten millions were
contracted for, together with 200,000 acres in the North
Island. (2) In place of Lang's burlesque purchase-
money (blankets, etc.) each of the (nine) Maori chiefs
was to be paid £200 and to receive life annuities of £100.
It was a bad transaction, but not quite so bad as Dr.
Lang misrepresented it. Truthfulness and exactitude
were not the fighting doctor's cardinal virtues.

Happily for itself, New Zealand was then a political
depenclency of New South Wales, and the government
of the Mother-colony was then, still more happily, in
the strong hands of Sir George Gipps. When the bill
for giving effect to this extraordinary transaction came
before the Legislative Council, the Govcrnor-in-Chief
did not spare the ' bloated monopolist.' In scathing
language he reprobated the shameful bargain. If all
the corruption, ho asserted, that had defiled England
since the expulsion of the Stiuarts were gathered into

THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 149

a heap, it would not amount to such a sum as was in-
volved in the transaction now debated. If all the job-
bery since Walpole were piled up into one job, it would
not be as big a job as this that Wentworth now asked
the Governor or the Government to perpetrate. The
chief owner of twenty million acres ! He would have
been a squatter in excelsis ! And all these broad acres
bought at a price reckoned at the rate of a farthing per
100 acres ! That would have surpassed missionary
Williams, missionary Taylor, and other like M'orthies,
who " bought " only 110,000 acres from the unsuspecting
Maoris, and paid much more for them. But there was
still. Sir George held, such a thing as public virtue,
and public integrity was not banished from the bosoms
of men in office. In the name of these high attributes
the Governor urged the Legislative Council to pass the
prohibitory bill, declaring that no titles to land were
valid that were not derived from or confirmed by the
Queen-in-Council. Wentworth pleaded before the Legis-
lative Council for two days, but the bill was passed.
Wentworth threw up his commission as a justice of the
peace, and Gipps withdrew his recommendation that
Wentworth should be placed in the Legislative Council.
It was a humiliating defeat for Wentworth, and he was
not one of those who forgive. He was thenceforth
Gipps's implacable foe.*

Wentworth's defeat on this historic occasion nerved
him to press for the reform of the Council. A few years
later he partially succeeded. The Council was made
elective in 1851. A few more years, and he was to be
completely successful. Constitutional government was
granted to the Colony. His defeat had other results
still. When Gipps endeavoured to inoculate the Colony
with " the leprosy of his beautiful code of squatters'
regulations," as Wentworth called it, the great squatter,
not yet the squatters' tribune, led the van of the resist-

* Dr. Lang reprints the speech of Sir George Gipps, and he
could hardly have taken a more deadly means of paying off old
scores. See his Account of New South Wales, i. Appendix.

150 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

ance. Not till 1847, when the Orders-in-Council were
issued, he was at last won over to be the pastorahsts'
chief. A year later he recanted his Radicalism. In
1839, as a member of the Patriotic Association, he was
so much of a Radical that he advocated a £5 franchise ;
in 1848 he went so far back on his old contentions that
he deemed a £20 franchise low enough.

A great landholder, Went^'orth was one of eight
individuals on the Liverpool Plains who held, among
them, 1,747,840 acres ; and the possession of three great
stations was but the just expression in landed property
of that puissant personality. He was the squatters'
tribune ; and in that capacity beyond doubt the greatest
service that he rendered to the cause of the pastorahsts
was the introduction and the carrying of the Lien on
Wool Act 1844 ; and he threatened to leave the Colony
if it was vetoed by the Home Government.

Wentworth was not the tribune of the squatters on
their own terms. He had not always been their ally.
During the twenty years of his crusade on behalf of the
Emancipists he was necessarily opposed to them, and
in his book on Australia, published in 1819, he launched
an indictment against the " Exclusivists " — the squatters
and others who would deny to the emancipists the pos-
session of political privileges. In 1844 he delivered
against Ben Boyd, the largest squatter in Australia,
the most stirring of his speeches. When he addressed
his constituents in 1848, he admitted that he belonged
to an unpopular class. " I perceive that the squatters
are no favourites of yours," he told his audience, " and
I am a squatter." He was a squatter rather by status
than by predilection, and (I am authoritatively informed)
he never resided on any of his three large stations.
When he stood for election, he did not seek a squatter's
constituency ; he preferred to sit for Sydney, and he
long rejoiced in representing the democracy. It was
Robert Lowe, far more than himself, he explained, whose
influence and oratory had procured leases of their runs
for the squatters. No one, he asserted, " had more

THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 151

earnestly upheld the people's right of freehold." He
was, in fact, a statesman by vocation, and if he was
a territorial prince, the virtual owner of half-a-county,
it was for the honour of the thing and the prestige at-
tached to the practical possession of extensive domains.
He was the Australian homologue of the great Enghsh
and European nobles, in whom the government of their
country was inseparable from the tenure of great landed
estates.

The possession of those great estates conspired with
his innate pride of race to convert Wentworth openly
into the aristocrat that he had always been at heart,
and dug a gulf between his earlier and his later career.
The old emancipist and Radical was already a Con-
servative. In that great year of 1848 Wentworth stood
at bay, as if resisting the advent of that democracy that
was to sweep men like him for ever from power. He
spoke like Gladstone in 1866, defending himself from
a charge of tergiversation or apostasy. On the Trans-
portation question he had acted with Cowper and Lowe.
" Why, then," he indignantly asked, " do you raise
your voices against me only ? Why am I to be singled
out for obloquy for doing that which all besides have
done ? Why do you not clamour down others with
this charge ? "

He was accused of misrepresenting and slandering
the Irish. It was a dangerous charge in those days,
when the vast majority of the emancipists was Irish,
and therefore the bulk of the population was Irish. It
would be a dangerous charge even now, when nominally
30 per cent., but probably, if personal observation may
be trusted, 60 per cent., of the population of Sydney,
is still Irish and Catholic. His retort was passionate
and personal : —

"It is true that in a certain debate in the Council I did de-
nounce the Irish murderers — those branded ruffians who, in some
of her counties, were polluting her soil and blasting her fame
with the blood of innocent and unresisting victims. In the full
abhorrence and detestation of my heart I denounce these men.

152 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

not only as destroyers of human life, but as the assassins of
Ireland's good-name. Some of the best blood in my veins is
Irish, and who will venture to tell me that I am bold enough or
base enough to calumniate the land of my father ? "

Unlike Gladstone, he had groAvn Conservative with
age, and the champion of the unrepresented populace
would now restrict the franchise he had proposed to
enlarge in 1839. He had ceased to be a democrat, and
yet was much of a Liberal. His chief offence, however,
was that he was a squatter, and the squatters were not
now popular. But who made them unpopular, he
queried ? What monopolies and what privileges loaded
them with odium ? Who gave them fixity of tenure
and the right of pre-emption ? It was the very people
— the anti squatting democracy — that gained these
things for the maligned squatter. W^as it not they who
crowded to the Royal Hotel in Sydney in 1844, and pe-
titioned the Home Government to grant twenty-one
years' leases to the squatters ?

Did he not again resemble Gladstone — the Gladstone
of the famous peroration beginning :

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor —

when he said — still in this impassioned harangue of

1848?

" You may cause it to be written on the tombs of my friend
and myself — Here lie the rejected of Sydney. But I will venture
to prophesy that in juxtaposition witli those words posterity will
add — Who gave to those who deserted them the liberty of the Press,
Trial by Jury, and the constitutional right of electing their own
representatives."

There spoke the true patriot, and the words that followed
burned still more ardently with love for what was, by
both birth and adoption, his native land.

As it happened, he was not one of " the rejected of
Sydney," which in after-years was twice or thrice to re-
ject another greatLiberal, Sir Henry Parkes, but only after
he had rejected his own most characteristic principles.*

• RuSDEN, G. W., History of Australia, ii. 449-C4.

THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 153

He was returned at the head of the poll in 1848, in
recognition of the justice of the self -vindication his
haughty spirit had stooped to make ; but when, three
years later, he was precipitated to the lowest winning
place on the poll for the same metropolitan constituency,
a revulsion of feeling took place in his mind. He was
called on to resign, but, declaring that he would hold
the seat to which he had been legally elected, he inwardly
resolved that he would retain it only till he had carried
his proposed constitution through the Legislature, and
then he would shake the dust of the Colony from off his
feet. He carried his great measure, and, having been
sent Home to coach it in its passage through Parliament,
he washed his hands of Australian affairs and settled
down to the life of an English country gentleman. It
is sad to have to make this confession, but there are
authoritative reasons for stating that he was cut to the
heart by the ingratitude of his fellow-colonists for the
priceless services he had rendered to his native country,
and he was overwhelmed with disgust at seeing the
government of the Colony fall into hands that he deemed
unworthy. If he felt in this way while the country was
still being governed by as fine a type of statesmen as
have ever ruled a British Colony, what, if he were still
living, would he say now when a Labour Ministry has
just been installed in the places he once coveted in the
Colony he did so much to make and mould ? Still more,
how amazed he would be when he learnt that, in the
vast Commonwealth that had been reared on the
scaffolding of the Australian colonies, another Labour
Ministry was guiding the policy of all AustraUa, while
its chief was figuring at the inauguration of another
federation within the Empire ! And he would perhaps
have honestly recognised that both of these Ministries
were comporting themselves in a manner not unworthy
of even so great a constitution-maker.

For seven years Wentworth remained in England,
taking no part in English public life, and estranged from
the only pubhc life that he knew. Then, like many an

154 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTBALASIA

exile, he felt a strong yearning to visit once more the
land that was virtually his birth-land. He Mas received
like a returning monarch. For some months he con-
descended to hold the high office of President of the
Legislative Council in New South Wales ; but feeling
that he was mo longer of that time or that place, he again
left the shores of Australia. He was never to see them
again. Ten years later he died. But Australia, in one
of whose political constitutions was embodied his im-
mortal part, was also to possess all of him that Mna
mortal. He lies buried in his own estate at Vaucluse,
near Sydney, where he was laid Avith a solemnity and
pomp befitting the occasion. We might sing with the
poet of " The Return of the Emperor " :

" The clouds shall pass away from thy great glory ;
Nothing to trouble it for aye shall come ;
It shall expand itself o'er all our story.
Like a vast azure dome."

According to Mr. Rusden, he had a classic Roman
head and a massive figure, but a slouching gait and a
cast in the eye. His voice, his son tells me, was extra-
ordinarily powerful and could be heard at a great dis-
tance. In his lifetime opinions differed about his rank
as an orator. He was compared and contrasted with
Robert Lowe. The speeches of Lowe were the " abler "
of the two : they shone with greater literary brilliancy ;
they were more redolent of culture ; but they were cold
with a purely intellectual passion, while Wentworth's
burned with elemental fire and fused facts, citations,
and ideas in a molten stream. From the passages cited
by Rusden one would infer that they might be compared
with the speeches of the great orators of our race — with
Pitt and Gladstone, if not with Fox and Bright, with
Daniel Webster, if not with Wendell Phillips ; but
either comparison would do him far too much honour.
Their elevation, their passion, their invective are not
always sustained ; there are commonplace passages
and conventional language ; in construction and diction
they arc often careless and sometimes slovenly. His

THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 155

elocution was as unequal as liis rhetoric. Roger Therry,
Attorney-General in the forties, says that his manner
of speaking was " abrupt," and asserts that he neglected
to sacrifice to the graces. It was the man behind his
utterances that made them impressive and persuasive.

With all its greatness, Wentworth's was a career
manque. He never fulfilled the measure of his possi-
bilities. He had no adequate arena. The Legislative
Council of his day — and he was fifty years old before
he attained even that small eminence — with its few
members and limited powers, was no proper sphere for
such a royal nature. He skilfully led his small Oppo-
sition faction in that Council, but he had never a chance
of being a great Parliamentary leader. Still less had he
an opportunity of proving himself a statesman. Never,
save indirectly and, as it were, surreptitiously, in the
time of Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy, when he enjoyed
the repute of being the dictator of the Colony, did he
influence the administration of the affairs of State. It
was all a matter of environment. In England, one or
two generations earlier, he might have been a Pitt or
a Chatham ; a generation later, he might have been a
Gladstone. Even in Australia he is now almost for-
gotten, and sometimes, on high juridical authority,
he is disparaged, as Sir George Grey is now either ignored
or contemned in New Zealand. Outside of Australia
he is almost unknown. Yet, though he lacked the
highest kind of greatness — moral grandeur, he was one
of the Empire's greatest sons.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ANTI-SQUATTING GOVERNOR : SIR GEORGE GIPPS

So vast a movement as the evolution of the pastoral
interest necessarily engendered men of towering indivi-
duality and commanding characters, between whom a
conflict necessarily arose. Had Wentworth and his
followers, aided for the time by men who were after-
wards his keenest foes, encountered no effectual resist-
ance, it seems far from improbable that the great dema-
gogue, who was animated by the same rebellious and
domineering spirit as John McArthur, would have done
as John McArthur did, and endeavoured to work a
revolution in the State. Had Governor Gipps been as
heady and as foolish as Governor Bligh, he might have
furnished just the kind and amount of provocation that
would have made Wentworth's passion blaze up in open
revolt. Happily, Sir George was a man of a different
stamp. Cool, wary, and resourceful, the anti -squatting
Governor was more than a match for the squatters'
tribune.

Belonging to a profession — that of engineering —
which has produced some of the greatest philosophers
of England, Germany, and Switzerland, and to that
military branch of it which has furnished several eminent
colonial Governors, and fresh from an official mission
in Canada, Gipps came to New South Wales equipped
with all the resources requisite for pacific conflict and
with much of the experience necessary for deahng with
conceited colonials. His term of Governorship, as it
happened, lasted through the period when the struggle

156

THE ANTI-SQUATTING GOVERNOR 157

with the squatters was at its acutest phase, and during
it he was brought into colhsion with almost every leading
public man of the time. Before him pleaded once, and
pleaded successfully, the future land reformer. Sir John
Robertson — doubtless, on a squatting-question, re-
lating to quit-rents unpaid or overcharged — one day
to take Gipps's place as a chief enemy of the squatters.
A few years earlier he fought a battle to the death with
Wentworth over that brave monopolist's bold scheme
for the cheap and easy acquisition of the whole South
Island of New Zealand and some one hundred thousand
acres in the North Island. From that moment Went-
worth was the implacable enemy of Gipps. He let slip
never an opportunity of thwarting Gipps's policy in
return, and as his was a commanding voice in the re-
formed Legislative Council from 1843 onwards, he gained
many a petty victory.

Gipps was not a natural enemy of the pastoralists.
He held that Australia was in general better fitted for
pastoral pursuits than for agriculture. Like Darwin,
he was struck with the poverty of its soil and the de-
structiveness of its droughts. He did not know that
750,000,000 acres of the island-continent enjoyed a
rainfall heavy enough to grow wheat. He was un-
acquainted with the rich wheatlands of Victoria, South
Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales, which
now stand represented by a trifle of five million acres.
He nevertheless believed that " the time would come
when the improvement of the land would be aimed at,"
but he also believed that " it would be -wiser to let this
time arrive naturally than attempt to accelerate it
by any contrivances." By " improvements " he must
have meant agriculture. He was therefore no enemy
of the pastoralist regime. Why, then, did he so strongly
take ground against the squatters ? He was moved
solely by a spirit of justice, or of righteous indignation
at the arrogance of men Avho claimed possession of the
estates they had been granted on annual license, not
on lease for a term. He could perceive a haughty spirit

158 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

growing up in them that would brook no remonstrance.
He was resolved to retain for the Crown the lands that
belonged to the Empire and were held for its behoof.
He therefore stoutly resisted all attempts on the part
of the pastoralists to get rid of the paj^ment of quit-
rents, or of the annual license-fee, to mass their stations
into runs, and to acquire leases. Over all these con-
tentions the battle raged hotly through Gipps's ad-
ministration.

Gipps was to furnish an occasion for the squatters
to triumph. In 1844 he called for reports by the Crown
surveyors on the state of the pastoral runs throughout
New South Wales. On the strength of these he took
it upon himself, in 1845, to issue regulations affecting
them. He called on all runholders to take out separate
licenses for each station ; he proposed to raise a con-
siderable sum for the necessities of the Government by
augmenting the amount payable for each station ; and
he notified all unlicensed persons as intruders. It was
a strong measure, and it delivered a deadly blow to the
squatters. These had come to look upon themselves
as life-tenants — nay, as inalienable proprietors of their
runs. The small license-fee of £10 per annum they had
doubtless paid once, believing that they paid it once for
all, and that they thus acquired proprietary rights over
their stations. With impunity they ran several runs
together, as a person ties several packages together
which he is leaving at the Left-Luggage Office, in order
that they may count as one.

The Governor raised the whole Colony against himself
and his *' regulations." Men who had never before run
in the same harness now ran side by side or, perhaps,
tandem-wise. Wentworth, Lowe, and Lang, men who
differed on everything else, agreed on this. The patriots,
the lawyers, and the reformers banded themselves to-
gether in order to aid the squatters and JSght their battle
for them. Not that the Regulations were wrong in
themselves, but their form was infelicitous. They ap-
peared not only to the pastoralists, but to most colonists,

THE ANTI-SQUATTING GOVERNOR 150

as an attempt to raise taxation unconstitutionally. The
squatters were beside themselves, and the politicians
got up a constitutional agitation. All parties — Lowe
and Lang, as well as Wentworth and Windeyer — united
against them, and the unfortunate Governor had but
one supporter. The result did not overset his com-
posure and never made him quail. He had placed Robert
Lowe in the Legislative Council as his nominee, and he
had favoured the brilliant lawyer. Lowe turned his
heel against his patron, and lent his splendid talents to
the cause of the squatters. Gipps treated him as Dis-
raeli treated him twenty years later, with contempt,
and in his despatches he never mentioned the name of
the apostate. He bore hardly upon Lang, whom he
describes as — J. D. Lang, Esquire, and of whom he re-
lates that he had been solemnly deposed by the Synod
of Australia. Wentworth he treated as Disraeli treated
Lord Cranborne, with more respect, but was none the
less resolute against him. At Wentworth's instance
the Legislative Council sent a threatening reply to
Gipps's farewell speech in May, 1846, and refused him,
through the mouths of its leading members, all credit
for the improved state of the Colony. It was Wentworth,
too, who moved, at a critical moment, the adjournment
of the Council ; Gipps replied by proroguing it, and thus
outgeneralled Wentworth. Gipps procured the revo-
cation of the Royal Listructions, granting special sur-
veys of 5,120 acres at a uniform price. And, as already
stated, he dealt a final blow at the squatters by reissuing
his obnoxious regulations of 1845. His merits will be
differently judged according to one's point of view. As
a Governor of New South Wales, his capacity wdll not
be denied. He was undoubtedly the strongest opponent
in high place that the squatters of New South Wales
ever had. He M^as the last of the Governors of that
Colony who wielded a personal authority.

Though he was strenuously supported by one Secre-
tary of State, Lord Stanley, he was practically thrown
over by another, Earl Grey, who granted to the squatters

160 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the leases that Gipps would have refused. Within the
Colony he had but one influential ally. The Bishop of
Australia was to him what Bishop Selwyn was to Sir
George Grey in New Zealand. Both had been educated
in English Canterbury and were schoolmates there ;
both were married there ; and there both suddenly died
— Gipps in 1847 and Broughton in 1853. They had
fought side by side in New South Wales, and in death
they were not divided. To both there are monuments
in Canterbury Cathedral, where it was appropriate that
a battle so heroic as theirs should be durably com-
memorated.

If Hegel is right in affirming — and Cardinal Newman
speaks to the same effect — that they who, like Joseph
de Maistre and Edmund Burke, honestly and nobly
resist the progress of true ideas more effectual^ subserve
the interests of society than they whose crimes or offences
have been made the means of realising such ideas, then
was Sir George Gipps of greater moral worth in opposing
the pastoral advance, at least in the form of runholding
on a large scale, than was Robert Lowe, whose duplicity
and tergiversation brought about their realisation. If
not directly a maker of Australasia, Gipps was un-
designedly a moulder and directer of a large body of its
makers.

CHAPTER XX

THE squatters' APOSTATE : ROBERT LOWE

What ill or happy chance was it that brought out to
Australia, in its keenest battle-days, perhaps the most
brilliant of the many remarkable men who have been
attracted to the island-continent during the century
and a quarter of its political existence ? Not the thirst
for gold, whose glitter an albino could hardly discern.
Not the desire of an idyllic pastoral life such as inflamed
the imagination of " Rolf Boldrewood " and many
another. Least of all, the ambition of a political career,
for which the arena, was but being prepared. It was
the physical disability of his semi-blindness that had
driven the successful scholar from learned Oxford and
the unsuccessful barrister from crowded London. Here,
too, in this glorious climate, he might hope to strengthen
the enfeebled health consequent on his albinism. So,
in 1843, he came out as an experiment, dubious, like
most immigrants, whether he could remain, and for a
time threatened, even here, with total worldly failure.
Ill-health continued to dog him, but in good part he
surmounted the obstacles it created ; he became a
successful barrister and a prominent politician.

In 1843 he was taken up by Sir George Gipps and
appointed a member of the Legislative Council, now
reformed, but still largely nominee. For a space he
supported the fighting Governor. Why did he desert
one who needed and desired support ? For petty per-
sonal and private reasons, his enemies asserted and
assert. Because the Governor had engaged in a pohcy
which ran in the teeth of Lowe's most cherished prin-
11 161

162 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

ciples as a Liberal, he would himself have asserted. He
put himself in the wrong by not at once resigning the
seat he had been given on the implied condition that he
should support that very policy. At length he did resign,
and the pastoralists of two combined counties elected
him their representative. In that position he lent to
the squatters' cause his powerful advocacy. He joined
the Pastoralists' Association Committee, and loudly
trumpeted its claims and contentions. So effective
was his championship that, to believe the magnanimous
Wentworth, " there was no one whose speeches and
whose writings had so much weight with the Home
Government in the concessions it made to the squatters."
It was ungrudging. From none of the pastoralist con-
tentions did he Avithhold his support. He strenuously
aided WentAvorth, who for almost thirty years had been
crying out for a political constitution that would enable
the Colony to govern itself and the squatters to govern
the Colony. In supporting him he out-Wentworthed
the ultimate author of the Constitution. A genuine
Liberal, he had fought side by side with Wentworth.
He was at first imaginative, and, so early as 1846 — the
very year in which Sir George Grey was scheming a
federation of New Zealand with the South Sea Islands —
he forecast a far grander federation, wherein " England
and her colonies would be knit in an iron confederacy
supreme in its strength." Then he became vituperative
and menacing. He charged the Home Government
with " wilfully and of malice aforethought murdering
the liberties of the ColonJ^" If it refused to listen to
their remonstrances — " if the Government of Great
Britain would insist upon thrusting a Governor on the
Colony when we are quite ready to govern ourselves,"
then the time would have come when the Colony should
consider whether its connection with the Motherland
should not be dissolved. He was a member of the Com-
mittee of the Legislative Council on Transportation,
and, jointly with Wentworth, he was responsible for
the Report advising the resumption of transportation.

THE SQUATTERS' APOSTATE 163

But " the principle of his life was change," said Wcnt-
worth, and again his opinions were transformed. He
deserted the squatters as he had deserted Gipps. Again
he clung to his seat, though he forsook his principles,
and once more, according to Wentworth, ho " choused "
his constituency out of its representation. Yet again
he made " a treacherous detour " and " stabbed in the
back " his " old comrade," WcntAvorth, as that old
comrade declared. " A parasite of the moment," in
1848 he stood for Sidney, and on the hustings the rivals
fought a battle-royal. Not till 1895, when Sir Henry
Parkes and Sir George Reid contested the King division,
was there another such duel. Having previously spoken
of Wentworth as " that great son of the soil," he de-
plored that he had lauded the statesman " in the sim-
plicity and the folly of his heart." Still impartial,
Sydney elected both ; and, when another election came
round three years after, Lowe had gone Home.

He went. Lord John Russell hinted, because the Colony
had grown too hot for him, and he could remain no
longer. " Many former associates felt obliged, for
reasons to which I need not now advert," added Went-
worth, " to drop his acquaintance." So far did his
opponents carry their animosity that a number of in-
dividuals, squatters and politicians, refused to sail in
the ship that was to carry Lowe back to England, and
the Australian Jonah had to find another. That is an
entirely Wentworthian account of the matter, and is
given by Wentworth in a political pamphlet. Could
his malignity not sleep ? Alas ! Lowe had waked it
afresh. Having " old scores to pay off, mortifications
and insults to forget, and vengeances to wreak," he
opposed in the House of Commons the Constitution
bill for New South Wales, which Wentworth was urging
through Parliament. We might acquaint the squatters'
tribune, if his ghost still haunted his tomb at Greycliff,
on the romantic shores of Vaucluse, that Lowe aban-
doned New South Wales for the same reason as Went-
worth himself forsook it : he had grown too great for it.

164 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

The consciousness of powers that fitted him to play a
high part in the most august senate on Earth was ahready
stirring within him. The future anti-democrat had
been trained for his mission on AustraUan battlefields.
The squatters' apostate, through Mhose instrumentahty
the great pastoralists were established on their stations,
was, in the most direct manner, a maker of Australasia.

CHAPTER XXI

SQTJATTERO-MASTIX : JOHN DUNMORE LANG

Of the five remarkable personalities that dominated
the pastoral phase in New South Wales the biographies
of four have yet to be produced. Mc Arthur, Went-
worth, Lang, and Gipps are still without biographers.
Mr. Rusden, it is true, has had access to the Camden
MSS., some of which have since been published in the
Historical Records of the Colony, and his narrative of
McArthur's public career, with some glimpses of his
private life, is full and sympathetic. Of Wentworth
it is known that a biography, authorised by his literary
executor, has been prepared, although it was left un-
finished at the death of the author, G. B. Barton ; but
the date of its publication, if ever it is published at all,
is uncertain. Of the strongest Australian Governor,
Sir George Gipps, the most that we can expect is a
historical account, such as has lately been published
of Governor Macquarie ; he was a fugitive on the
Australian stage, and can claim to be judged as a
statesman is judged. Robert Lowe was almost as
ephemeral, but his private life and his public career
were equally bound up with the history of the Colony,
and the biography composed by Arthur Patchett Martin
worthily takes its place among biographies of Australian
statesmen. Of no Austrahan would the biography be
so interesting — not to say, spicy — as one of Dr. Lang.
The incidents and adventures of his private life, which
was hardly private, seeing that it was lived in the sight
of all, were so mingled with his strenuous and often

165

166 TEE PASTOBAL AGE IN AVSTFALASIA

effective action in public spheres that a work which
left " half told the story of Cambuscan bold," would
be a maimed and truncated composition. He has acted
to some extent as his autobiographer. In speeches,
pamphlets, and treatises, historical and contentious,
Lang has related as much of his own story as he perhaps
cared to tell, though by no means as much as we should
like to know.

The commanding part played by churchmen in Euro-
pean history has had but faint reflections in the history
of colonisation. Colonial history has seen no such
picturesque figures as Imiocent III. or Gregory VII. ;
there A^as little or no scope for such personalities in
countries that passed through a mere remnant of the
ecclesiastical stage. Yet Australia and New Zealand
have afforded a theatre for three or four remarkable
ecclesiastics who have done great things or exercised
effective influence outside the pale of their communions.
Samuel Marsden fought many a stout battle with the
high officers of the State, and Bishop Broughton, as
long a member of the Legislative Council of New South
Wales, or as heard before it, contended on equal terms
Mith such men as Went worth and Lowe, and was a
vahant ally of the strong Governor of his day. But
two men stand out conspicuously by their intellectual
power and moral energy and the largeness of the arena
where they battled — Bishop George Augustus Selwyn
and Dr. John Dunmore Lang. In the Church of England
and the young colony of New Zealand Selwyn Mas another
Innocent, though usually in alliance, like St. Boniface,
with governing persons and potently swaying a bar-
barous people ; while Lang was far more of the type
of Hildebrand, endeavounng to mould or subjugate
Secretaries of State and Governors, Councils, Presby-
teries, and Synods, fulminating brands of excommuni-
cation when ho failed, defying all, chained on his rock
or confined in prison ; withal, a leader of peoples, a
founder of colonies, and a planter of churches.

Born in 1799, Lang came in almost with the new

SQUATTER0-MA8TIX 167

century and embodied its energy and progressiveness,
while Wentworth, six years his senior, was always in
spirit a denizen of the eighteenth century. With grimy
Greenock as his birthplace, he was reared in the romantic
west of Scotland, on the shores of the Firth of Clyde,
and there he made the acquaintance of the sea in all
its moods, which his mobile spirit reflected ; perhaps
he there imbibed the vein of poetry that cast a faint
halo round his warrior figure. Like most clever Scottish
youths whose families were in comfortable circumstances,
he was bred for that grand arena of talent, the Kirk,
and in 1822 he was ordained one of its ministers. The
fiery energy of the young probationer could ill brook
waiting (as he himself expressed it) " for a dead man's
shoes," and, having no such " interest " as would com-
mand preferment, he stormily resolved that he would
migrate to a country where no Presbyterian minister
had yet settled. The resolution was aided by the
knowledge that his elder brother had gone out to
Australia, and was seemingly doing well. In 1823 he
landed in Sydney, and ever afterwards he was proud
to describe himself on his numerous title-pages as the
Senior Minister of the Church of Scotland in New South
Wales ; as if, it was said, he claimed to be the Pope
of Presbyterianism. He soon made his mark. He built
up a church — the famous Scots Church of Sydney, to
which Lang appears to have bequeathed his animosity
against Roman Catholicism. His incorrigible meddle-
someness soon got him into trouble. Though Governor
Sir Ralph Darling, as he himself tells, was evidently
wilhng to oblige the able young minister, Lang had not
been six months in the Colony before the authorities
placed him on the list of the proscribed. Like Robertson
of Brighton, he was to be a marked man, and that from
his eai-ly years.

Tn 1826 he made the first of his many visits to the
" old country " — then at six months' distance — and
when he returned he brought out with him the first, but
by no means the last, of his eminently desirable immi-

168 THE PASTOJRAL AGE IN AV STEAL ASIA

grants — his father, mother, and brothers. He showed
his faith in the Colony by determining to build up a
clan in Australia ; it was the first of his many points
of resemblance with another great Presbyterian divine
that, like Dr. Chalmers, who had " sixty cousins in
Edinburgh," he could count on the support of a numer-
ous clan. For his father he procured a grant of 2,000
acres and for his brother a grant of 1,000 acres. In
1828 he experienced the first of his disappointments
at the hands of the authorities : with his customary
daring and largeness of view he projected a Scots
College, the nurse of a future university, but Governor
Darhng refused to let the structure be raised by convict
labour, and as there were then few mechanics, had there
been money to pay them, the scheme necessarily lapsed.
He did not therefore drop the project. In 1830 he made
another trip to England, where, so great were his powers of
persuasion, he prevailed on the Secretary of State, Lord
Goderich, to give him an order on the Colonial Govern-
ment for a large sum (£3,500), provided an equal amount
were previously raised by subscription. Of this sum
one-half was to be appropriated for the payment of the
passage-out of 50 or 60 Scottish mechanics whom Lang
had induced to emigrate. It was the first of his immi-
grating bands, for Lang was to build an enduring fame
as a leader of peoples. Then, as always, he brought
out immigrants of the best sort — blacksmiths, carpen-
ters, masons, and plasterers, as if to rear the college on
which he had set his heart. He again visited England
in 1833-5, and again he paved the way for valuable
immigrants — this time 250 vine-growers, engaged by
himseK in Germany, but (if one rightly remembers)
the emigrants were allured by the inducements offered
them in Brazil, and there deserted the man who had
made it possible for them to reach the shores of the
New World. He was a man of many disappointments,
but his robust nature triumphed over them all.

Detained in New Zealand on his way back to England
in 1839, Lang there found little to approve of. He

'x?|»:-f^.

DR. J. D. LANG.

p. 168]

SQUATTER0-MA8TIX 169

condemned the methods of the missionaries. He con-
demned still more sternly the action of the missionaries
in taking possession, for a nominal equivalent, of large
tracts of native lands, and when he arrived in England
he pubhshed his condemnation in scathing language.
He no less condemned the proposed colonisation of the
Islands by the newly formed New Zealand Company,
and in his first important publication he outlined a large
scheme of national colonisation.

Returning by way of America, he paid a visit to the
United States. There, in a country that was once oc-
cupied by a group of British colonies, he saw churches
of all denominations thriving on voluntary support.
He was promptly converted to a belief in the dises-
tabhshment of the Church. He was not a man to conceal
conclusions that he had arrived at, and, in a volume on
Religion and Education in America, he stated his views
so trenchantly as to give great offence to churchmen in
both Austraha and Scotland. He believed, with George
MacDonald, in the weakness of letting oneself be wounded
by the ill-nature of others, and he did not allow some
sour faces or stinging words to deter him from carrying
into effect the purpose he consequently formed. In
New South Wales, which alone of the Australasian
colonies (a single province of New Zealand temporarily
excepted) rapidly passed through the stage of ecclesias-
tical establishment and endowment general in Europe,
four religious denominations — Anglicans, Cathohcs,
Methodists, and Presbyterians — were recognised and
supported by the Colonial Government, which never-
theless assumed none of the rights of control usually
claimed by the state over established and endowed
churches. Such a system was not made to last, though
all the subsidised denominations seemed content to
accept such " tainted tribute." Yet it needed twenty
years of remittent agitation to upset even this unstable
equiUbrium. In 1842 he renounced for himself as a
minister all aid from the State. Beheving that he had
thus fatally weakened his position, or feehng uncom-

170 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

fortable in a city where he had made so many enemies,
he resolved to shake the dust of Austraha off his feet,
as he had shaken the dust of Scotland off his feet, and
depart for New Zealand, then in the throes of birth as
a colony. His congregation, though tried by his ec-
centricities and his frequent absences, was yet proud
of him, and induced him to remain. So he stayed on
till his dying day, to fight many a battle, be involved
in many a trouble, and become the most famous Presby-
terian minister in the Empire, ■with two possible ex-
ceptions— Thomas Chalmers and Edward Irving.

The reconstitution of the Legislative Council in 1842
opened uj) a path for Dr. Lang into political pubhc life.
The Council had hitherto consisted of high officials and
Government nominees, as the Norman sovereigns had
at first no other council than one formed by the officers
of the Court and those others — warriors or clerks — whom
the monarch thought fit to summon. It was now en-
larged to admit the representatives of electoral districts.
Lang was the last man likely to have been nominated
under the old system by any Governor, who could not
desire to place in the Council a scourge for his own
back. Now he was put in a position of independence
such as he could never otherwise have gained. He was
elected one of the members for the newly settled pro-
vince of Port Phillip. In one way he had earned the
distinction : he had long energetically protested against
the virtual control of the Council by an autocratic
Governor, aided rather than checked by a band of like-
minded advisers ; and he had taken a leading part in
claiming for the Colony the right of enacting its own
laws and controlling the appropriation of its own
revenue. He was to earn it in another way by reso-
lutely contending for the separation of Port Phillip from
New South Wales. It need hardly be said that, while
he remained a member of the Council, he formed part
of the Opposition. The Governor was then the master-
ful Sir George Gipps, and he had to govern with the
consciousness that every bill he brought fonvard would

SQUATTERO-MASTIX 171

be received with hostility by a portion of the Council
organized as a parliamentary Opposition. Why did
Lang necessarily become a unit of this faction ? As
almost ahvays with Lang, primarily for a personal
reason. Apparentlj', because Gipps refused to comply
with a recommendation of the Legislative Council that
a grant should be made to the Scots Church. Ever
afterwards, and in his History long after Gipps was
dead, he was extremely abusive of the eminent Governor.
He named Gipps, with more coarseness than wit, " Lord
Stanley's man Friday." He assailed Gipps as " not
having learnt the proprieties of his place." But there
were deeper reasons, inseparable from the nature of
the man. He was a reformer, like Wentworth in those
days, and like him, we may suspect, was a reformer
only till those above him had been levelled down to
himself, while he was little in favour of levelHng up to
himself those who w^ere politically below him. He was
accordingly in favour of extending the franchise, still
somewhat high, and he made strenuous efforts to have
it lowered. He denounced the nominated portion of
the Council as being contrary to the Bill of Rights. He
claimed that taxation M^as the inherent, incommunicable,
untransferable, and exclusive right of the people and
their representatives. He affirmed that the Civil List,
largely made up in England, and the appointment of
high officials in England, were infringements of the con-
stitutional powers of the free inhabitants.

As always, Lang's attitude was affected and his posi-
tion complicated by financial embroilment. Presbytery
and Synod called for an explanation of certain trans-
actions connected with his College, and summoned him to
appear before them. He took no notice of the summons.
The Synod deposed him, and appointed one of its mem-
bers to preach the Scots Church vacant. Lang refused
to admit the minister to his pulpit. The Presbytery
refused to recognise him ; he would refuse to recognise
it. It went further. It transmitted to the presbytery
of Irvine, which had ordained him, all the documents

172 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

in the case, and the Scottish presbyterj' deposed him.
The law of the Church is said to be that no Piesbyterian
minister or church can exist in isolation ; he and it
must be in communion vnih the presbytery witliin
whose district it hes. Lang cared not ; he was a church
or a denomination by himself, and, till towards the end
of his days, he remained unconnected with the presbytery
of Sydney. He visited England in 1846, and remained
there for three years, but he then took no steps to vin-
dicate himself ; either it was that he did not think of
the resource he afterwards tried, or he had " other tigers
to comb." Not till 1861, when he was again in the old
country, did he adopt the measures he should have
resorted to, it might seem, at an earlier date. In that
year he appealed for redress to the presbytery of Irvine,
which refused to grant it. He then appealed to the
supreme civil tribunal — the Court of Session, which
compelled the presbytery to annul its act of deposition.
He was set right before the now disrupted Kirk, which
was once more made to feel its dependence on the State,
and he was set right before the Presbyterians of Australia.
He did not need to be set right in his oaati eyes.

Other and more carnal activities occupied, witliout
ever engrossing, the activities of the amphibious divine.
His main object was to enhst a band of emigrants v,iih
whom to people and occupy the new colony he pro-
jected in the North-Eastern parts of Austraha, which
he proposed to name COOKSLAND. He gathered to-
gether his emigrants, chartered his ships, and had one
of them despatched. Then the Colonial Office inter-
vened. It had not allowed some irregularities connected
with the payment of the requisite deposits on account
of each passenger to hinder the issue of land-orders to
those emigrants, but it now decided that before such
orders could be issued to future emigrants, the customary
deposits must be paid. Why should there have been
any difficulty about the payment 1 To all appearance
the sums paid were appropriated by Lang. This was
not done in order that he might become personally pos-

SQUATTERO-MASTIX 173

sessed of the money, to be used for his personal ends.
It was employed, we may presume, to meet the costs
of shipping and settling his colonists. But it had an
ill look, and the Colonial Office took an unfavourable
view of the transaction. Then the wrath of the doughty
Doctor broke out unassuageable. He addressed a letter
to Earl Grey, then the Secretarj^ of State, which may
be compared -vnth the philippics of Junius against the
Bedfords and Graftons. As Lang wrote this letter on
the eve of his departure with one of his emigrant ships,
he put it out of the power of the Colonial Office to reply
while Lang was still in England. Lord Grey neverthe-
less did reply, and in scathing language. During the
three years Lang had been in England he had never
once called on Lord Grey ; he did not write to him ;
he wrote only when Lang's own acts placed it out of
Grey's power to reply. The Colonial Office had Avinked
at Ms irregularities for a time, and intervened only when
those irregularities amounted to open defiance. The
emigrants, moreover, were not of the class required in
the proposed new colony. They were to be imported
as cotton-planters, but they were inexperienced as such.
The truth is, Lang had ways of his own of doing things,
which jarred against official ways and methods. The
masterful man got on ill with other people who were as
masterful as himself.

He returned to Sydney in 1850 and was at once elected
a member for Sydney in the Legislative Council. He was
re-elected in 1851, when he was at the top of the poll,
beating the great Wentworth, who was at the bottom.
After the Wentworthian constitution came into force
Lang still maintained his political position. The bulk
of the topics legislated upon had drifted outside of the
purview of a priest, but on certain special subjects he
showed unremitting energy. The agitation for the
disestabhshment of the churches, not the Church, he at
length brought to an issue twenty years after it had been
set on foot, and, though " vested rights " were respected
(the last Anglican recipients of State bounty died only

174 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

a few years ago), all churches in New South Wales,
as in all the other Australasian colonies, were in 1862
disconnected AAdth the State. With one other reform
his name is also inseparably identified. Still as member
for Sydney, the democrat carried through the Legis-
lature a law repealing that old aristocratic custom em-
bodied in the " law " of primogeniture.

On a question fraught mth larger importance Lang
took a bold and independent line. Burning with in-
dignation on account of the treatment he received from
the Colonial Office in 1849, he conceived, like Sir George
Grey, a passionate aversion for the Government of
England. AVliile Went worth looked forward to an
Imperial federation of all the colonies Avith the Mother-
land, Lang prophesied the dissolution of the British
Empire, and he dreamed of the future " freedom and
independence of the Australasian colonies." His ex-
pectation that a disruption would eventually take place
between Australia and England was shared by many,
perhaps by most, public men of the time. Liberals,
Conservatives, and Radicals were alike under the do-
minion of the fatalistic belief that all the self-governing
colonies would follow the example of the United States
by taking up the freedom that would not be refused
them. Lang's belief that the disruption would " pro-
bably " be accompanied, if not accomplished, by violence
was peculiar to himself, and was begotten of his own
strong passions and imperious ways. Tliere is something
repugnant in the very notion of a fighting preacher of
the religion of peace. But Lang, like his Divine Master,
if he was correctly reported, had come to Australia to
bring, not peace, but a sword. He contemplated the
establishment, " probably by violence," of " a system
of government in which Great Britain shall have nothing
to say." He had grown rootedly hostile to the English
Government. When the Crimean war broke out, he
refused to attend a meeting convened in Sydney to
express sympathy and offer aid. This was not neces-
sarily a proof of his disloyalty. Many men of high

SQUATTERO-MASTIX 175

character in England and Scotland, besides Bright and
the Quakers, Cobden and the Manchester School, con-
demned it at the time, as many a man condemned the
South African war, in the name of equity.

Many of the incidents of his life throw a disagreeable
light on his character. He was thrice prosecuted and
twice imprisoned for criminal libels. In 1850 he was
prosecuted for libelling Mr. Icely, a well-known member
of the Legislative Council, for things done twenty-six
years before, and he Avas then fined £100 and imprisoned
for four months. In 1855, after his son had been con-
victed of embezzlement, he scurrilously libelled the
Chief -Justice of Victoria, who heard the case ; but Lang,
possibly in compassion for a sorely tried father, was
generously acquitted. The judicial leniency taught
him no lesson. Only four months later he was convicted
of libelling a functionary of the bank in which his son
had been an employee. He took it all, sunshine or hail,
with more than philosophic composure. He used the
enforced leisure of the prison in revising his historical
account of New South Wales, in reading the newspapers,
and in drinking coffee. He was evidently sustained in
all his trials by the consciousness of rectitude, but he
was supported yet more by an innate fortitude that was
in good part physical.

Is it not a prodigy that a man who Avas so often in
trouble, who was dragged before the Courts on criminal
charges, who had made acquaintance with the inside
of a prison, who was expelled from his church, who was
deposed from his clerical office — that is, stripped of his
rank as a minister, who was publicly assailed in the
strongest terms of reproach by leaders in the State, such
as Wentworth and Lowe, who had a succession of
Governors against him, who was in questionable ways
mixed up with financial imbroglios, and was accused
of something worse than sharp practice, who was
deserted by the creatures of his hands — men whom he
had brought out to Australia to serve as schoolmasters
and ministers — ^is it not a prodigy that such a man

176 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

should have been able to maintain his position as a
minister and a citizen, should have held the affections
of his congregation, should be a power throughout New
South Wales, should die in honour, and be commemorated
by one of the best statues in Sydney, placed in a central
square 1

Throughout his career he constantly reminds us of
one of his greatest contemporaries — Thomas Chalmers.
Both were Presbyterian church leaders and founders
of churches. Both were social and pohtical reformers.
Both had a firm grasp of public affairs and the capacity
of a statesman. Lang enjoyed the splendid oppor-
tunities that fall to the lot of men of light and leading
in a young country, and he was besmirched in a way
impossible to Chalmers. Yet Chalmers was, like Lang,
in troubles oft, and he was bitterly assailed by a large
section of his fellow countrymen. Hardly should we
have inferred from the incidents of his pubhc career
that Chalmers was an unworldly. God-fearing man and
an intense Christ-worshipper ; but his Journal reveals
the secret of his strength. Did we possess the journal
of Dr. Lang, what confessions, what evidences of self-
abasement, what solicitous anxiety for rectitude, what
an enthusiasm of humanity might we not find ? Even
the libels which he expiated so bitterly were just such as
would be committed by a priest, accustomed to conceive
of the difference betAveen right and wrong as infinite,
looking at it, as Mme. de Stael would have said, from
the heights of Heaven or the depths of Hell.

He plumed himself on resembhng men who had made
many enemies, as Bishop Burnet, or been shunned, like
St. Paul. Lord John Russell said of the bustling bishop
that he " exposed himself to envy by his independence
and disinterestedness," and Lang evidently took
Russell's words to himself. So vast was his self-esteem
that he habitually tliought of liimself in large relations.
When he addressed an open-air congregation on the
Turon gold-fields, he remembered that our Saviour had
spoken to some thousands of people in not dissimilar

SQUATTERO-MASTIX . 177

circumstances ; and if he did not distribute loaves and
fishes to his hearers, he might reflect that he was ad-
dressing gold-diggers, who could have been in no want
of either. Paul, he admitted, had been instrumental
in settling far more ministers than he had himself been
in Australasia. If his disinterestedness is open to
dispute, he had no doubt of it himself. He never
shrank from recalling that he had made great personal
sacrifices and exertions on behalf of public causes.
The property he had surrendered, he claimed, would
now (when he spoke — say, in the sixties) be worth
£100,000.

He claimed that he had made an end of the practice
of concubinage in ofiicial circles, and he put a stop to
the editing of official journals by freedmen. He brought
out schoolmasters of a high class, divinity students —
some of them men of talent, and successful ministers ;
and he planted and reared many a church. Wliat a
host of individuals he must have baptized, married, or
followed to the grave in his long life ! He carried one
great measure through Parliament — the repeal of the
laws of primogeniture and entail. The carrying of
another — the disendowment of the four subsidised
Churches — was initiated by the action he took in 1842,
when he renounced State aid and virtually seceded
from the Presbyterian Cliurch, and was throughout
aided by his incessant agitation.

Why have I thus fully outUned the career of the
Squattero-Mastix — the most interesting, though not
the most attractive, personality in the history of Aus-
traha ? Because it forms a large part of the social
environment in the pastoral age, and because his atti-
tude to the pastoralists is the key to nearly all his
activities. All the pastorahst leaders — McArthur and
Wentworth, Berry and Leslie — at one time or another
came into coUision with this clerical Ishmael, Nearly
all of their measures fell under the lash of his invective.
He urged a continuous polemic against their pohcy.

12

178 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

He never tired of denouncing the curse of squatterdom,
and he looked back indignantly on those " dark days "
when the squatterocracy ruled New South Wales. At
all times he did his utmost to thwart its ends. Twice
he carried to England and the Colonial Office petitions
against the retention of the Clarence River district in
New South Wales, because he believed that that was in
the interests of the squatters. For the same reason
he opposed the retention of the Riverina. From the
first he hailed the gold discoveries as being certain to
work a complete transformation of the social condi-
tions. Especiallj^ did they ring the knell of the squatters.
" The object of these gentlemen," he wrote, " was to
occupy and engross the country for themselves ex-
clusively, to partition it into immense sheep-walks and
cattle-runs, and prevent the influx and settlement of
an agricultural population." They sought to keep the
people down. In 1846, by granting them long leases,
and in 1855, by handing over to a clique of Australian
squatters the noble inheritance of the people in the waste
lands of Australia, the Colonial Office aided them. Now
the ascendancy of the squatters had virtually ceased.
The game was up, and the days of the pastoralists, as
a powerful political party, were numbered." *

For the same reason he welcomed the Free-Selection
Act carried by Sir John Robertson, and he told how,
through the financial embarrassments of the principal
original owners, some large estates in the neighbourhood
of Bathurst had been broken up, and thus prepared the
way for " that wonderfully salutary revolution " which
had " almost revolutionised the Colony." f He aided
in engineering the transition to the agricultural stage
by importing farmers and farm-labourers. He was not
only the scourge of the squatters ; he was largely the
destroyer of their class. He has therefore well earned
the title he took, of a " maker of a new Australia."

* Lang, Account, etc., ii. 353-4.
t Ibid., ii. 214-6.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PROSPECTOR

Having examined the various forces, physical and moral,
that went towards the shaping of the pastoral Hfe in
these new countries, we are now prepared to watch their
operation. The disadvantages of presenting the differ-
ent phases of that life in sequence, logical or not, when
they are simultaneous may be compensated by the
clearer view that is thus had of each separate phase.

The prospectors of country suitable for runs were still
more various than the prospectors of goldfields. Some-
times an individual, " seized by the longing to explore
new country," would set out by himself or accompanied
only by a mate. He would be armed with a gun,
equipped with a compass, and supplied with provisions.
Many such perished in the bush. Such was one of the
very first settlers of these in Northern Queensland, de-
scribed by Mrs. Campbell Praed. His gun accidentally
going off, he was killed, while his companion, unable
to guide himself by the compass the dying man taught
him to use, drifted among the blacks, who kept him for
eight months. Another, whose bones, together with
fragments of a letter, were found, might be either sur-
veyor or prospector.*

Or a rich squatter, actual or potential, would despatch
an overseer or bushman, to go in search of new country.
Thus, in 1832, W. G. Cann headed an expedition sent by
Henry Dangar, and, after encountering formidable
obstacles and suffering fearful privations, discovered
Armidale. Four years later the same prospector pushed

* My Australian Girlhood, pp. 101-2.

179

180 TEE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

north-west to Myall Creek, of infamous memory.* In
1840 Captain McAlister despatched his overseer,
McMillan, on a journey that resulted in the discovery
of Gippsland.f R- Scougall, of Liverpool Plains, sent
Henry Dennis exploring up north, and he found " the
huge Jimbour run." Often these deputies took up runs
for others. The same prospector took up Dalby, on
Myall Creek, for Charles Coxen.

Another would set out on horseback, like Don Quixote,
in search of a run and also of " colonial experience."
After riding many miles he would find quarters for the
night in a bark hut, where, after unsaddling and hobbhng
his pony, he would sup wdth some fifteen or sixteen
stockmen on tea, damper, and boiled beef. He would
sleep warm on a sheet of bark near the fireplace, under
a pair of not over-clean blankets, in company with the
stockmen. Edward Palmer spent a whole year in the
Bearch of a run.

As the art of prospecting develops, it becomes more
collective. At first conducted by a single individual,
or by two friends together, \\ith a few servants, usually
convict in the beginning, each expedition now grows
co-operative. The party consists of a band of pro-
spectors (often six in number) of equal rank, who may
all be in search of new country, and who, indeed, may
be secretly endeavouring to forestall one another. In
older days the prospector provided the entire equip-
ment of his party. In more recent times each equal
member of the party provides a certain number of horses
and his share of the food and other necessaries likely
to be consumed or needed during the journey. There
may be as many as forty horses, 24 of them pack-horses,
laden with food-supplies, clothing, tents, medicine, and
tomahawks — the tomahawks being needed, not for
scalping the blacks, but for the chopping of wood for
the camp-fires. There are generally also blackboys
(blacks of any age), and all are well-armed. A leader

* Barti.ey, Australian Pioneers, ch. viii.
t Bkodribb, Reminiscences, p. 8.

THE PROSPECTOR 181

is at the outset chosen, whose orders all are bound to
obey, on pain of expulsion. He rides, as a leader should,
at some distance ahead of the main body, accompanied
by a black. The others follow in twos, like the United
States cavalry hunting down Indians, or Tarass Bara-
bola's brigands in Ruthenia, while the spare horses and
pack-horses bring up the rear. At first, till they get out
clear into the open country, they ride at the rate of
fifteen miles a day ; then at various speeds, as the leader
determines — 10, 20, or 25 miles daily. Or sometimes
they encamp for a few days, while the country is
being explored in various directions, and possibly marked
off for future selection. For every bit of good country
the party passes through is examined, its trees marked,
its landmarks noted, so that it may be described when
leases or licenses are applied for at the Crown Lands
Department. When the tents are first pitched, the
party is carefully organized, and special duties assigned
to each member of it. The worst bushman is made
cook, and is also left in charge of the camp and of the
spare- and pack-horses while the others are gone on
flying excursions. All of these, and all the apportion-
ment of functions, are directed by the leader, who
exercises an absolute despotism. On no other terms,
to all appearance, could the party be held together.
Only thus could the quarrels, heartburnings, and
jealousies in the band be kept under ; only thus could
latent rebellion be nipped in the bud. Then we may
picture their joy when they discover from some emi-
nence far-stretching plains and rolling downs, clothed
with rich natural grasses and nutritious herbage. These,
they know, will one day be the home of thousands, when
farms have replaced runs, and towns have supplanted
farms. Meanwhile, the first inescapable pastoral stage
has to be traversed, and the runs have to be defined
and formed. In each great area several large runs are
measured off. The bearings of the most remarkable
points are taken, and the boundaries of each run are
vaguely defined according to the natural features of

182 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the landscape — creeks, rivers, or lakes, hills and ravines.
Their task accompHshed, they set out on their return
journey, and on the way they ballot for special bits of
land or tracts suitable for runs. Finally, they rush
for the metropolis, fearing to be forestalled, and take
out licences for their finds at the Crown Lands OflBce.
There may be rival expeditions in the field. Two
parties may aim at taking possession of the same tract
of country. War may then break out, with its strategy
and manoeuvres and casualties. Or the leader of an
expedition may have descried a fine country in the
distance, but concealed his discovery. Then auto-
cratically diverting his party on another track, he would
return, organize a fresh expedition, and set out a second
time to secure the Promised Land (the land he had
promised himself) he had descried from Mount Pisgah.
But still another party might be organized by a member
of the first band to go in quest of the country he had
only suspected to exist, and this party too would find
the desired track. Then there would be a race between
the rival parties for the priority in gaining the licence
to hold the run at the Crown Lands Department. For
in those days runs could be held without being stocked.
They were therefore taken up by stockless and money-
less persons, who speedily sold them for a few hundreds
of pounds to intending squatters. Thus the prospecting
for runs became a speculation and almost a gamble.
It served an end, however. As squatters could not
obtain runs close at hand unless they would pay foi
them, they went further afield, and discovered fresh
country. Thus the whole province, and ultimately all
Australia, have been opened up. Nowadays the
pioneering prospector, like the pastoral stage itself,
over a large area, has been superseded by the railway,
which has opened up hundreds of miles of country,
where scores of runs can be formed.*

* Alexander C. Grant, Bush Life in Queensland, chs. xxi-
xxii. Edward Palmer, Early Days in North Queensland, p. 91,
Haygabth, Bush Life in Australia.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE NOMAD

Nomadism in a manner long prevailed, and still pre-
vails, with the Australian pastoralist. When the grass
has been browsed bare, the sheep or cattle are removed
from one tract or (since fencing has been adopted) from
one paddock to another ; as is done by the nomad tribes
that still roam over the steppes of Central Asia, Siberia,
and Eastern Russia. Had a precocious airman fluttered
over the riverside tracks of New South Wales and
Victoria in the late thirties and early forties, and over
those of Queensland in the forties and fifties, he would
have dimly seen from his airy heights long processions
of sheep and cattle being driven from the coast and
coastal districts inland towards the river-flats and well-
watered plains. They were in search of stations, it is
true, but for long after a nomadic movement in quest
of better conditions was ever in progress. As in ancient
days, on the banks of Tigris or Euphrates, when the
stock expanded beyond the capacity of the region oc-
cupied to supply grass enough, or when the pent-up
energy of the younger members of a family craved for
elbow-room, a migration was made to another district.
Thus, Esau " went into the country from the face of
his brother Jacob ; for their riches were more than that
they might dwell together, and the land . . . could
not bear them because of their cattle." Sometimes
patriarchal families quarrelled, it might be about wells
and springs, and then they separated. " Is not the
whole land before thee ? " asked Abraham of Lot,

183

184 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

" Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me : if thou wilt
take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; or if
thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left."
They forsook their native or early seats, together with
their kindred, whom they might not see again, and
went, like the migrant and semi-nomadic Boers of South
Africa, on trek.

The nomad instinct proper to the pastoral race was
often enough shown by the early Victorian squatters.
Many of them were continually on the move. One
removed from the Seven Creeks northward to the great
Saltbush Desert. Others changed, more sensibly, from
the Upper Yarra to the richly grassed Western division
of Victoria. Others still ruined everything for the sake
of change, and gave up good stations for ones that "were
far inferior.* Thus, John Highett " remained (moving
about) a short time on the Barwon," before he removed
into the Melbourne district. Messrs. Manifold removed
from one station to another. Messrs. Learmonth left
the Barwon for Buninyong.f

Much of the nomadism arose through the same neces-
sity as made and makes the Mesopotamians and Central
Asians nomadic. The Boers of the Transvaal shift all
their stock every summer from the low to the high veldt
and in winter shift it back to the low. In time of
drought the more sedentary pastoralists of Australia
remove their starving flocks from the scorched plains
to the cool and still grass-covered highlands. " It was
only," writes a Victorian pioneer, " by having my
marching establishment complete, and thus constantly
shifting my ground, that I was enabled to keep the stock
ahve." t

The nomadism of the old pastoralist was no less deeply
ingrained in the Queensland squatters. Thus, the
earliest of Queensland squatters, Patrick Leslie, sold
out in 1856 the run he had culled from his many seizures,

• BoLDREWooD, Old Melbourne Memories, ch. xiv,
t Victorian Pioneers, pp. 130, 155.
i Ibid., p. 205.

THE NOMAD 185

and returned to his native Scotland. Once more he
was tempted to the Antipodes, but this time to New
Zealand, where in the late seventies (he was there in
1877) he settled in the barren AVaikato district of the
North Island. Of the two well-known station-partners,
Beck and Brown, Brown travelled from Canal Creek
with sheep, Beck remaining in charge at Canal Creek.
Going in search of a run, Brown pulled up at Dogwood
Creek, which was the furthest out station where sheep
grazed. Beck and Brown had taken up 1,100 square
miles of land, but could not for a long time occupy so
great extent of country. They were far from their base
of supplies ; labour was dear and hardly to be procured ;
there were no neighbours within 100 miles. Brown
wandered from place to place with his sheep — sometimes
a year here, at another a year there. For two years
he settled in Gidemhay's country, which was then un-
occupied and still in a state of nature, with no roads
beyond, but only a track. Not till 1856 was the vast
area (of the 1,100 square miles) formed, and then it was
sub-divided into four stations.*

In certain parts of Australia the early nomadic move-
ment is constant. The overlander and the bullock-
driver or the sheep-drover are the descendants of the
Kirghiz and the Bedouins. " A Riverina Road "
witnesses their daily passage : —

" A land of camps where seldom is sojourning,
Where men, like the dim fathers of our race.
Halt for a time, and next day, unreturning,
Fare ever on apace."

Mobs of sheep and cattle are driven in search of pas-
ture.

'• The sheep are travelling for the grass, and travelling very

slow ;
They may be at Mundaroon now, or past the Overflow,
Or tramping down the black-soil flats across by Waddiwong."

* Babtley, Pioneering Reminiscences, pp. 185-6.

186 TEE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

And after both cattle and sheep have become com-
paratively stationary, individuals may still be restless.

" He's shearing here and fencing there, a kind of waif and stray,
He's droving now with Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh."

Or " the red marauder," Drought, drives the swagman
" out back." He begs his way " on the parched Paroo
and the Warrego tracks," but the tramp "never got
hands in wool, though he tramped for a year out back."
He dies at last in the scrub.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE OVERLANDEB

Almost as soon as Port Phillip and South Australia
were colonised, the new class of Overlanders was be-
gotten. Exploring Western Australia in the late thirties,
Sir George Grey was interested by this striking group.
They were men — often capitalists — who drove large
flocks of sheep and herds of cattle across country from
one colony to another — sometimes across great part
of Australia. From New South Wales to Port Phillip
and South Australia, and in later days from all parts
of Australia to Northern Queensland, they patiently
trudged with their stock, following the slow stride of
their cattle and the still slower step of their sheep.
Among them, probably, he first met with E. J. Eyre,
who was subsequently his subordinate officer in South
Australia, in a post which his overlanding journeys
peculiarly qualified him to fill, some years afterwards
his lieutenant-governor in New Zealand, and long sub-
sequently the too-famous Governor of Jamaica. Eyre
raced another overlander, Joe Hawdon, with stock from
Mount Alexander to Adelaide. It was the beginning
of Eyre's remarkable journeys of exploration. For,
eager to beat Hawdon, who was following the course
of the Murray, Eyre cut across the first big bend the
Murray makes to the south, and struck the Wimmera.
As if by an enemy, a red herring had been drawn across
his trail. Fired by the prospect of tracing the course
of the new-found river to the sea, as he probably ima-
gined, he followed it down-stream, only to find that it

1873

188 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

lost itself in Lake Hindmarsli. Again he started off
on another wild-goose chase. He had seen the Lindsay
pour its waters into Lake Hindmarsh, and he would
run it to earth. Alas ! it was a characteristic AustraUan
river, which soon disappeared in the ground. Then, after
having nearly lost his life in the dreaded mallee scrub,
he came back to the stock he had left in charge. Of
course, he had lost the race.

These overlanders were the saviours of new colonies.
The older settlements. Governor Sir George Gipps told
Lord John Russell in 1840, were the hives " whence
swarms of sheep and cattle were driven to give value
to the lands of Port Phillip and South AustraUa, which
without them would to this day be an unprofitable
wilderness. The enterprising colonists," he added,
" who first drove sheep from New South Wales to
Victoria rescued that colony from ruin." Hawdon
we have already seen at work. In 1836 he was the first
to drive or send cattle from New South Wales to Port
Phillip. Later in the same year W. A. Brodribb started
the second draft of cattle. The two of them, he tells
us, were " the first to mark a road to Melbourne." The
explorer blazes a track. The overlander marks a road.*

Such trips were frequent. Did a squatter on the
Broken River in New South Wales sell his stock to Port
Phillippians ? He would make a trip overland in order
to deliver it to the purchaser. Taking with him a
servant, a gig, and 2 horses, he would accomplish the
journey in ten days, and in three days more the delivery
would be accomplished. t

Such an overlander might sell his own surplus stock,
or he might purchase stock to sell it over again. He
would return to Sydney, and purchase, say, 1,200 head
of cattle, grazing at a station 300 miles to the westward.
He would then, what he called, organize an expedition
to take possession of these cattle. He would buy several
stock-horses, pack-horses, teams of working-bullocks,

* Brodribb, Recollections, p. 15.
t Ibid., pp. 19-20.

THE OVERLANDER 189

and drays. A week aftenvards the station in the in-
terior was reached, the cattle were collected by the stock-
men, and delivery taken. Then followed the trip to
Melbourne as before. They proceeded by easy stages.
The party would consist of the purchaser and his
brother, two friends, and nine men. It was no light
job. Masters and men divided the night-watches
among them, burnt large fires, and rode around the
cattle. They worked like slaves, night and day. They
rode from daylight to dark. Half the night, at other
times, they watched the night through, for they could
not trust the men. Travelhng for seven weeks, by easy
stages of eight or ten miles a day, they reached Mel-
bourne.

When the market was glutted in Melbourne, two
gentlemen would join together to form a cattle expe-
dition in order to push on to Adelaide and capture the
market there. But there the cattle market would be
found to be depressed, and the expedition would be
recalled.

The cattle thus waiting for a purchaser would be
placed on a temporary run near Melbourne. A number
of squatters kept large herds of cattle in depot at Port
Albert in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, whether
for sale or for forming new stations. But cattle were
then a drug in the market, and unsaleable at anything
like a remunerative price. A little later large flocks
and herds of sheep and cattle, brought across country
from New South Wales, were camped around Melbourne
for sale. All values had fallen. Out of these gentlemen-
overlanders developed the professional cattle-men, who
grew into the cattle-kings.

Sometimes the overlanders struck out in an altogether
new direction. Gippsland had lately been discovered,
first by McMillan, and again by Count Strzelecki. The
problem was to find a practicable route for stock from
the newly discovered country to Melbourne. A meeting
of Overlanders was held some time in 1842 with the
object of discovering such a route and, at the same time,

190 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

ascertaining whether a harbour existed on the Gipps-
land coast, where a depot could be formed. A company-
was formed, and a vessel chartered. They were suc-
cessful in finding a harbour, but unsuccessful in finding
a stock route. But they made two discoveries — they
first beheld the Latrobe River and Lake Wellington.
The expedition cost £2,000.*

As Sir George Gipps stated, and Sir George Grey
explains, the class of Overlanders was called into exist-
ence by pecuHar and, we may add, temporary circum-
stances. There were new colonies — Victoria, South
Australia, and, later, Queensland — to be stocked ; new
stations in the mother-colony to be formed ; and old
stations to be replenished. Or, sometimes, a station-
owner would substitute sheep for cattle or cattle for
sheep. And this continued till the Colony had been
stocked, Avhen the Overlander necessarily disappeared,
or was transformed into a cattle-dealer.

The Overlanders were usually single men in the prime
of youth, says Grey, and certainly most of them in the
early days, Avhen he was acquainted with them, were
comparatively young. If they were not, all of them,
" remarkable men," as he affirms, at least they needed
no little grit. Their toilsome journeys were often over
snow-clad mountains, through drought-stricken, grassless
plains, across SAvollen, and hardly fordable rivers, en-
during hunger and thirst and lack of all things, in perils
oft, but keeping ever a light heart, and seldom needing
to appeal to the unyielding will that lay behind and at
the bottom of their cheery spirits.

Grey picturesquely imagines a man of this class and
type who had finished one long overlanding journey
and was prepared to essay another. Ill-clad and un-
impressive, ho enters a company of heavily bearded,
weather-beaten men. They take little notice of him.
Then, joining in their conversation, he proposes a new
and practicable route for stock, and declares his willing-
ness to undertake a trip over it. All are instantly
* Bbodbibb, pp. 95, 20, 24, 45, 61.

THE OVERLANDER 191

attentive to the speaker. They will club with him.
Like liim, they are capitaUsts. They have large sums
at their command, and, making heavy purchases of
store-cattle, they will add their mobs to his. They
will follow the route that he, it may be, has discovered,
and, arriving at their destination with a mob of cattle
and stock, at once change the situation of a district
or of a colony, give it a fresh impulse, supply cheap
cattle, develop the land, and make a fresh conquest.
On the back of this new occupations spring up, and a tide
of immigration begins to flow. Such men have earned
the gratitude of a whole people, which shows it by feting
them. They have become personages. Were this a
mythological age, they would be made heroes and
demigods.

A few figures will show the magnitude of the opera-
tions engaged in by the Overlanders. On a trip a single
Overlander, of course aided by shepherds and bullock-
drivers, would carry with him 855 cattle, worth £8,550 ;
62 horses, worth £3,720 ; and 900 fat wethers, worth
£1,575 ; or, stock valued at £13,845. Did he take
sheep alone, he would drive sometimes from 6,000 to
12,000, worth from £10,000 to twice that sum. How
largely South Australia, for example, benefited by the
operations of the Overlanders appears from the figures
showing the stock taken from New South Wales to South
Australia in a period of fifteen months during 1839-40.
In that space 11,200 cattle, 230 horses, and 60,000 sheep,
valued at so great a sum as £230,800, were driven across
two frontiers into the young colony. It was after stock
had been driven as far as Adelaide that the name of
Overlanders was applied to the class.*

In the last years of the fourth and the first of the fifth
decade, we are told, the track (we must not yet speak
of a road) from Sydney to Melbourne was " studded
with drovers of stock," and all drovers were armed.

Sir George Grey saw the Overlander from the outside ;
later writers evolve him out of their inner conscious-
* GflEY, Journal, iL

192 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

ness, because they have led his life and gone through
his toils. He is no longer the large capitalist of Grey,
who was nevertheless a reaUty, but a fugitive one ;
nor is he the large squatter of the thirties and forties,
like " Joe " Hawdon and W. H. Brodribb, Avho is a
squatter first of all, and only makes himself an Over-
lander on occasion. He is shorn of the aureole of wealth
and independence "s^dth which Grey's imagination had
clothed him. He is now, in the sixties, but a small
capitaHst, who purchases the stock of a large squatter,
or as much of it as he can buy. His object, of course,
is to drive it to some distant market where he may
dispose of it to advantage. It is a speculative trans-
action, as the journeys of the early Overlanders were
speculative. Like most of them, he invests his all in
the purchase, and, if he fails, he is ruined. Like them,
too, he drives his own stock.

Li the same decade there was a second class of Over-
landers, who stood on a very different financial footing.
These simply hired themselves to " take doAvn " (the
phrase has now a very different signification) the stock
belonging to another. This class is, or was, by far the
more numerous ; in fact, the typical Overlander of the
sixties, as of the present day, was a drover on com-
mission, while the capitalist di'over of the thirties and
forties has become virtually extinct. The occupation
is by many preferred to residence on a station ; it is
better paid ; it affords more scope and opens up pro-
spects of independence. The overlander of this class
often wins a name for himself, and, if he is successful,
he may amass a competence. He then reaches the
summit of his ambition and acquires a station.

This new and now prevaihng type of Overlanders is
drawn from all ranks in society. Like the older type, it
includes men from the universities and the public
schools, from the army and the navy. Many Over-
landers are bushmen or stockmen who have risen, and
again some of these may be of good family.

The Overlander's occupation and responsibiUties de-

THE OVERLANDER 193

mand sterling qualities. On him all depends. Does
he lack any essential attribute ? The undertaking will
fail disastrously ; the stock will die en route, or be lost,
will never reach their destination, or reach it reduced
in numbers. He must be constantly vigilant over both
his stock and his hands. His eye must be ever on his
men, who, Avithout his incessant supervision, would
lose their heads, neglect their duties, go wrong, or fail.
The ideal Overlander must have an iron constitution,
like all pioneers. He must be acclimatised to all weather,
and ready to face all vicissitudes. He is ever watching
over, thinldng, dreaming of, his flock or herd. He is
a prey to racking anxiety. The strain on both mind
and body is tremendous, and is never lifted. Few could
endure it for many years ; if it lasted long, it would drive
them mad.

The Overlander is active and hardy, and has remark-
able energy and endurance. He has large practical
knowledge of all things connected with stock. He is
endowed with quick perceptions and a sound judgment,
not rash or hasty, but, when he has matured his plans,
decisive. He must have the power of command, be
firm and yet kindly, and know men. His behaviour
must be exemplary.

He must be a thorough bushman — apt at finding a
track and at picking it up again when it is lost. He
knows where water is to be found, and he is an adept
at handling his thirsty stock when they rush madly
towards a newly found water-hole. He is no less quah-
fied to cope with the minor difficulties that beset the
travelling stockowner.

The Overlander might have six men for driving the
cattle and the horses, while an overseer and two men
would drive the sheep. The men might be young,
and " greenhorns at driving cattle." Then the boss
had to be active, day and night. Sometimes a guide had
to be employed, as across the Snowy Mountains, over
" a dreadful route." Over a mountainous, scrubby,
and boggy tableland, with a running stream in every

13

194 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

valley, they might have to pass. The descent of rocky
and precipitous mountains would task their skill and
endurance. As it was impossible to drive the whole
mob down at once the side of a mountain a mile deep,
they would cut off 25 or 30 at a time. These they would
force down 300 or 400 yards to the first ledge, where
they left two men with them ; the o^^Tier and the rest
would go back for the remainder ; till the cattle formed
a long line from near the top to the base. Exhausted
though the master and men alike were, the process
had to be repeated Avith the sheep. All had to watch
by night. Truly, the difficulties, trials, and dangers
of an expedition with stock over the Australian Alps
made the journey memorable.*

They might be overtaken on the summit tableland
of the Australian Alps by a tremendous snowstorm. It
was hard then, even with the help of the sheep-dogs,
to get the sheep on. Deeper and deeper fell the snow,
so that the guide would lose his M'ay. It was intensely
cold, and they could go no further. They were brought
up in front of a high and wooded mountain. The boss
would fall asleep, with his head on the saddlebow, as
he stood by the side of his horse. It snowed heavily
all night and all next day. The position grew dangerous.
The boss and the guide, leaving the sheep with the two
shepherds, went off in search of the track. With the
aid of a compass they found it, and they reached the
spot at nightfall. Next day they went back for their
sheep, which had sustained no harm from their long and
terrible exposure.f

Very daring bits of overlanding were sometimes
attempted and accomplished. An Overlander was
engaged by a South Australian squatting firm to take
2,000 cattle from the Darling Downs to Adelaide. Men
were hired and supplies purchased. Then, instead of
following the customary route by the Darling and the
Murray, the leader boldly struck across country, ap-

* Brodribb, Recollections, pp. 82-3.
t Ibid., pp. 62-4.

THE OVERLANDER 195

parently to avoid being entangled with the cattle on
stations passed on the orthodox track. His men, panic
stricken by the abandonment of the rivers-route, sud-
denly forsook him in a body as soon as he got beyond
the more settled country. Aided only by a blackboy
and his dogs, this original Overlander persevered with
his plan, and, driving them slowly or fast, according
to the state of the herbage, brought his cattle to Adelaide
with but shght loss and in improved condition.*

More daring trips still were undertaken. A free-
booter of the type of Rob Roy gave an example of High-
land cattle-lifting on a large scale. Taking 1,000 head
from a station on the Thomson river, in Northern
Queensland, he drove them by Cooper's Creek and the
Barcoo to Adelaide, where they were sold by auction.
Had the robber not taken a white stud bull from a
station on the Darling Downs, he might have escaped
detection, but he was tried for his crime. There must
have been at Roma some of the sympathy the Highland
cateran or the Border freebooter usually found in his
neighbourhood, for he was acquitted. By way of
punishment, it is stated, the district was deprived of
its circuit court. f

* Babtley, Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences, pp. 189-
90.

t Ibid., pp. 188-9.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SUPERINTENDENT OR MANAGER ; AND
THE OVERSEER

The type of manager, or superintendent (familiarly
abbreviated to " super ") was various and has often
been drawn. In the early days the runholder was his
own manager, and sometimes, like Brodribb, he gave
up his own station to manage another's. Where there
were two partners, one stayed at home to manage
the run, while the other remained in town to conduct
the commercial part of the business, or, if the partners
held tAvo runs, he managed the second, ^^^lere the sole
partner was not in customary residence, as was the case,
for example, with Wentworth, who never truly squatted
on his stations, though he OAvned huge runs, a superin-
tendent or manager was employed. He was sometimes
of extraordinary muscular development ; gray at forty
(not an uncommon thing in these colonics and in the
liberal professions here) from hardship and exposure ;
a grizzly-bearded, stern-looking man, with a gruff,
authoritative voice, and a tanned complexion. He
wore a cabbage-tree hat, a flannel shirt, a short tweed
jacket over it, and corduroy breeches, with a broad
belt around them instead of braces — a common practice
in the bush. He was a hard worker, and was wrapt
up in sheep. Or (if he was on a cattle-station) he was
great at mustering cattle, cutting out " scrubbers "
(cattle that had wandered away into the scrub and came
back to Join the herds), getting in wild horses, and
drafting beasts in the stockyard. He handled__with

196

THE SUPERINTENDENT OR MANAGER 197

skill a mob of wild cattle. Dash and courage were two
of his chief attributes. Humane he was, no less. He
would carry a lamb for miles on his saddle-bow, and
nurse a ewe through her first lambing. He was strict
with his men, and no skulker could hope to escape his
sharp eye. He was taciturn from his solitary habit,
but he had a keen eye for a bargain.* For such services
he received, with his keep, the modest salary of £80. |

The station-superintendent yields a variety of types,
and a picture of the Victorian manager may supply
some deficiencies in the sketch of the Queensland
manager. J He has worked up through various stages
of bush-apprenticeship, and hopes one day to pass into
the ranks of the ' squatocracy.' He is a man of keen
intelligence and great knowledge of stock, commercial
shrewdness and a military tactician's power of com-
bination. He is in possession of the latest lights, and
himself invents improvements of various kinds ; and all
his appliances are of the most modern stamp. He is
deep in all the mysteries of wool, and can judge of the
fineness, freeness, density, and length of staple of the
ideal merino. He can tell how much the building of
a dam will cost, and how many men, working how many
days, and consuming certain quantities of provisions,
will be wanted to construct it. He is in his glory when
he is calculating, planning, ordering, and arranging.
He chooses out-stations, drafts and apportions stock,
selects the ration-carrier, and directs the making of
stockyards. He is noted for his perfect mastery of
every particular, his energy, his forecast, his rapid and
easy arrangement of a hundred jarring details, and his
prompt decision. All his plans have a knack of suc-
ceeding. He forgets nothing and superintends every-
thing. He trusts nobody ; he coerces, persuades, and
manipulates everybody. He has the terms of all con-

* Abthxjb Nicol, Wild Life and Adventure in the Bush, pp.
87-90.

t Gbant, Bush Life, i. 52-3, 72.

X Rolf Boldrewood, The Squatter'g Dream, chs. iv. v.

198 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

tracts at his finger-ends. He keeps the various parties
in hand. Toihng all day and half the night, he does
the work of two or of ten men. We do not wonder
that, in a comparatively few years, out of a salary of
£300, he saves so much as £2,000, or sometimes £3,000.
He is usually rewarded by being taken into partnership,
or becoming a runholder by himself. He often rises
to the Legislature.*

The transition from squatter to manager reveals
the passing away of the true patriarchal stage. The
pastoralist who squatted in the midst of his flocks and
herds, and lived surrounded by his familia (in the old
Roman sense) — his family and his dependants, was
becoming a thing of the past. He preferred to live in
the provincial capital, where he might be a legislator or
a minister, where his children could be educated, his
sons find a career, and his daughters be married. At
best, he withdrew to his run when the season was over,
as the English country gentleman returns from London
in August to his " place " in the country. Or he sold
out to a syndicate or a mortgage or loan company, or
he was superseded by the bank, which foreclosed on
its mortgage and placed a manager in his room. The
station grew ever more into a commercial speculation.

The lucrative results of the gold-discoveries tempted
squatters to sell out and depart for the metropohs. The
squatters got rich and promoted their stock-riders to be
overseers and their overseers to be managers. The
manager of a run has not always sprung from the
English rural class, nor graduated through successive
stages of experience in the bush. He may have be-
longed to the English urban classes. Sometimes the
secretary of a club has been taken straight from the
city to a station by a grazier who had confidence in his
capacity.

On a large run owned by a wealthy pastoralist, who
resides in Sydney, where he is a legislator, there may
be a " swell super," with a salary of £1,000 a year, who
* Victorian Pioneers, p. 22.

THE SUPERINTENDENT OR MANAGER 199

drives a four-in-hand, wears kid gloves on the station,
and keeps race horses. On such a " swell " station
there may be two overseers.*

In early days it was impossible to distinguish between
manager and overseer ; the same individual was both ;
sometinjes the squatter was himself both. In course
of time, as stock increased and hands multiplied, the
two professions were differentiated. The manager re-
served for himself all larger matters — the employment
of men and their wages, the purchase and sale of sheep
or cattle, the breeding and allocation of them, while
the task of supervising both animals and men was left to
the overseer, who was the manager's executive. One
of his duties was to go the round of the sub-stations,
counting and inquiring about the sheep. The manager
might be a gentleman, or one who aped the manners of
such. On great stations in Queensland he might drive
about in drag and four and wear kid gloves on the
station, and have a salary of £1,000 a year. On smaller
sheep-stations in New South Wales the manager, in
the eighties, received a salary of £400 and sometimes
£500 a year. He, again, \^as the subordinate of a
general manager, who controlled three separate stations,
belonging to a single proprietor or, afterwards, a com-
pany or institution. The manager was an autocrat.
He might keep his family in town, where they lived in
ease, and where his children were educated.

The overseer, who was often a hard-working bush-
man, was fed on salt junk, boiled pumpkin, and damper
(unleavened bread) — Nicols, Wild Life, 115-7. He
was sometimes of a different class. Dr. Traill's over-
seer was originally a " gentleman new chum," who went
to stay in New England with his relatives at Cassilis.
He at first " humped his swag " (went on tramp),
became a station-hand, was next made overseer, and
finally was appointed head-overseer. He was a man
of great determination of character. Some have won
the reputation of being first-rate station managers, and
* Grant, Bush Life in Queensland, ch. vi.

200 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

such men (like Dr. Traill) soon become owners (Satge,
98).

The rationale of the evolution of the manager is that
it begins with the runholder being his own manager or
superintendent. When he retires to town to Hve on
his means or take part in public life, the manager
assumes his position. And when the pastoralist sells
or is sold out, the manager retains his place, but is
subordinate to the bank, mortgage-agency, or other
financial institution that now owns the estate.
Should the estate ever be nationalised, he will remain
as working superintendent. The evolution ends, as it
began, with a working-pastorahst at the head, though
on different planes.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE STOCKMAN

After the superintendent or the overseer the chief in
dispensable employees on a cattle station were its
stockmen. Like most others on the station, the stock-
man had a strongly marked individuality. Mrs. Camp-
bell Praed has drawn his portrait. He is long and
loose-jointed, lean and sunbrowned. He wears tight-
moleskin trousers, elastic-sided boots, and a shirt of gray
flannel ; and his kerchief, the woman's eye keenly
notes, is tied in a sailor's knot — the bushman thus
anticipating a recent fashion. On one foot he has a
short-necked spur. He slouches loosely in the saddle,
but, like his congener, the Gauclio, is a piece of the
animal and has a firm seat. The stockwhip, which, un-
like the bullock-whip, is always changing its make, a
strap, and a pouch complete his equipment. His leash
of kangaroo-dogs is indispensable. Very independent
in spirit, he won't be " bossed about." A handy man,
he can do most things, from baking to building a
house.*

He is a man who can procure posts in the bush,
split rails and shingles, take contracts for building
houses, stockyards, etc. ; who works among timber
continually, sometimes falling and splitting, sometimes
sawing ; a hard-working man and one of the best speci-
mens of the Australian workman, j But his special
business is to watch and handle cattle. He may be sent

* My Avstralian Girlhood, pp, 177-8, 13.
I Grant, Bush Life in Queensland, i. 80-1.

201

202 TEE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTBALASIA

to quarters that are fifty miles from the head-station,
where he will reside in a bark hut and close by a fenced-
in M^ater-hole. His duty is to ride a patrol fifteen miles
north and south of his hut, and turn back all cattle
that have crossed during the night. Once a fortnight
his food, with a newspaper, is brought him by the
ration-carrier.*

Often these stockmen were men of good family, with
bronzed and bearded faces, quick in their movements,
first-rate in the saddle or with a stock-whip, a dead shot
with a revolver, and yet, if put in dress clothes, and
dropped down in a London ballroom, would bear him-
self confidently and be the hero of the ladies. f Some-
times a newly arrived immigrant, a hard-headed,
resolute-looking sort of a farming-man, would soon learn
the work of a station, and become a thoroughly good
horseman, who knew the ways of cattle and was inured
to labour. It was a case of a natural vocation for
bush-life. In the early fifties, in the dearth of labour,
the Queensland squatters imported Germans — two
shiploads of them arrived in 1855 ; the majority turned
out excellent. They remained long in the service of
the squatters, who engaged them for two years ; but
many of them remained for fifteen. English immi-
grants of a good class followed them, and were equally
stable. Never again was there the same dearth.^

Their duties were sometimes rendered dangerous by
the proximity of hostile blacks or the treachery of
black boys employed as their assistants. Murders of
stockmen were common, and many a station was de-
serted in consequence. They ^^'ere told always to
carry a revolver, not to give rations to blacks, and,
if cattle were killed l)y the blacks, to follow them
up. " You know what to do then, eh % " A. E. gives
an account, evidently from personal knowledge, of
one such murder. Jim, the stockman in question,
gave his nigger, or blackboy, " a big-follow growl,"

• A. E., Overlanding, pp. 21-2. f I^id., p. 2.

X Babtusy, Pioneering Reininiacencea.

THE STOCKMAN 203

charged him with being sulky and lagging behind, and
finally struck him with his stockwhip. In revenge the
black killed him while he was stooping over his fiie.
Two new-chum stockmen chased the party, and picked
out the murderer, who was taken nominally to a distant
police-camp, but really was privily made away with.*
The case was typical.

The stockman was capable. In Victoria in the
forties, tens of thousands of cattle were managed by a
single stockman (afterwards named a stock-rider) with
the aid of a black (known always as a blackboy) or a
white boy. They Avere remarkably independent, and
sometimes exasperating. Knowing their power and
seizing their opportunity, they would strike just when
a new station had been formed, or would demand an
impossible rate of wages. Especially was this the case
after the discovery of the goldfields, and indeed for
two or tliree years afterwards, when they were com-
pletely masters of the situation. Then, on many a
station, cattle and sheep w^ere herded and shepherded
by blacks.

The stockman, like most Australians, had a high
notion of his own importance, and scornfully resented
identification with a parallel and, one would say,
equivalent functionary — the shepherd. His wages
varied a good deal at different times and from province
to province. About 1840 (I think it must be Mr.
Brodribb who makes the statement), shepherds in New
South Wales received £2 a week, and bullock-drivers
and stockmen " proportionally." I don't know what
" proportionally " means as here used, but elsewhere
he states that drovers and bullock-drivers received £2
a week and rations. According to Rolf Boldrewood,
who was squatting in Western Victoria about the same
time, wages were not high. One stockman and his wife
there received £30 a year, while another was paid only
ten shillings a week. On the Conda mine and its
tributaries experienced station-hands asked from £100
* Overlanding, pp. 37-8.

204 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

to £150 a year, with food, as their lowest wage. In
other parts of Queensland the customary wage was
255. per week, with the usual rations — flour, tea, sugar,
oatmeal, and salt. Tobacco, soap, and matches were
paid for at the ordinary station-rate. The Victorians
at least were contented. They saved money, bought
stock, and became squatters. In some parts of Queens-
land they completed a term of service under indenture,
and then, with their savings, bought small farms. Many
of the great cattle stations in Western Queensland and
North-Western Australia at this day are owned or
managed by old bushmen.*

Such men necessarily played a large part as " makers
of Australia." They were the squatters' indispensable
skilled instrument in the handling of cattle. Often they
were but little inferior to the squatter, if also they were
sometimes little superior to the animals they splen-
didly handled. They can seldom have lived with their
cattle as the Laplanders live with their herds of rein-
deer, which look upon their masters, it is believed, but
as a higher sort of deer, who sometimes sink into
bestiality ; but the cattle in Australia knew their
masters and obeyed them. Many times the stockmen
have rendered special services. A bushman discovered
the district of Armidale for Mr. Dangar, his employer ;
and a similar incident in A Squatter's Dream may be
typical.

Many of the workers on a station were regularly or
periodically imported. In 1836-9, at the instance of
Dr. Lang, eighteen shiploads of destitute persons from
the highlands and islands of the west of Scotland, num-
bering upwards of 4,000 individuals, were brought out
at the expense of the Colony, and landed in Sydney and
Melbourne. Semi-pastoral people, they were found
acceptable, and were scattered over New South Wales
and Victoria as shepherds and small farmers.! Some

* Bbodribb, Reminiacencea, p. 20 ; Old Melbourne Memories,
ch. X. ; Bartley, Pioneerina, p. 43 ; A. E., Overlanding, p. 20.
t Lano, Account, i. 267-8.

THE STOCKMAN 205

ten years later Mr. Neil Black, of Basin Bank, used to
import annually, as stockmen, a " draft of stalwart
Highlanders." A section of Western Victoria is now
peopled by the clansmen and their descendants.*

Squatters would ride fifty miles to hire male or female
servants on board of an immigrant ship. That was in
days when all the station hands save the overseer had
left for the gold-diggings. The squatter would then
hire two " fine upstanding Carlow men," who were
indentured to him for a year. But they remained with
him for years — indeed, till the station was sold. The
squatter himself would break them in to stock-riding,
and in a year they would ride, rope, brand, and draft. f

Immigrant stock-riders changed with the changes of
the land. They became thriving farmers. Thus, the
squatters not only prepared the way of the farmers ;
they bred the farmers.

The English farm-labourer, hired from an emigrant
ship, still wearing his smock-frock, speaking his Dorset-
shire or other dialect, and Avith his rustic gait, " deve-
loped through various stages of colonial experience,"
into dairyman, rouseabout, bullock-driver, stock-rider,
and working overseer. Not a few of the overseers rose
to be runholders.J

* BoLDREwooD, Old Melbourne Memories, ch. ii.
f Ibid., ch. xxii.
X Ibid., ch. xvi.

- CHAPTER XXVII

THE BULLOCK-DRIVER

When the cattle-run or the sheep-walk has been formed,
the station and its routine organized, and everything
got into working-order, it is necessary to set up and
maintain relations with the distributing and receiving
centre. This may be a small township on a neighbour-
ing river or a larger town or a city on the sea-coast,
Avhich receives the wool or hides and other products of
the run, and distributes the commodities that are given
in exchange. The welfare and the very existence of
the up-country station depended on the greater or less
regularity of the agencies of exchange. Were the
rivers in flood ? An out-back station might be cut off
from its base and, receiving no supplies for months,
be reduced to everlasting beef or mutton as its sole food.
The chief intermediary then was the bullock-driver,
with his team. The bullock was as naturally the
squatter's ally as the camel was that of the Arabian or
the Arab, and the ass that of the Oriental. He was
always at hand, and fed himself by the way ; if he was
slow, time was then of small consequence ; and his
harness was of the simplest description. The driver
was an individuality. He was an Australian institu-
tion, and is beheved to have been unique, like the
Australian pastoralist regime itself. There are teamsters
in Canada and the United States, but they are of a
different kind. Drivers of bullocks are found all over
the world, but the bullock-driver is Australian. Aus-
tralian blacks acquire some proficiency in the craft,

206

THE BULLOCK-DRIVER 207

and are employed as oflf-siders, but aliens of the white,
yellow, or brown races never rise above being " finished
bunglers."

The bullock-driver was a sunburnt, healthy-looking
man, of tall and muscular figure (height was needed for
the successful wielding of the whip), clad in a home-
made flannel shirt and moleskin trousers, wearing
usually a cabbage-tree hat and sometimes also a Parra-
matta frock, which may bo conceived to repeat the
English peasant's smock. The assistant blackboy was
similarly dressed, but wore a gaudier shirt. Both rode
on horseback when the journey was long, but where a
difficult place had to be negotiated the driver descended
to terra fir ma,.

When the bullocks yoked up to start on their short,
but lengthy day's journey, there was much running
about, shouting, and swearing. The whip was freely
used, and every lash left a long, deep cut on the hide of
the animal. In driving there were great differences in
skill. With an amateur in charge, the team would move
at its own pace, but when the true driver appeared, the
bullocks straightened themselves and instantly obeyed
the word of command. He did not walk up and down
his team, but was where he was wanted, pushing on a
laggard, or urging the polers over a stiff place. The
leaders and polers showed themselves docile and obe-
dient to the word of the driver, says another old bush-
man ; but the bullock, according to a third, is, on
occasion, the most exasperating animal that man has
ever used as an instrument. Even the best team, by
its perversity, may " reduce " an irascible driver to " a
state of foaming idiocy," or impel him towards the
boundaries of insanity. The craft would have been
called, by the medievals, a " mystery." At one place the
driver will issue an imperious call : " Stand up. Tiger ;
get on. Snowy," in stentorian tones. As they near a
steep and apparently unscalable barrier, he addresses
Spot and Mouse, Brindle and Nobby, in terms of en-
dearment, and the scene that follows has been described

208 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

by a master.* The air is rent with the thunderous
diapason of the bull-punchers' hoarse blasphemy, with
the deep-toned, sullen thuds of the whips, or with
cursing, encouraging, entreating. You see a chaos of
hurtling horns and staring eye-balls, of slavering mouths
and low-bent brawny necks. The dray is sometimes
embedded in the plastic clay of the terrible hillside.
This time it is going to emerge. There is a vision of
blood, and the sound of demoniac oaths. A crash of
commingled whips, bullocks, yokes, chains ensues ; a
long, deep, ominous, rolling explosion bursts forth ;
there is one deadly roar of culminating and murderous
profanity ; and, at last, the crest of the hill is gained.
The bushman's Waterloo was only " Jerry's Pindi."

Very picturesque looked the encampment (usually
pitched near a lagoon or a water-hole) A\hen the day's
journey had come to an end, and the bullocks Avere un-
spanned, Avhen sonorous bells were fastened on their
necks and the sonorous oxen driven to the pasture.
Then followed the evening meal, prepared on a huge
log-fire ; it consisted of a smoking dish of beef and
potatoes, while tea was boiled in a galvanized-tin bill}'.

The part of the bullock-driver as a " maker of
Australia " is notable. He was formed of the very
stuff required for the building-up of a pastoral com-
munity. He greatly aided in exploring the eastern
and south-eastern colonies — Victoria, Queensland, and
New South Wales ; and he accompanied Sir T. Mitchell
and many another bold discoverer. Over high ranges
or across endless plains, through thick scrub or treacher-
ous morass, in drought or flood, on unfenced roads with
awful ruts, he held the uneven tenor of his way. The
offsider was a caricature of the driver, and faithfully
reproduced in an exaggerated form all his ways. The
famous greenhide bullock-whip remains unaltered and
formidable, but the dray is at length superseded by
the waggon, when larger teams (of 30 to 40 bullocks,
travelling ten miles in seven daj's) and still more skilful
• Babtlky, Opala and Agalee, pp. 272-4

THE BULLOCK-DRIVER 209

driving are demanded. That, again, was eventually
ousted by the railway-train, which almost supplants the
bullock-driver, save for short journeys.*

The subject may be summed up, and its philosophy
stated, by describing the bullock-driver as an offshoot
of the stockman and a special variety of that type.
He disappears with the bullock-team, which was his
incarnation in an animal-form, and he almost dies out
with the pioneering phase.

* A. C. Grant, Bush Life in Queensland, chs. iv. v, ; Ernest
Favenc, in the Sydney Morning Herald ; Edward Palmer,
Early Days in Northern Queensland ; and station-literature
generally.

u

CHAPTER XX^mi

THE SHEEP-DROVER, THE SHEPHERD, AND THE
BOUNDARY-KEEPER

The bullock-driver must be born to his trade, to be
successful ; the sheep-drover nicay be made. He may-
have spent all his days at " clerical " work (accounting,
teaching, perhaps preaching, writing, painting, who-
knows-what ?), be " as weak as a cat," obnoxiously
modest, and " too bloomin' polite for anj'thing." He
may possess literary skill and have culture enough to cite
Dante and the poets. Suddenly, he is thrown out of
gear, and, half -doubtfully, half-eagerly, he grasps at a
" droving billet." He takes his first job — to aid in
driving a thousand sheep from one station — say, Narni,
to another — say, Yarrawanga, on the Victorian side of
the Murray, whence they are to be consigned to Mel-
bourne. His horse is his first trouble, and it is " for
six consecutive weeks a terror by day and an incarnate
nightmare." He makes his first acquaintance with an
extensive drafting yard, which seems to him " a mere
maze, the prize ground-plan of a labyrinth." He has,
to begin with, repeatedly to carry two buckets of water
from a water-hole 800 or 900 yards away, but looking
and feeling as if it were miles distant, and that under
the torrid blaze of the Riverina-plains sun at midday,
when the thermometer sometimes stands at 117° in
the shade. The stock-route, which is not necessarily
either the coach-road or the regular travelling thorough-
fare, but must follow the lead of feed and water, may
be the worst imaginable. Its desolation may be

210

THE SHEEP-DROVER 211

primeval, its difficulties formidable — a true via dolorosa.
It may pass through a swamp that stretches in a deep
depression right across the track. The getting of the
sheep through this bog is a labour of Hercules. Run-
ning and rushing and yelling, boss and man vainly strive
to drive the sheep through the slough of despond. The
" man " has to take one across, dragged by his horns,
struggling tremendously ; perhaps on his back, kick-
ing through the water. Thrice through the flood he
struggles, and ties the ram to a tree. After two hours'
racing and chasing, the foremost of the mob follows,
and the whole flock starts after him. Their chief
trouble is at an end, and they have no more adventures
on this journey. But every expedition has its tale of
vicissitudes, and in facing and overcoming them there
is as much room for heroism as in more historical ex-
ploits. The sheep-drover, too, was and is one of " the
makers of Australasia."

The Australian shepherd -but partially resembles his
congeners in distant England or Scotland, and he must
be still more unlike his brethren of the craft on the
banks of the Tigris or Euphrates. Literature and
biography have made us familiar most with the shepherd
in the country which, most of all, has moulded itself
upon the ideal of the patriarchal Hebrews. John
Brown, of Haddington, taught himself Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew while he, a " herd-laddie," fed sheep on the
hillsides, and he has been the ancestor of at least two
generations of famous Browns, among whom we must
include the best or best-known of them all, the finely
cultivated and humane Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh.
John Cairns, too, a favourite pupil of Sir W. Hamilton,
and a successor of Chalmers as a pulpit orator, was a
rustic figure who looked like a shepherd even in the
pulpit. Of the same rare and high type were such
men as figure in George MacDonald's Scottish novels.
They figure also in Carlyle's Reminiscences. Many a
time he walked, barefoot, on his way to Edinburgh,
through the " Peebles-Moffat moor country " — a " region

212 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

without roads, often without foot-tracks ; " "a charm-
ing secluded shepherd country, with excellent shep-
herd population." " The vast and yet not savage
soUtude " — "long miles from farm to farm, or even
from one shepherd's cottage to another " — impressed
itself deeply on his mind and memory. " You lodged
with shepherds who had clean, solid cottages, whole-
some eggs, milk, oatbread, porridge, clean blankets to
their beds, and a great deal of human sense and un-
adulterated natural politeness. ... A kind of confra-
ternity of shepherds from father to son. No sort of
peasant labourers I have ever come across seemed to
me so happily situated, morally and physically well-
developed, and deserving to be happy, as these shep-
herds of the Cheviots." Carlyle himself, in his last
years, with the Annandale peasant coming out plainly
in his face, might have sat for one of these Cheviot
shepherds.

Shepherds of as fine a type as these are apparently
not to be readily met with in Australia. At all events,
the portrait of the " Australian shepherd drawn by a
cultured " jackeroo " from England is sketched in sepia.
In those daj^s, at least, (the forties) two men were set
apart for every flock — a shepherd and a watchman.
Every morning, soon after sunrise, the shepherd set oufc
with the flock. All day long he folloAved it Avithout
intermission, keeping within the limits of the run ; for
trespass beyond them was punished by the District
Commissioner. At sunset he returned, saw that the
sheep were put into their folds, and, the day's work
over, resigned them into the hands of the night-watch-
man, aided by his indispensable collies. Every day
the latter shifted the folds, folloAving the sheep. The
wage given to the shepherd was £25, with ample rations,
permitting substantial savings to be put past. Yet
the occupation was unpopular. It was considered the
lowest kind of labour on a station. The life was
monotonous and uninviting ; * perhaps it bore the
• Hayqabth, Btiah Life in Australia, ch. v.

THE SHEEP-DROVER 213

ignominy of its convict origin. Most of the early shep-
herds had been convicts.

Lady Barker paints a more attractive picture. Her
shepherd, Hving alone at an out-station, with his dogs
for his sole companions, was, in comparison, a superior
being. His chief duty consisted in daily riding a
boundary down the gorge of the river, which had many
times to be crossed and recrossed. His it was, too, to
supply the home station with mutton, killing four or
five sheep a week for the purpose. All day he was em-
ployed out of doors, but he had the evening to himself,
and he spent it in reading. He was well-informed and
intelhgent, and expressed himself clearly and forcibly.
He was a bit of an artist besides, and had covered the
walls of his hut with sketches.* In the awful solitude
it has often happened that the shepherd, brought up as
a Calvinist, has gone mad while he brooded over the
doctrines of election and redemption.

In later days the shepherd and the boundary-rider
have disappeared with the erection of fences. Yet
Mr. De Satge, writing recentlj^ and at a time when there
was " a profusion of paddocks of small area," says
scornfully that " your boundary-rider " now requires a
paddock for his hort^es and a verai.dahed cottage. | He
has evidently risen in the world.

A variety of the shepherd is the boundary-keeper,
as he is called in New Zealand, where the runs are com-
paratively small, or the boundary-rider, as he is named
in Australia, where they are often of far greater extent.
He belongs to the pre-fencing days, and his business
is to act as a human fence. He and his dog (for the
well-bred sheep-dog, with hereditary instincts, is as
essential as the man) are stationed on the boundaries
of a run to keep the sheep from wandering away. He
makes reconnaissances ; he catches sight of a stray
flock and sets off in pursuit of them ; he stops them by
means of his dog, which places itself in front of them,

* Station Life in New Zealand, Letter xii.

t Pages from the Journal of a Queensland Squatter, p. 165.

214 TEE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTJRALASIA

or heads them off in a different direction. Sometimes
he loses a mob, which gets snowed in tiU next spring
sets them free.

This too is a lonely life, and sometimes the boundary-
keeper, hke the shepherd, loses his reason. But, to
distract his thoughts, there is much to interest in Nature.
Sunset and sunrise are clothed with fresh magnificence ;
the snow (we are in New Zealand now) plays many a
prank ; and the Bush takes on new aspects with the
approach of spring. The boundary-keeper (who is
sometimes an educated man) returns to civihsation ^^'ith
a keener appreciation of its advantages.

CHAPTER XXIX

STATION-PROCEDUEES AND PROCESSES

A VOLUME on the pastoral industry that should con-
tain no chapter on the processes and procedures that
form the culmination of its activities would resemble
the proverbial play, with the chief part in it omitted.
And yet we feel, with the Roman historian, that such
topics are better left severely alone than inadequately
treated. The voluminous descriptive hterature of the
station expressly and fully, and the best of the station
fictions incidentally, but with a still greater wealth of
illustrative detail, clearly describe or vividly paint
scenes that rank as distinctive features of bush-hfe. In
these they should be sought. A few points may never-
theless be noted, showing both the changes that time
has brought and the unchangeableness of things that
are revealed on a larger scale.

Everything connected with the station passes through
an evolution that recapitulates a like development in
the Motherland. So recently as 1854, although New
South Wales had then been growing wool for more than
fifty years, the mode of sheep-washing was simple and
inexpensive, just as it was in England at the same time.
The fleece was placed on rough slabs and under a bark-
roof ; the wool-table was clumsy, and the wool-press
only a long lever, with a box attached to it. Now vast
improvements have been made. All implements have
been perfected, often at great expense. The wool-shed
on the huge run of Jondaryan, in Southern Queensland,
for example, cost as much as £5,000. Spout- and

215

216 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

steam-wasliing have been introduced. The sustained
rise in the price of wool and the rapid growth of pastoral
industries have made such developments practicable
and such expenditure remunerative.* In such direc-
tions, as in many others, it is probable that the daughter-
land has far outstripped the Mother-country whose
slower steps she was at first content to follow.

Sheep-shearing is doubtless one of these. The speed
and the skill with which sheep are shorn on Austrahan
stations is possibly unexampled. The shearers are a
very different type of men from the con\dcts who were
the first shearers, or the reckless, drunken hands who
succeeded them. They belong to the most powerful
trades-union in Australia, and, by means of the Court
of Arbitration or the Wages Board, they can dictate
their own terms to the pastoralists. The head ofiice
of the Union is called upon by these to provide stations
with shearers and shed-hands ; while the employer is
required to furnish suitable machinery, and, if the
machinery is not in good condition, the workers may
successfully claim legal compensation from the station.
The men are now sober, of good character, and earn
large sums. Arriving at a station on their bicycles,
they race through their task, and then hasten to another
station where they have " booked a stand." There
is a minute division of labour in the industry. Besides
the shearers, there are penners-up, wool-rollers, pickers-
up, piece-pickers, cooks, and rouseabouts, with " the
boss of the board " at their head, or the shearing over-
seer and shearers' " rep." Along with this division of
labour necessarily companies an equally high degree
of organization. A code of rules, made by the men,
the squatters, or the court, binds the system in an
organic union.

It would be as idle to repeat twice, or twenty-times,
told tales of yardirg and drafting, mustering and
tailing, on a cattle-station as of shearing on a sheep-
station ; vivid narratives of all such station-procedures
* Batge, pp. 50-1, 97.

STATION-PROCEDURES AND PROCESSES 217

will be found in A. C. Grant and the descriptive writers,
or in Henry Kingsley and the novelists. These things
on such a scale are almost as threadbare as the descrip-
tions of them, and, if we look for novelty, the exhibition
of them on a large scale, we must betake ourselves to
the great cattle-runs of the Far North. There, on a
station 9,000 square miles in area, with 70,000 head of
cattle, bullock-mustering dwarfs all prior station-pro-
cedures of a like kind. When the six months' wet
season that stretches through the summer is at an end,
the first mustering-plant sets out for three weeks' work
on distant parts of the run. Six or eight stockmen, all
of them splendid riders, with as many blacks on un-
broken horses. A train of laden pack-horses, with a
supply of provisions and the mustering-plant, follows.
Behind these ride the cook and his blackboy, who seek
for a site for a dinner-camp. Then comes the fierce
work of the long, hot morning. " Over spinifex ridges,
down gorges and gullies, across spear-grass plains and
through ti-tree scrub " the cattle are mustered and
driven towards the camp. Then comes the cutting out
of the bullocks, and then are to be seen "wonderful
feats of horsemanship, wonderful handhng of the long,
heavy stockwhip, furious galloping and wheehng in
and around a great mob of ever-moving cattle, with
great tossing horns and pawing hooves." *

* Sydney Morning Herald, April 30, 1910.

CHAPTER XXX

SUBSIDIARY INDUSTEIES

Vaeious subsidiary industries came to the rescue of
the hard-driven squatter in his extremity. Dr. Lang
denounces the practice of boihng down sheep and cattle
for the sake of their fat, which can thus be converted
into fat ; yet he lauds H. O'Brien, of Yass, who invented
boiling down. There cannot be a doubt that the dis-
covery of its practicability saved the pastoral industry
of New South Wales at a crisis, and perhaps oftener
than once. At times when sheep and cattle were un-
saleable in any market — ^when the distance from a
market was so great and the roads so bad that stock
was untransportable, this precious resource, wasteful
though it seemed, fell like manna from heaven and
saved the squatter in many cases from the extinction
that overtook others that lived too soon.

Othor industries sprang out of the pastoral. An
innovator in many fields, Thomas SutcUiYe Mort ranks
with Alexander Berry as one of the pioneers of dairying
in Australia. About the middle fifties, in copartnery
with Joseph Hawdon, the famous overlander and
pioneer squatter, lie purchased an estate of 14,000 acres
at Bodalla, in the Moruya district, on the east coast,
200 miles soutli of Sydney. There he bred cows, and
sent their milk and butter to Sydney. The under-
taking was a great success, and in 1860, when the estate
had expanded to 38,000 acres, and he had expended
£100,000 on it, he bought out his partner. The busi-
ness is stated to be the most extensive in Austraha,
and its products arc said to be equal to the best EngUsh

218

SUBSIDIARY INDUSTRIES 219

dairy -products. Not only do Moruya and Coolangatta,
where the Berry estate is situated, supply Sydney ; they
export hundreds of tons of butter annually to England.
A still bigger industry was the offspring of Mort's
enterprise. So early as 1843, possessed with the belief
that meat could be exported to England, Mort had
attempted to cure beef in the ordinary way and then
export it. The attempt was necessarily a failure.
Towards the end of the sixties or the beginning of the
seventies, at Mort's instance and with his financial
support, a man of scientific capacity and training,
E. D. Nicolle, discovered — he first, not only in Australia,
but in the world — a cheap means of producing arti-
ficial cold by the repeated use of the same quantity of
ammonia. He demonstrated that meat could thus be
thoroughly frozen, that its quality was not thereby
injured, and that, after being thawed, it kept better
than other meat after it was killed. Mort built
slaughter-houses in the valley of Lithgow and freezing
works at Darling Harbour, in Sydney, at a cost of
£80,000, while the squatters of the Colony subscribed
£20,000 to export the frozen meat that was to save them
and their stations. In 1875 the practical experiment
was at length made, and, unfortunately, it issued in
heart-breaking failure. But the failure was only
temporary. A few years passed, the process was per-
fected, and in 1881-2 the first cargoes of frozen meat
were despatched from Australia and New Zealand.
The writer well remembers the surprise of the captain
and officers of an American barque, boarded in mid-
South Atlantic, at the sight of the funnel on a meat-
carrying saihng-ship in 1882. The funnel marked the
successful initiation of the great new source of food-
supply that Mort had inaugurated. It was to convey
cheap butcher-meat to the masses of the British people,
as now even to the United States ; and it rescued from
insolvency large numbers of squatters and sheep-
owners.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE squatter's FOES

No one who lands or alights at any of the cities of Aus-
traha would readily imagine that the denizen of this
favoured continent could have any serious enemies at
all. The chances are, at almost any season of the year,
that the warm sun is shining in a sky of cloudless blue.
A cool and tonic breeze, highly charged with ozone, is
blowing in from the sea ; the bleak and bitter winds,
the prolonged tempestuous, or cold and rainy weather,
that bulk so largely in the biographies of our European
contemporaries — of Carlyle, Huxley, Spencer, George
Eliot — as in the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller
in a former generation, are soon discovered to be almost
unknown. Of what, then, can the pastoralist have to
complain ? Of what is he afraid ? Is not this the
Garden of Eden, the Lost Atlantis, the dreamland of
the poet, where eternal spring abides and never-failing
flowers, and where (in most parts of it) there " never
falls the least white star of snow ? "

Alas ! the very beauty of the climate is its danger
and its snare. The sun, so genial in spring and autumn
(for winter is hardly known), is as a burning fire in
summer, which is often prolonged through many months.
Pitilessly it shines down on the burnt-out pastures,
piercing at length to the roots of all but the deepest-
rooted grasses. Rain has ceased to fall for weeks or
months, for eighteen months or two years in many parts
of Australia and certain provinces of New Zealand.
The herbage is reduced to mere earth, and dark clouds
of fine dust blow over it. With the death of the grass

220

THE SQUATTER'S FOES 221

the cattle and sheep die — of thirst as well as of starva-
tion, and their bleaching bones or the stench of their
rotting carcases assail the senses of the traveller. The
human inhabitants suffer almost as keenly as the dumb
animals. Their cows cease to give milk, and the empty
tanks supply no water to cook with or drink. Men
and women, prostrated with sunstroke or heat-apoplexy
or other grave illness, when the mercury stands at 120°,
crowd the hospitals. The traveller hastens to a creek
that he knows in the hope of quenching his maddening
thirst. 0 God ! it is dry, and he falls dead in its dried-
up bed. The wild birds, overestimating their strength,
sink beside a lagoon that would have saved them, could
they have reached it earlier.

The most gigantic of scourges is undoubtedly that
which has been named, the drought-fiend. If foot-rot
and tick slay their thousands, and scab its tens of thou-
sands, drought slaughters by the million. Diseases
travel slowly and strike individually, and are often local
and limited in their operation, like thunderstorms or
rain ; drought spreads its broad wings over a whole
State or the greater portion of a continent, and all life
dies or dwindles under the upas-blight. First, the water-
courses give out, and great rivers that are thousands
of miles in length, which, even in the ordinary Australian
summer are mere chains of water-holes, dry up alto-
gether, and the supply for hundreds of thousands of
sheep and cattle is completely cut off. Their tributaries,
on which yet more flocks and herds depend, disappear
still earlier. The grass, no longer nourished with dews
or fed by rains, withers down to the root ; if the drought
is protracted, even the roots, tenacious though they be,
are killed. Cattle and sheep grow lean and at length
die, and the ground is littered, as the air is poisoned, for
miles and miles by their decay. Siroccos, or heat-
waves, engendered in the torrid north, make the dAveller
even on the comparatively cool seaboard feel as if he
were living in a furnace and breathing flame, like
Apollyon, Day after day the sun rises in a sky of

222 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

cloudless blue, and the heavens are brass, while the
earth is as hard as iron. Human beings are conscious
of the oppression, and cry in despair : will the rain
never come ? Now and then such clouds as would fore-
token rain in any country temperate gather in the sky
and raise vain hopes. So it goes on through weary
weeks and months, and even, in a mitigated form,
through years and years. The protracted drought
of Queensland lasted from 1900 to 1903, but the terrific
drought that began in New South Wales in 1895 endured
still longer. Even this is slight to the droughts of
Argentina, which sometimes are prolonged through as
many as fifteen years.

The havoc such scourges Avork is terrible. The mere
figures are impressive. In Queensland, by 1890, the
number of sheep approached 22 millions. After the
three-years' drought that ended in 1903, it had de-
creased to 7,213,895 — a reduction of more than two-
thirds. The losses in cattle Avere no less appalling.
Their number had risen from 432,890 in 1859, in spite
of recurrent shorter droughts, to 7,012,997. Then
came the big drought, and the number fell to 2,481,717
—another decrease of about two-thirds. As the result
of a drought of equal severity in 1900-2 in the other
Colony that is most exposed to such calamities, New
South Wales, the number of sheep fell from over 42
millions to less than 20 millions.

In the train of drought, or sometimes after a short
rainless spell, folloAvs the yet more destructive confla-
gration. The smallest accident- — a dropt lucifer-match,
an unextinguished picnic-fire, the dregs of a broken
whisky-bottle inflamed by a burning sun — may give it
a start, and all the resources and exertions of the " little
god of earth " will be powerless to arrest it. The most
memorable of all such bush-fires gave its name to Black
Thursday, on February 6th, 1851, when a wall of fire
100 miles in breadth swept Victoria from far inland to
the sea, licking up grass, corn, bush, and trees, sheep,
cattle, and horses, farm-steadings and station-home-

TEE SQUATTER'S FOES 223

steads, and even human beings in its dread flight. But
we need not go back for sixty yeai's. Turn only to the
newspaper of this very day (December 23rd, 1910), and
we find an account of a huge bush-fire that sweeps
station-properties over an area of 30 miles long and up
to 12 miles wide. In its brief career it has many vicissi-
tudes. Driven by a strong northerly wind, and fed by
the long, dry grass, the flames travelled at a tremendous
pace.

The flood is the counterpart of the drought, and
usually affects the same country. Elsewhere floods that
are often beneficial are created by the melting of the
upland or mountain snows ; in Australia they are be-
gotten of tropical or monsoonal rains, which are, when
normal, the standby of the pastoralist. So heavy are
these that not many days' rain is Avanted to flood a
country. In temperate New Zealand and south-eastern
Australia three inches ma}'^ at times fall in as few hours.
In tropical countries, like Queensland, eighteen inches
may fall in one day. A few days' rain, at even the lower
rate, will raise the sta.rved rivers far over their low
banks. Then flocks and herds, horses and houses and
human beings are swept down by the all-engulfing
stream. Many a squatter has been ruined by floods.

Or there may be only continued wet weather, when
many stations run out of rations. Drays may then be
fourteen months on the road. There is no food but
mutton or beef. Always the iron pot is on the fire.
There is no tea, and such flour as they could procure
is carried on pack-horses.

In more temperate countries, such as New Zealand,
here repeating the experiences of the Motherland, especi-
ally Scotland, drought may be matched, in an adjoining
province, by a calamitous snowfall. Lady Barker gives
a harrowing account of the digging out of sheep that
had been buried in snow. Under its warm mantle they
would have been safe, had not a stream risen and
drowned them. One-half of the sheep were lost, she
writes, and ninety per cent, of the lambs, while on the

224 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

back-country ranges the losses were far heavier. Sheep
and cattle were found dead in hundreds along the fences,
where they had mistakenly gone for shelter. In all,
half-a-million sheep were lost.* (In her later volume
the numbers are much reduced.)

Hardly less destructive than drought, and often en-
demic where drought is only epidemic at long intervals,
is the sheep-breeder's deadly enemy, scab. A French
philosopher has ingeniously hazarded the view that the
invasion of human beings, as of the animals he domesti-
cates, by myriads of parasites, embodies the revenge of
the lower species against the higher for dispossessing
them of the Earth. It is a questionable theory, but the
exasperated pastoralist, harassed on all sides, would
perhaps have found consolation in it. Scab Avas doubt-
less the worst of the diseases that make sheep-farming
precarious. It annually carried off large numbers of
sheep, which at times died by hundreds and thousands,
or were boiled down for tallow, when the poor pioneer
was almost a ruined man again. It was a dread word,
which spelled ruin and heavy loss, endless torment,
death, and destruction. The straying of a single sheep,
due to a careless or malignant station-employee, might
introduce the ovine leprosy and undo all that had been
done to obviate it. One's neighbour was often then
one's natural enemy. If he were a careless fiockholder,
he might ruin your flocks. There were, of course,
remedies for the disease. A late judge of the Supreme
Court in New Zealand, himself an ex-runholder, used to
relate hoAv he cured a flock of scab-smitten animals
with tobacco-Juice ; a former legislator, at the other end
of the same colony used to trumpet the virtues of his
famous dip. But most remedies were ineffectual.

The foot-disease comes next in destructiveness. It
first showed itself in cattle, and next in sheep, in the
year 1803. It disappeared with the drought, and, for
almost three-quarters of a century, it was virtually un-
known. Then it again became afresh formidable as the
• Station Life, Letter xx.

THE SQUATTER'S FOES 226

foot-and-mouth disease in cattle and as foot-rot in sheep.
The cause of its reappearance is unknown, but it gener-
ally accompanied the rich herbage that grew on certain
fertile soils. The results of it were that flocks were
habitually lame, and the yield of wool Avas greatly re-
duced. Many hands had to be employed on sheep-
stations ; and the son of a large squatter would tell,
as late as 1884, how he and his men, for two or three
weeks together, had been occupied in paring the hooves
of some twenty or thirty thousand sheep.

Larger animals than the bacteria that engender scab
and foot-rot have been less formidable, because they
can be extirpated. On cattle-runs kangaroos eat up the
grass. The dingoes, or Native dogs, did not at first
show themselves, but began to appear on stations when
they found there was food to be had ; * they ate calves
and foals, worried sheep, and destroyed lambs. In some
parts their destruction has checked the disappearance
of the kangaroos, on which they preyed. All such
mammals are vanishing with the black denizens of the
Continent.

The kia, or parrot, that feeds on the kidneys of sheep
in New Zealand, is comparatively isolated, and the mis-
chief it has done grows less, year by year. Other avian
pests need only be noted. " Crows and eagle-hawks are
our worst enemies," wrote a Victorian pioneer.* They
alone are likely to persist.

Whether the more destructive pests can be completely
eradicated is still a question. The vast inorganic foes
of the squatter, drought and flood, present a more for-
midable problem. Yet much has already been accom-
pHshed. Wells have been sunk on every station, and,
by means of artesian bores, the great, parched interior
and western plains are being irrigated by the plenteous
waters flowing underground, or stored -up there for
countless ages. Nay, the scientists themselves, with Sir
Oliver Lodge at their head, encourage us to hope that
the day is at hand when electrical science, which has
* Victorian Pioneers, p. 148.
15

226 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

created artificial sunshine for less-favoured lands, Tvdll,
a new cloud-compeller, unlock the treasures of the flocks
and herds of the sky for the benefit of the herds and
flocks of the Earth, and thus convert the drought-
stricken southern land into one copiously washed by
supernal rains as by subterranean waters. Thus the
physicist will become, as the engineer has already proved
himself to be, a true " maker of Australasia." Other
branches of science will contribute their quota. The
biologists have tracked the metamorphoses of the liver-
fluke, destroyer of sheep ; they will yet trace the microbe
that rots the hooves and the bacterium that produces
scab, and with the discovery of the poison there will
come, in time, the invention of its antidote. Man will
then be the master as well as the maker of Australasia.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE BREEDER

The story of the breeder, in so far as it belongs to the
earHest pastoraHsts, has already been told. After that
earliest importation the others were " casual and hetero-
geneous." At different times the small buffalo breed
was imported from Calcutta. An Andalusian cow was
left by a Spanish ship in 1794. A hornless English bull
and cow were sent from St. Helena in 1796, and they
greatly improved the existing breeds. The first breeders
took their stock where they could find them. They
imported cattle from India, and some blood, now in-
finitesimal in amount, of a hump-backed Brahmin breed,
still flows in Australian cattle. Sheep of a fine quality
were yet harder to be procured, and it was by means of
chance importations from the Cape and gifts from the
royal stud in England, that the merino was domesticated.
With a strong faith in the possibilities of the climate,
though in the teeth of the prediction that not wool but
only hair could be grown on tlie backs of Australian sheep,
John McArthur and Samuel Marsden persevered with
their self-imposed task, and they soon engendered the
expectation in England that they would eventually
produce wool equal to the finest Saxon. They, or their
successors, were far to surpass all existing breeds. The
genial climate, aided by the rich and succulent native
grasses, was favourable to all stock, but was most of all
favourable to the sheep, especially the merino. It made
practicable the rapid blending of types and varieties to
such an extent that, in a comparatively few years,
AustraUa has traversed all of the stages passed through

227

228 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

by sheep in their European and American evolution, and
left the latest behind.

The breeder has ransacked the Avorld to find the
materials for fashioning his perfect sheep. Three varie-
ties of the Spanish merino, which date from the beginning
of the seventeenth century, and these further modified
by a detention in Germany, formed the ground-sources.
To these add one famous French breed, also of Spanish
parentage ; one purely Spanish type, imported direct
from Spain ; four American types, also of Spanish origin,
immediately or remotely. AJl these varieties have been
blended in the Australian merino so completely that the
visitor describes the sheep on every station as being
" thorough-bred mongrels." That, of course, is an in-
correct expression, but it adumbrates the number of
strains noAv blended in Australian merinos. They are
beUeved to be unequalled or unapproached in confor-
mation of carcase and length, silkiness, weight, spinning
character, and general quality of wool. The mixing of
the breeds answers to the blend of the human population,
and has but one base — the Spanish merino, imported
vid Germany, the modified descendant of the primitive
European sheep. The breeders who have thus " made "
Australia would form a long but honourable roll of
" makers," known and unknown, who must here, per-
force, remain anonymous..

The evolution of Austrafian cattle might similarly be
described as consisting of the blending of the many great
Enghsh stocks by a multitude of breeders, who might
reasonably claim a place in all accounts of the making
of Australasia.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE ECONOMICS OF THE STATION

In the early days of Australian colonisation land had
little or no market value, and the first estates, like the
first estates in England after the Norman Conquest, were
granted as donations. Between the years 1810 and 1821
estates of from 3,000 to 5,000 acres were promised to
gentlemen-settlers by the Secretary of State in England
proportionally to the capital they carried out with them.
In 1821 Governor Macquarie drew up a scale regulating
the extent of land-grants by the apparent capital pos-
sessed by the immigrant, and ranging from 100 acres
for £100 to 2,000 acres for £3,000. The days of free gifts
had come to an end. When John McArthur, who
already held 7,500 acres, induced Lord Bathurst to
assign him 10,000 more, he was to pay for them at a
stipulated rate.

All such acquisitions, however, were freehold, and,
though the earliest pastoralists, Johnson and Marsden,
vv^ere freeholders, and McArthur, the first great pastora-
list, was a freeholder, it is not with them that we are
here primarily concerned. It is in the at first unlicensed
and afterwards licensed occupiers of the waste lands of
the Crown lying outside of the recognised boundaries of
settlement that we are here interested. The pastoral
initiation took place within the pale, and from it the
stimulation issued, but the nisus of pastoral progress
operated without the bounds, on the vast stretches of un-
trodden land that were hungry for the advancing settler.

A large number of the pioneer stations — those formed
in New South Wales from 1815, in Victoria from 1836,

229

230 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

in South Queensland from 1840, and in North Queensland
from 1850 — were discovered and formed by their first
owners. As a licensing fee of £10 was all that had to
be paid for the " right of station," their whole means
were laid out in the purchase of stock and the erection
of station-buildings. The majority (not all) of the
pioneer pastoralists who settled Victoria in the late
thirties or early forties brought stock with them from
Van Diemen's Land or New South Wales. A large
number of the squatters who formed runs in Australia
brought wealth with them from England, or had acquired
it as superintendents of stations (as in Tasmania), or
in other employments, as that of a sea-captain. The
capitalists who at first purchased extensive tracts of
land in Western Australia from the Home Government,
then, finding conditions impracticable there, migrated
to Tasmania, and finally, learning the promising prospects
of pastoralists in Victoria, settled there, are examples
of the first class, while John G. Robertson and John
Hepburn are examples of the others. Young men like
Rolf Boldrewood, as T. A. Browne is honourably known
in literature, was furnished by his father with the means
of purchasing stock enough to form a small run, and
when he had completed his purchases he found himself
in possession of a few shillings as his sole floating capital.
Others were sent by their fathers to take up runs at
some distance from the paternal station, and they over-
landed thither the surplus of their father's stock. Others
still had acquired cattle or sheep by means of theft, like
certain innkeepers in Queensland and small squatters (in
the primary sense) or, it might be, free selectors every-
where.*

These are instances of stations formed and often
discovered by their owners. But the sale and purchase
of stations already formed rapidly sprang into existence,
and a run often changed hands repeatedly in a few

* Victorian Pioneers, pp. 22, 43, 265, and passim ; Old Mel-
bourne Memoriea, ch. i. ; Dabwin, Voyage, etc., ch. xix. ; Grant,
Bush Life i and Patebson, An Outback Marriage, chs. xiv. xv.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE STATION 231

years. Here is an example of the terms on which the
transaction was effected. In the Salt-Bush country,
200 miles from Melbourne, an immigrant family, con-
sisting of husband and wife, with two sons, bought a
station with 10,000 sheep for £10,000. A sum of £3,000
was paid down in cash ; the rest was held on mortgage
for four years at an interest of 10 per cent. Tanks were
placed, and dams built. Within four years the mortgage
was paid off ; more vacant country w as procured ; and
as many as 25,000 sheep, by purchase or increase, then
owned. That was an exceptional case, it will be said ;
and, as we shall see, things did not go as smoothly with
the majority of runholders.

What was really sold was the stock, whether sheep or
cattle, on the station. At most, the permissive " right
of station," or " right of grass," was sold. The right of
brand, the stock-horses, station-stores, implements,
homestead and station-buildings and furniture were
given in. Mr. Brodribb gives a specimen of the terms
on which the transference was effected, which, he says,
remained constant for forty years. One-third of the
purchase-money was paid in cash. The balance was
paid in instalments, at intervals of one, two, or three
years, by bills payable at a bank, and bearing interest
at 10 per cent. And the settler held a mortgage on the
property until the last bill was paid. The station was
then transferred to the purchaser, provided the trans-
action had received the sanction of the Government.*

The thing sold is variously expressed. Brodribb hab-
itually writes of " stations " being sold. Boldrewood-
Browne speaks of the " right of run," sometimes of the
" grass right of run," and again of the " right of station."
Another Victorian pioneer says that he purchased the
live stock of certain station-holders, "with the right to
their station." Years later he purchased more stock,
" with the right to " the extensive stations of the
parties. Another sold " my right to the . . . run." f

* Brodribb, Recollections, p. 19
t Victorian Pioneers, pp. 157-9i

232 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

The mere opening up of vast tracts of land on all
sides, after the policy of keeping all the inhabitants
penned up within comparatively narrow boundaries was
abandoned, was a temptation too strong to be resisted.
As had happened when the granting of land was confined
to the pale, sanguine individuals took up an extent of
it beyond their means adequately to stock. What else
could they then do but apply to the banks and the
financial institutions to supply them Mith the means ?
Many such institutions, in order profitablj^ to invest their
capital, urged individuals to take up runs, and financed
them. Or they almost forced loans upon them, " The
Bank will be most happy to honour your drafts up to
£10,000. If you need more, you will be kind enough
to advise us," the manager of a great banking corporation
would write to a pastoral client. After a good clip,
said one such squatter, "I might have had 10,000 sove-
reigns to take away in my hat." Scarcely had a station
been discovered and stocked, when the owner was com-
pelled to seek financial aid. " Accommodation " was
then given at the rate of 10 per cent., brought up to
17 per cent., or much more, by commission, brokerage,
compound interest, and a hundred other charges.*

The position of the pastoralists was apparently
strengthened, but was rathfer weakened, by the very
measures that were devised to aid him. The granting
of leases in 1846, and the legalising of the transfer of
titles to stations, gave them a strong hold on their
stations, but also induced them to embark on speculative
adventures. Even the Lien on Wool Act, which Went-
wortli promoted and Deas Thomson declared had been
productive of immeasurable benefits, led to a corre-
sponding development of banking in questionable forms.
When pastures and stocks were alike pledged as securi-
ties for the debts incurred, and thus converted into
assigned pledges, there was witnei::.^ed the novel phenom-
enon of agents who had no money negotiating large
transactions in paper with bank directors who had Uttle
• Lang, Account, ©tc, ii. 187.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE STATION 233

more ; the only real values passing between them being
hypothetical possessions.*

To recover the advances, a system of jobbing in
stations grew up and was stimulated by the banks.
Under the operation of this system many stations thus
formed or thus aided passed into the hands of the banks
or the merchants, even while they remained in the hands
of their nominal owners. Consider for a moment what
this necessarily implied. The merchant to whom a
squatter was indebted held a preferential lien on his
wool or a mortgage on his live stock. Before the squatter
could call an ounce of the wool on the sheep's backs his
own, his liabilities to the banker or merchant had to be
met. He could not bargain for its sale. He must send
it to London in ships chosen by the mortgagee. Bills of
lading must be endorsed by the mortgagee, and this was
done at a cost of 2| per cent. He must accept supplies
from the merchant, and at the merchant's prices. A
chain of monopolies bound him hand and foot.t

The gains of the pastoralist were affected by a variety
of circumstances. The profits of the first year were
swallowed up by expenses. Then a financial panic in
London might send down the values of stock or the
price of wool with a mighty and disastrous fall. Wages
were high and discount was at war-rates. Three-fourths
of the squatters had hazarded their all in buying stock
and acquiring stations. Loaded with debt and unable
to meet their liabilities, they sank into despair. A
drought might ensue, when the sheep and cattle died in
thousands. Absolute ruin seemed imminent. Large
business-firms became insolvent or passed through the
bankruptcy court. The banks themselves were pushed.
Such was the state of things in 1838-9 and in 1843-8. J

Embarrassed themselves, the banks put pressure on
their chents. These were informed that the bank must
close all pastoral accounts under a certain amount. It

* Ranken, Bush Essays, pp. 13-4.
f Beodkibb, Experiences.
X Lang, Account, ii. 187.

234 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

realised on the securities it possessed promptly and
■without respect of persons. It accordingly called on
the squatter to extinguish his liabihties \\ithout delay.
Or it would at once realise on these securities for the
moneys advanced through a long series of years, and it
threatened to sell up without mercy, in the middle of a
grass-famine and a money-famine, the pastoralist who
had been led to imagine that he would be allowed time,
accommodation, and reasonable assistance in order to
repay.*

To the despairing squatter a letter comes from his
banker formally requesting him to reduce his overdraft.
If he could not meet this demand, it seemed that he was
to be sold up (as Rolf Boldrewood graphically puts it)
in the very vortex of the panic, in the worst month of
the year, in the most depressed period of the worst
drought. He goes to tovm and calls at the bank. There,
in the ante-chambers, sit other squatters who have been
called to account. One of them is a pioneer squatter
who, by long years of toil, risk, and privation, had built
up a modest property. He had incurred debt by com-
pulsion in order to buy a few thousand acres around his
homestead when free-selectors came swarming over the
flats he had discovered and ridden over as his own for
twenty years. " If they sell me up," he said, " I shall
have to go out a beggar." He is summoned to the
manager's rooms. Soon he comes out with clenched
teeth and ghastly features of hopeless woe, and eyes
that are awful in their despair. His own turn comes.
The bank-manager suavely names an indispensable
measure — the formal execution of a mortgage over the
station — as a matter in the ordinary routine of business,
which is requisite " for the support of our advances to
you, past and future." In fact, the deed is already
prepared and is now submitted for his signature.

Tlie signature involves the actual sale of the station,
and, very shortly afterwards, the bank reaUses on its
investment, and sends a new owner to take possession.
* BoLDBEWOOD, Squatter'a Dream, clis. vi. xvi.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE STATION 235

The lately-wealthy capitalist goes out, like the grizzled
pioneer after a life of toil, a beggar, and has to commence
life afresh.*

Such experiences may seem to give the unfortunate
squatter some ground for believing, what more impartial
persons gravely assert, that the banks and money-
lending firms have always secured the lion's share of
squatting profits. Yet it should be remembered that
banks were themselves involved in the financial ruin
they were instrumental in bringing upon others. They
passed their dividends, or were " reconstructed " in a
manner that left their shareholders stricken for long
periods, or they faded out of existence. Only twenty
years ago the strongest bank in New Zealand, and a
perfectly solvent bank, as it has since abundantly proved,
came down with a crash that beggared its proprietors.
A few years later bank after bank in New South Wales
and Victoria put up their shutters, and the passer-by
saw their closed doors, while he read, with a pang, that
they had " suspended payment." The banks have, none
the less, played a large and beneficent part as " makers
of Australasia," and especially in connection with the
pastoral interest. Speaking one evening with his cus-
tomary violence at a college table, Ruskin blurted out
that " all bankers should be hanged." Nothing in the
early history of Australia is more striking than the
absolutely necessary rise of a banking-system. The
principal superintendent of convicts acted in his private
capacity as a banker and a moneylender, and this may
be considered the germ of the now-important Government
Savings Bank. But in 1817 a private bank, the Bank
of New South Wales, came into existence, and both its
genesis and evolution were closely connected with the
pastoral industry.

Manj'^ of the earlier squatters, who had been indebted
to merchants or to the banks, either for the means of
purchasing or for the means of carrying on, had to sur-
render their stations, and became penniless. Others,

* BoLF BoLDBEWOOD, A SquattcT^a DreaWn chs. xv, xvi.

236 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

for many years embarrassed by their liabilities, often
incurred at high rates of interest, succeeded in freeing
themselves only after long struggle. The new men, on
the other hand, who purchased the surrendered runs,
escaped the anxieties and privations of the pioneers,
and became rich. Forgetting what they owed to these
(the older settlers complain), the younger men look down
on them as " fossils, when they do not treat them as
incumbrances." *

One old squatter sadly sums up the " salient points "
of his experience as a squatter. " I have lost my capital.
I have lost my health. I have lost fifteen of the best
years of my life. I have undergone many hardships,
exposed myself to many dangers, and am now a poorer
man than I was when I became a squatter." f

Edgar Quinet considers that the record in the Book
of Genesis is shown to be less ancient than the picture
given in the Indian Vedas, because it mentions the use
of money ; Abraham weighs out 400 shekels of silver,
current money, to Ephron the Hittite, for the purchase
of a burying ground in the cave of Macpelah. In the
Book of Job, which is popularly supposed to be of greater
antiquity than Genesis, it is sardonically related that,
when prosperity had returned to the patriarch, his rela-
tives and acquaintances brought him presents of money.
In these old books both man and nature, the imaginative
Frenchman believes, appear to be of inferior antiquity
to the men and life of the Vedas ; yet, if one remembers
rightly, there is, even in these world-old narratives, some
mention of money. Tried by this test, the Australian
pastoralist regime is, in one sense, older than the most
ancient records and, in another, younger than some of
the most civilised European countries. Money in the
form of coins of the realm is, on a station, almost un-
known. All payments are made by means of cheques
on a distant bank. W. C. Wentworth himself, an old
bank-clerk relates, ''used to come into my little sanc-
tum and pore over the array of orders and cheques that
♦ Victorian Pioneers, pp. 18-4-5. f Ibid., 188.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE STATION 237

had rolled in from his numerous and wide-spread sta-
tions," and he was only one of many.* The practice was
unavoidable. Almost all stations were distant — some
were very remote — from villages or towns. Money
was as useless to the dwellers on a station as it was
to the blacks, who sometimes waylaid and murdered
a traveller, and left his gold-laden pockets or belt un-
rifled. The practice was unavoidable, but it often
had lamentable consequences. Receiving a cheque for
a large sum as the liberal payment of a year's labour,
a stockman \^ould set out for the nearest country
town, or, it might be, the provincial metropohs, and
there put up at an inn. He at once handed the cheque
to Boniface, who took good care to see that it was soon
exhausted by carousing and " shouting." When he got
tired of his guest, he turned him out of doors, saying
that the bushman had received the equivalent of his
cheque. The process has ever since been known as
" lambing down." Australia has the demerit of having
invented one of the vilest known forms of crime, and
untold thousands must thus have been robbed. Out of
it, possibly, have grown the " confidence-man " and the
cloud of harpies who regularly swoop down on country-
men arrivhig in town. Ten thousand such individuals
are said to make a living in each of the larger Austrahan
capitals.

* N. Bahtley, OpaU and Agates, p. 56,

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE COMPANY AS PAST0RALI3T

The Company has played so considerable a part in the
pastoral development of Australia that it cannot be
ignored in describing that development ; but its part
has ahrays been secondary, and here it must therefore
be content, like other pastoral features, Avith a skeleton
chapter, where space is lacking to clothe the naked
anatomy with flesh and blood.

The natural evolution of the pastoralist system was
from simple to complex forms. It began with the
taking up and the tenure of a single station by a single
individual, and this form has survived the others. The
next was the joint tenure of a run by two, or sometimes
three, related persons, oftenest brothers (and there were
many such),* or brothers-in-law, like the famous run-
holders. Beck and Brown, or otherwise related, then re-
peating the phase shown in the occupation of the plains
of Mamre by Abraham and Lot, uncle and nephew.
Perhaps the next phase, if it was not simultaneous, was
the co-partnery of two (or three) unrelated individuals.
The passage from this phase to the company was
insensible. A number of small companies, never incor-
porated, like the Lochinvar and St. Ruth Company, and
one mentioned by Edward Palmer, both in Queensland,

* Squatting firms of brothers abound in the Letters frojn
Victorian Pioneers. Thus, there are — Bateses, Whytes, throe
Wedges, Carmichaels, Addisons (three of them), Ruffys (again
three of them), Dennises, Loarmonths, Watsons, Collyers, Mani-
folds, Yuilles, Simsons, Campbells, Faithfulls, Pykes, McLeods,
O'Rourkes.

238

THE COMPANY AS PASTORALIST 239

came into existence, and held, each of them, a number
of runs. Out of these the larger and incorporated joint-
stock companies would naturally have developed. As
a matter of fact, no such evolution took place. The
industrial development of the Motherland here cut across
the growth of the pastoral industry in Australia at an
angle.

The second and, still more, the third decades of the
eighteenth century witnessed the rise of the joint-stock
company. Having recently resided in England, where
he observed the phenomenon. Captain John Mc Arthur's
scheming brain devised such a company in Australia for
the encouragement of the pastoral industry. Austraha
was not England, and the requisite capital could not
then be raised. The aid of Government was therefore
to be invoked. Especially was its financial assistance
requested, the assignment of convict servants desired,
and the importation of merinos at Government expense
demanded. The Government, by way of security, was
to have a certain number of shares in the Company, and
(in order to obviate the danger of mutiny) the estates
of the Company were to be placed in the interior, at a
distance of at least five miles beyond the settled districts.
The demands were perhaps unreasonable ; at all events,
Macquarie seemed to dread the removal of convicts
beyond practicable Government control. Accordingly,
though the proposal was approved of by so advanced,
yet sober, a mind as that of Commissioner Bigge, the
Company was not formed. Perhaps it was best so.
Pastoralists were put on their mettle, and their efforts
were in due time crowned with success. The individua-
list and independent pastoraUst was evolved.

The time of the Australian company was noc yet
come. The time of the English company was, however,
at hand. In 1825 — a great year for the formation of
joint-stock companies in England — the Austrahan Agri-
cultural Company was formed by a number of Members
of Parhament and other gentlemen connected with the
wool-trade. It received vast grants on easy terms.

240 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

For a million acres, at the end of five years, it was to
pay a nominal quit-rent, and its lands were to be re-
deemed in twenty years by the employment of a pro-
portionate number of convicts, thus reheving the Colonial
Treasury of the burden of their maintenance. Its estates
were situated away in the rural districts — at Port
Stephen, the Liverpool Plains, and Peel River. It was
therefore virtually McAi'thur's Company on an English,
in place of an Australian, base. Like many Enghsh
colonising companies, it was controlled by men of high
character and lofty aims ; Sir Edward Parry was one of
its chairmen, and Admiral Gidley King (son of the
eminent Governor) one of its directors. A similar Com-
pany, the Van Diemen's Land Company, was formed in
almost the same year, and on quite the same principles.
An offshoot of the A.A.C. came into existence as the
Peel River Company. All of these Avere rather Enghsh
than Austrahan companies, and their history belongs in
good part to the commercial history of the Motherland.
The A. A. Company still exists, though now shorn of its
splendour ; and the Peel River Company, its daughter,
which pays good dividends, is still vital and active. It
holds, I have heard, three stations, of which one, at
Tamworth, has a milhon and a half of sheep, and is
therefore the largest sheep-station in Austraha. In 1910
it paid a dividend of 10 per cent. All these companies
have played a large part in colonial pastoral history.
Sometimes their action has been conservative and retro-
gressive, and the greatest of all has latterly been a
millstone around the neck of the colony. Only under
pressure, and in recent years, has it released its grasp
on the lands it obstinately kept under pasture, and
surrendered them for conversion into agricultural farms.
Another big pastoral company enjoys the unenviable
distinction of being the most colossal failure in Austraha.
The Western Australian Company was founded in 1838
in order to attract settlers to Australia by applying (so
we are told) the principles on which South Australia had
been formed. In 1840 it purchased extensive blocks for

THE COMPANY AS PASTORALIST 241

settlement in the western colony. The remoteness of the
settlers from one another and from their base, caused
by the vast extent of the grants, and the lack of labour
supphed by the convicts in Australia, MTccked a hopeful
and Avell-intended scheme. Yet it introduced many
valuable settlers into Western Australia, and it laid the
foundations of that south-western province which has
passed from a pastoral to an exporting agricultural
country.

Some of the men who had failed in Western Australia
migrated to Van Diemen's Land, and there, on a smaller
and more manageable area, slowly acquired instead of
being seized in mass, they succeeded. So well did they
succeed that in 1835 an association of " adventurers,"
as they called themselves, was formed in Tasmania, and
it aided in accomplishing the splendid undertaking of
colonising Victoria and spreading pioneer pastoralists
over the broad grassy acres of the West. Having served
its end, the association dissolved.

In 1836 the Derwent Company purchased the shares
and interests of the Van Diemen's Land Company, and
formed stations in the Geelong district. The Clyde
Company formed stations on the Moorambool, and the
Circular Head Company in Tasmania. In later days
companies, with endless sheep and capital, competed
for mammoth stations. The Lochinvar, Rosenthal, and
St. Ruth Company, in Queensland, owned many runs,
and Edward Palmer mentions a company as existing in
1859, which had realised all its ambitions. Most of these
companies were English. The United Australian Pastoral
Company has a large station, with 50,000 sheep and
10,000 cattle ; it was formed some forty or more years
ago, and still declares a good dividend. In the seventies
the Musgrave Range Company held a large extent of
country in the Northern Territory. A New Zealand Pas-
toral Company (R. Campbell and Sons) declares a fat divi-
dend. The existence of such companies is the outcome
of a general movement. Company-ranches and com-
-pei,ny-estancias in North and South America are parallels

16

242 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

in the New World to the company-stations in this
southern world.

A station-trust is hardly in sight. Yet the various
pastoral associations, which act and sue hke legal persons,
reveal an organization that perhaps better answers the
same purpose. The nationalisation of stations, which
is the trust carried a stride further, has been proposed,
at least in regard to the Native reserves in the Far North
and North West. In those remote wilds, where alone the
black now seems to thrive, still cattle and sheep ranches,
together with the growth of rice, cotton, sugar, tobacco,
rubber, and tropical fruits, might all, it is believed, be
carried on by the State, in the interests and by means
of the natives. From Native reserves, thus aggregated
under Government, to private or company-runs, simi-
larly massed, there is but a step.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE HOMESTEAD AND THE HOUSE

The first business of a squatter who purchased or formed
a run in a new country was to fix a site for the head-
station, where he was to reside. There he built a house
and planted a fresh germ of the collective life. The
growth of the dwelling reflected the successive stages of
the pastoral life.

For a time many pioneers lived in tents. Henry
O'Brien, says Dr. Lang, was, like Jabal, the " father of
such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle." It
was the first stage in the pastoralist existence and re-
called the nomad phase. Two ladies, the wife and mother
of Victorian pioneers, one of them seventy years old, lived
in tents for ten months. Doubtless, it was a brief stage
with the squatters and their ladies, but in one form it
long survived. The lining of the first slab huts on a
station long consisted of canvas.

The improvements on some of the pioneer stations
began with two thatched huts. Then, with the arrival
of a new proprietor and his wife a cottage was built,
after the model of an Indian bungalow, with an all-
round verandah. It was thatched with long tussock
grass, as was also the new detached kitchen. A garden
was made, and a piano introduced.

Sometimes, but very rarely, as with F. N. Broome's
station in the Malvern Hills of Canterbury, New Zealand,
the house was built two miles away from the homestead,
when the squatter's wife liked "to be removed from
the immediate neighbourhood of all the work of the

243

244 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

station." * Often it was situated on a rise, or on a spur
running from the hills, as if to command the various
out-stations, and to provide, like the feudal castle that
was built on a height, against attacks by the natives ;
and there, like the homestead of Elsey Creek in the
Northern Territory, it might overlook a lagoon so large
that it might be called a lake. Yet also thick timber
and wattle bushes might hide the approaches to it,
though the huge trees were often stripped of their bark
for a mile or two, and stumps of large trees that had
been sawn down lay scattered. The various buildings
were enclosed in a paddock, and they looked ragged,
patched up, and rather tumble-down, yet they had on the
whole a comfortable appearance. Those trees that were
left imparted a parklike aspect to the scene. These
buildings formed a quadrangle or square court, in the
centre of which might grow a large tree, round which,
in Queensland, a merry circle of black girls might be
gathering the everlasting flowers and, amid laughter,
decorating their short shining curls Avith them. In front
would be a large low-verandahed cottage adorned with
roses. The sides were formed by the store, with the
offices on one side and kitchen-buildings on the other.
The fourth side was occupied by the bachelors' hall. The
stable, cowshed, and dry-store were in a line with the
last, while, further away were a hut for the men and a
substantially built stockyard. All of these structures
had grown up bit by bit as they were wanted, and the
straggling quadrangle had " many corners and un-
expected doorways and passages," which made it some-
what of a maze.

The germ of the whole later evolution was a rough
slab hut, often containing only two rooms — a but and
a ben, as the Scots would say — with a sloping bark roof
fringing ruggedly over the caves. The slabs stood apart,

* Barker, Station Life in New Zealand, lottor x. ; see also
Grant, Bu8h Life in Queensland, i. 132-5, 56, 153 ; Daly,
Northern Territory, 340-1.

THE HOMESTEAD AND THE HOUSE 245

the freshly felled and cut wood not having been seasoned.
The walls were hned with canvas. The rafters were
bare and the home of tarantulas, centipedes, and other
uncanny creatures. The bunks were made of sawn
saphngs, nailed against the slabs. The humpey, as such
structures are termed in Australia, had no windows
properly so called, but only openings, with rough slab
shutters in which the planks hardly joined. At first,
there was a huge slab chimney, with a large open fire-
place, hke a little room. But this soon caught fire, and
was replaced by a chimney of stone, where a fire was
kept fuelled by mighty logs. The house may have con-
sisted only of the two original, rather large, rooms, but
as children came, rooms opening on the verandah were
added to it. The verandah, imperative and indispen-
sable in all parts of Australia and in most parts of New
Zealand, ran along the whole front of the house, and it
had an earthen floor and log steps.*

Commonly, the original building remained the prin-
cipal living-room, and rooms are successively added to
it, as they are needed, so that, as was wittily said, a
colonial house looks for all the world as if it " had come
out in penny numbers ! " Sometimes, however, it is
pulled down, and a cedar house, with kitchen and bed-
room wings, is built round a garden. Then there will
be a splendid broad verandah all round, with doors and
French windows and an iron roof. Even then the old
couple may live on in the old humpey, which may remain
detached, because they are used to the place, and
perhaps no longer feel equal to housekeeping on a larger
scale. Such a new house, though built of hardwood
slab, like the old house, would be carefully built, with
doors and French windows, and, though one-storeyed,
would be long, with a splendid broad verandah all
round and an iron roof. In the pioneer stations of the
Northern Territory it might be a large barulike building

* Patekson, Outback Marriage, pp. 35-6. Campbell Pbaed,
My Australian Oirlhood, pp. 59-60, 154.

246 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

with slab sides and a high and steep-pitched roof, as
was everywhere the old way. Others, again, that were
more advanced, in that same Territory, might be sohdly
built of freestone.

In the headquarters of squatting in New Zealand the
house at the head-station is often beautifully situated,
comfortably built, and of a handsome design, belonging
to a rich squatter whose name is (or used to be) a power,
but it is still of wood, like so many of even city houses
in almost stoneless New Zealand. In Australia the
house of a great squatter may be substantially built of
stone, of bungalow shape, with only one story, and a
three-sided broad verandah. Easy-chairs and lounges
will be scattered over the verandah. The high windows
come down to the floor. The door is Avide and inviting,
opening on to a spacious cool-tiled hall. There may be
a couple of dra^ving-rooms, and behind them a cheerful
morning-room, while the bedrooms, always cool and airy,
open on to the verandah. A group of detached buildings
contains bachelors' quarters and a schoolroom, which
may be used equally for a concert-hall and a chapel.
In front there may be a natural lake or ornamental
water, with a windmill and pipes running into the
garden.

Some of these houses, even if belonging only to pioneer
squatters, may be, like Lady Barker's in the Malvern
Hills, adorned with many of the little elegancies of life,
such as drawing-room ornaments, pictures, etc. The
dining-room may have fine prints on the walls and a
" trophy of Indian swords and hunting-spears over the
fire-place." The hall may be hung with whips and
sticks, spears and hats. In the drawing-room may be
seen a tall, white classically shaped vase of Minton's
pottery. While the sitting-room may be the picture of
cosy comfort, with well-filled book-shelves, arm-chair,
and sofa. Yet that was a pioneer station, far in the
interior of Canterbury province, in New Zealand. Such
a house may be small, but as a pioneer squatter said,
it is ** large enough to hold a great deal of happiness."

THE HOMESTEAD AND THE HOUSE 247

It may be rough, but it is often the dwelling-place of
refinement and culture.*

No colonial house of any pretensions would be complete
without its garden, full of exotic blooms. None of the
wonders of the great country houses are, of course, to
be seen either in Australia or New Zealand, but they are
adorned by native or imported wealth of blossoms,
growing in the open, such as few English mansions can
show. The great hedges of cactus that struck the visitor
in Sir George Grey's island of Kawau, do not grow
further south, at least to any size, but the luscious
passion-fruit and the gorgeous sun-flower are widely
spread. Just as colonial homes are often decorated by
" all sorts of nondescript treasures, placed in one's
boxes at the last moment of leaving English hall or
rectory by careful loving hands of mothers or sisters."
So in Canterbury " the flowers and shrubs of Old England
grow side by side with the Avild and lovely blossoms of "
the new island home. In the court of an Australian
station a handsome gigantic convolvulus round a central
tree, while " morning glories " twine their graceful stems
on the posts of the verandah. Often there were acres of
garden, with great clumps of willows and acacias, but
the garden might be almost as lacking in design as the
house. There might be " acres of fruit-trees, with
prairie-grass growing at their roots, trees whereon grew
luscious peaches and juicy egg-plums ; long vistas of
grape-vines, with little turnings and alleys, regular lovers'
walks, where the scent of the honeysuckle intoxicated
the senses." At the foot of such a garden a beautiful
stream, with its pebbles flashing like opals in the sun-
light, was fed by the mountain snow. In the lately
savage Northern Territory even homes that are on the
confines of the desert are adorned with oleander and
other trees. Lawns and gardens made and kept by the
blacks humanise these wild spots. Other stations in

* Grant, op. cit., i. 153 ; Barker, Station Life ; Daly,
op. cit., 340-1 ; Wise, Commonwealth, of Australia, pp. 40-1.

248 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the same region are said to have well-stocked gardens,
which are kept by Chinamen.*

* Writing about the beginning of the century an old pastora-
list, Mr. De Satge, estimates that a sum of 100 milHon pounds
sterling has been invested in pastoralist improvements in New
South Wales — houses, woolsheds, wire fencing, dams, reservoirs,
and artesian wells. — Journal of a Queensland Squatter, pp. 2-3.

CHAPTER XXXVI

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS

Social life was cheerful and bright in those early days.
What society, we may wonder, could there be on the
DarHng Downs, where each station, or little group of
human beings, was separated from all the others by
many miles of roadless tracks, where there were few
women, few luxuries of any kind, few of those contriv-
ances subsidiary, but so necessary, to enjoyment ? Yet
those days, by the account of those who lived through
them, were the happy period, the golden age, of young
pastoral Queensland. In 1843 there were already twelve
stations on the Downs. There some house, whether a
station or that of a Commissioner of Lands, was a social
centre that " it would have been hard to match for
good-fellowship and warm attachments." The beauty
of the new scenery and the delightful atmosphere gave
health to all, imparted cheerfulness, and engendered
social brightness. There were constant rounds of visits,
and everj^where the guests met with a hearty welcome.
Reciprocal services were cheerfully rendered. A cheery
spirit was ever the squatter's viaticum. Hope gilded the
future and cast retrospective rays upon the present.

Those who have lived through the patriarchal phase
in Austraha or New Zealand recalled their Hfe there
with the regretful longing that we feel for " days that
are no more." The wife of one of the oldest pioneer
settlers in Queensland said that " those wild days were
the happiest," and the lady who reports the saying
speaks in her own name as well. " Those Journeys,

249

250 TEE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

those days and nights of camping out, are just the things
I am gladdest of, the most real and the m.ost cherished "
(A.G. pp. 82-3). It was the same in New Zealand, where
the very occupations of the station were wrought into
materials for happiness. Lady Barker tells of an ex-
pedition after ^^■ild cattle in the KoAvai bush that con-
sumed three days — " three long, happy days," she calls
them. And years afterwards she speaks of " those
delicious wild daj^s," when she was the wife of a Can-
terbury runholder (S.L. ; S.A. p. 79). We are reminded
of Hawthorne's "wild, free days on the Assabeth" in
the company of Ellery Channing.

Just so did the Patriarchal Age lay " an invincible
spell " on the imagination of the Hebrews, so that a large
section of the people yearned ever to revert to it ; and
Renan explains their religious evolution as a reversion,
under the influence of the prophets, from the worship
of a stern and terrible Jahveh to a genial adoration of
the more kindly Elohim. Just so did the New Eng-
landers of North America look back on the early days
of colonisation, though their trials must then have been
hardest ; and just so do the Canadians of the present
look back on the contented and happy life led by a past
generation in the eastern provinces.

The mood is not entirely an illusion. Those days
were happy days, when care pressed b'ghtly on the brow,
and life was bright and free, and simple pleasures
abounded. It was an idyllic existence, such as was led
*' in the days of ignorance," in Arabia, or —

" Where shepherds still their songs repeat.
And breaks the blue Sicilian sea."

It was well to taste once of such bliss as made the
Garden of Eden credible. Even now the dreamer, re-
turning to a station whereon his j'outh has been spent,
may recall days when " the blood ran riot in the veins,"
and " the dullest felt vague strivings which he could not
resolve into words, dim visions of holier things." Then
the autumn mornings were for riding through the timber

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 251

or for rowing by the willows, or for high resolve, for the
clearer vision or the sudden illumination, which does not
last.* Neither the vision nor the life could last. The
world has to be faced and fought with, its chagrins and
disappointments experienced, and its bitter disenchant-
ments undergone. Lady Barker, bright and happy soul
though she was, and Mrs. Campbell Praed, though fame
was to come to her, were to see the darker sides of life
and know something of its woe. Rolf Boldrewood,
who writes of pioneer station-life in lyrical strains, was
to find his reminiscences of it, even financially, the most
lucrative portion of his experiences, and Henry Eangsley,
who has been censured for describing station-hfe as " a
prolonged picnic," was to know dark reverses of fortune.
They but repeated, with much assuagement, the vicissi-
tudes of the most tried of Oriental patriarchs. Let us
hope that, like him, they were able to justify the ways
of God to man in their persons and retain their faith
through sorrow and calamity. Those bright early days,
in Australia as in Chaldaea, in New Zealand as in Sicily,
were the days of youth, and could no more endure than
the youth of Tithonus.f

The arch-opponent of the squatters, Dr. Lang, asserted
that very few of the squatters in the forties were married.
How could they be ? we may ask. What woman, fife
to be a helpmeet for such men as many of them were,
would consent to share such an existence ? Who would
invite gently reared women to come into such solitudes,
where many of the necessaries and almost all the luxuries
of life were denied them, where dangers to health and
life were to be encountered ? He adds — and the state-
ment is the key to the other — that very few of them
possessed the fee-simple in a single acre of the land they
occupied. That was it : even their tenure of their com-
fortless homes and their toilsome stations was insecure.

Yet Lang's assertion is doubtless exaggerated. Though
it was ten years later, the conditions were the same on

* E. H. C, in the Sydney Morning Herald.
t See also Victorian Pioneers, p. 239.

252 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

the Darling Downs in Ihe fifties as in Southern New
South Wales in the forties, and early in that decade
Patrick Leshe, pioneer squatter of Queensland, married.
Not long after Mr. Murray Prior, father of ^Mrs. Campbell
Praed, married also. And when the famous Orders in
Council of 1846 brought security to the precariously
situated fraternity, a new era dawned, says RL*. Brodribb,
who lived through that time. Squatters made per-
manent improvements, pushed farther into the interior,
and occupied new country. With the new sense of
permanence their circumstances gradually improved.
On stations hundreds of miles from Sydney or Melbourne
you would meet with highly respectable ladies, whose
famihes were reared in comfortable homes, where they
were happy and contented. And of the foUo-wang decade
in Queensland Henrj'^ Stuart Russell, himself married,
writes in similar terms,*

Men who, gently bred and brought up in luxury, find
themselves in the Austrahan bush, hundreds of miles
away from a settlement, with everything still in the
rough — rough food and clothes, rough beds and housing,
rough companions and rough overseers — are often seized
with an inextinguishable regret that they rashly threw
away such priceless advantages as were theirs in order
to lead the life of a clod. They remember " the gray
city with its dreaming spires," and they lament the
abandonment of the congenial studies for which, they
now fancy, they were better fitted. Some of them were
doubtless right. One of the best books about Austrahan
life in the bush was wTitten, seventy years ago, by one
such remorseful emigrant. f They grieve, more super-
ficially, that, through long disuse of it, they have become
unfit for societ}'. Even a large squatter, who is a
member of the Legislature of his colony, will confess to
his conscious unsuitedness for even the social life of the
provincial metropohs. The younger and still amorous
Btockman will ask how long it is since he has touched

* Lano, Account, i. 356-7. Beodkibb, Reminiscences, p. 57.
t Hayqabth, Bush Life.

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 253

a lady's hand,* will grieve that he must spend the
Christmas day like a savage in the isolation of a bush-
man's hut, and will wonder whether the cousin he left
behind him in England is now letting another man make
love to her.f The more piously disposed will bethink
himself with anguish on a Sunday that he is fifty or a
hundred miles away from a church, and he reflects that
the religious sentiment itself soon disappears when the
ordinances that nurture and express it fall into abey-
ance.{ Often the nostalgia is so strong that it drives
men back irresistibly to the old country, and even men
who have grown gray in the successful service of their
colonies return to spend the evening of their days amid
the scenes of their youth.

The style of living on a " station " Sir George Bowen
saw to be much more advanced than that of the Homeric
Greeks. He was struck with the signs of luxury in the
squatters' houses. There these lords of broad acres lived
in patriarchal style, dispensing a patriarchal hospitality.
Their days were spent in the saddle, and 400 pastoral
centaurs escorted him to Warwick, as, twenty years
later, a like number of farmers escorted Mr. Gladstone
to Haddo House in Aberdeenshire. Their evenings were
spent in refined and cultured intercourse, in aesthetic
enjoyment, or in innocent pleasures. The picture is
idealised or too rose-coloured, and to one who, like
Mrs. Campbell Praed, grew up in that way of living it
contrasted sharply with the stern reality as she knew
it only too well. It was truer of the nearer than the
remoter stations.

Very different pictures of station life might be drawn.
Take first the less favourable. The station is situated
500 miles up country, and that country of the dreariest
description. It stands amid the sandy plains of the
Condamine River, and into the weary souls of the dwellers
has entered the iron of those plains and of the brigalow

* See poem in Sladen's Australian Anthology.
t A. E., Overlanding, pp. 65-7.
t HAYGAI.XH, op. cit.

254 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

scrubs of the Dawson country. For seven years their
food has consisted of " fat hen," their only vegetable,
gait beef, and damper, or unleavened bread. Through
years of bad times the struggUng squatter often wishes
for death as a release, " when he views his haggard wife
and foredoomed children — doomed to a scant education,
social extinction, and early trouble." ^Vlien a crisis
arrives, like that of 1866 in Queensland, the pressure
becomes acute. Money grows scarce. The rates of
carriage are prohibitive. Flour can hardly be bought.
Under such conditions the harassed squatter cannot
make both ends meet. He sells out, and returns to
town, where he lives as he can. Others, it is true, face
the same hardships and hold on grimly.*

Cultured habituf^s of pioneer stations in those early
daj'^s write, on the other hand, of the " chatelaine's soft
voice and ever-varying converse," and Henry Kingsley's
pictures, as of Mrs. Buckley, as also of Major Buckley,
are portraits of typical English gentlemen and gentle-
women transported to a strange environment. Just so
did Arthur Young, travelling in France before the great
revolution, fall into raptures over the charms and accom-
plishments of the old French nobiUty, \\dth whom he spent
the evening, after he had passed the day in inspecting
their estates. The charm that Boldrewood found then
in the stations of Western Victoria was no more lasting
than the refinements of the chateau ; it vanished with
the sale of the runs and the advent of the goldfields.

In the monarchical countries of Europe the genesis
of social life was marked by the advent of ladies to the
king's court. Society, so called, began in France with
Francis the First, who professed that a court without the
ladies was like a year without a spring and a spring
without roses, and so he attracted by the splendour of
his fetes the chatelaines who, until then, had remained
forgotten in their feudal castles. In England it was
hardly older than the contemporary of Francis, Henry
VIII. It had its rise in the ascendancy of some female
* Babtley, Pioneering, etc., pp. 267, 256, 196.

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 255

personage, not always royal or even legitimate, who (says
an old French historian) " brought to the court politeness
and courtesy and gave keen points of generosity to
well-born souls." In all of the Australasian colonies, as
in the British colonies of North America, the initiation
of society, in its more restricted sense, followed on the
arrival of a Governor of striking social gifts, accompanied
by a chatelaine of sympathetic disposition and winning
ways. Just such an admirable pair arrived in the
metropolis of Queensland in 1859 in order to inaugurate
representative government in the Colony. Was it they
• — Sir George Bowen, the accomplished scholar, and his
diamond princess — whom Mrs. Campbell Praed paints ?
Ho, of the Viking type, was " quite splendid," while his
lady was a fitting helpmeet for such a man. A Greek,
from Corfu, and named Diamantina, she was " a stately,
sweet, and sympathetic figure," with dark Southern eyes
and Greek head, her hair growing low down on the brow
and gathered in a " Clytie knot." At a (Queen's) birth-
night dance she, divinely tall, seemed a picture in amber
satin ; in a crimson and gold-amber cloak, she appeared
quite regal.*

Of the " court " these two distinguished persons gradu-
ally formed the pastoralists and their leading famiHes
were prominent figures. As many of the political offices,
from the Premiership downwards, were held by the
squatters — the Palmers, Bells, Murray-Priors, Hodgsons,
Mackenzies, Archers, and who not ? — these were among
the foremost social figures. As in London and Washing-
ton, the Parliamentary session was the social season.
Did the pastoralist party hold office ? Then the families
of the squatter-ministers were resident in to'wn, and their
social life was a perpetual whirl. The ministeriahst
position might be threatened, and then the ministerial
families remained in a flutter of expectancy. For three
days and nights and a fourth day the testing debate in
the Legislative Assembly might last, and it might end
with the defeat of the mini sterialists. A cloud would then
* My Australian Qlrlhood, p. 216.

256 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

fall on the squatting families. Loss of office meant to
them a return to their stations in the country, which was
a fall from Heaven to Earth, Their fate might be
suspended. An appeal to the constituencies at least
promised a reprieve. But social '' functions " were at
an end for a time.*

Still, there remained the birthnight or other great balls
at Government House, to which ins and outs were ahke
invited, and then the more prominent pastoral famihes
shone like stars. Long years afterwards, when those
splendours had faded into pictures of memory, high
ladies would tell how, when days of continuous rain
made the roads impracticable for vehicles, they rode as
far as twenty-five miles to attend a big ball at Govern-
ment House, arriving in the evening at half-past six
o'clock. Far into the night they danced, and in the
glorious Australian dawn they rode back to their homes.
How and v/here did they carry their gorgeous ball-
dresses 1 it may be asked. They had practically none.
Tarletan frocks were their chief raiment, and natural
flowers their only adorning. Those were still the days
of the simple life.f

The pastoral life engendered new types of occupation.
It changed the character and affected the activities of
prominent individuals not directly connected with it.
It exhibited beautiful specimens, individual and domes-
tic, of the pastoral type. It gave a new complexion
to features inherited from its Oriental forms.

It illuminated the path of empire, and opened up new
and vast dominions. The work of mustering and tailing,
the pursuit of runaway or stampeding cattle, and the
amusements of the chase serve, as Gibbon, not only
historically but prophetically said, as " a prelude to the
conquest of an empire."

The " most honourable " of the Asiatic shepherds
devolved on their captives the management of their
flocks and herds ; and the early Australian pastoralista

• My Australian Oirlhood, p. 216.

t Etta Young, Qucenslander, August 7, 1909, p. 23.

u .1

B

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o

3

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H

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SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 257

deputed the same duties largely to their convict servants.
The leisure thus left to them was in both partly devoted
to the strenuous pursuit of the chase. The cattle-drovers
of every age have been celebrated as " bold and skilful
riders." The horsemanship of the Gauchos, who are
real centaurs, is shown in amazing feats ; and the
Australian stockrider can keep his seat on the unbroken-
in Brumby or ride down declivities that are steeper than
the roof of a house. They confidently ford streams and
swim rivers in flood.

Hunting, once the sole pursuit of a people, when it
rose above trapping or fishing, and acquired the means
of capturing large game, became half a necessity to our
Australian squatters and half a recreation, as an inter-
mediate stage towards its being a sport. As with the
Vedic Indians and many another people, it was a means
of importing a wholesome variety into the monotony of
the daily fare, consisting largely of beef or of mutton
alone. In the early pioneering days, when both animals
abounded, kangaroo-hunting provided kangaroo-tail soup
in abundance, and the stockmen often rode down emus
for food. Almost every day the gun was in their hands.
In the forties there were to be seen large flocks of bustard,
numbering from ten to thirty or forty or more ; and
quails were plentiful. In the early fifties, reports an old
Crown Lands Commissioner, " there is nothing in the
shape of sport, except in the season a few snipe and
quail ; then it ends till the next September. For an
idler or a sportsman this country affords nothing,
and for a miUtary officer " like himself, " it is the
most damnable quarter in the world. Now, in the
early fifties, the kangaroo and the emu are nearly
extinct in the district ; the country is almost devoid of
game."

In those early days — the forties, namely, in Victoria,
Rolf Boldrewood recalls " glorious times," when they
wandered about, gun in hand, or with their three famous
kangaroo-dogs, slew the swift marsupial.
17

258 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

There were no foxes then in AustraUa, but a tolerable
substitute was readily found. The native dog was game
enough to be hunted and fast enough to be chased on
horseback. The gentlemen squatters in Western Victoria
kept a noble pack of hounds and hunted twice or thrice
a week. " Noble sport. They met at one another's
houses, and sometimes as many as thirty gentlemen
would sit do^vn at table. At daybreak the squatter
master of the hounds sounded his bugle ; his second was
soon after sounded for breakfast ; and his third, in half
an hour, for mounting. A fine pack of dogs appeared,
led by the master of the hounds, and followed by thirty
well-mounted gentlemen-squatters." After passing over
sixteen miles of ground without one check, twenty riders
were in at the death. The pack, the sport, and the
sportsmen, in the opinion of Captain Forster Fyans, were
worthy of Leicestersliire {V.P., 119 — 20).

The life of often-ungenial, but seldom unremitting,
toil on a station has from the first been frequently varied
by bouts of indolence or recreation. "While the grass is
growing in the earth, and the wool growing on the sheep's
backs, and the cattle are fattening, the masters of these
sheep and cattle and the broad acres on which they
graze, may disport Avith a freedom the agriculturist
hardly knows and the industrialist finds hopelessly out
of reach. Their amusements are evidently limited by
the lack of numbers ; they cannot, in the pioneer stage
anyway, play at cricket or football or any of the games
for which a score or more of players are required. But
all have horses, and all can ride, and one of the most
exultant sensations a man or a woman can know is theirs
in prodigality. They are the horsemen of the Empire,
and when a new form of soldier is devised — the mounted
infantry-man — in a country where a new form of warfare
is necessarily waged, the young squatter or stockman
fights at an advantage.

One, at least, of the old recreations was practised in
two portions of an Australasian colony. In the bleak

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 259

uplands of Canterbury in the South Island of New
Zealand, close by the Southern Alps, and in the still
bleaker uplands of Otago, by Lakes Wakatipu and
Wanaka, the exhilarating sport of skating could be
pursued. Even in Canada there is no better skating,
Lady Barker beUeved, than among the Malvern Hills,
where, in remote and black mountain-tarns, on the
borders of the glaciers, ice several feet thick lies all
winter. There, on lakes far inland, bullock teams could
travel in safety. To such lakes the squatting party
would ride by two or three stages. First, they would
ride for thirty miles to a neighbouring station. Facing
the majestic chain of the Alps, they would pass through
long, Avinding valleys and steep gullies, or, later, through
bleak, desolate valleys, round the shoulder of projecting
spurs, through swamps, and up and down rockj^ stair-
cases. Spending the night there, they would set out
next morning on a rough road, through desolate
gorges, in scenes of desolate grandeur, and amid a
silence that seemed awful, and after two hours' difficult
riding, they would arrive at their skating ground — a
gloomj^ tarn, Avhere two mountains rose sheer from
the water's edge, and a dark pine forest loomed before
them. Situated in " the cleft of a huge, gaunt, bare
hill," lay a sheet of black, thick ice. There, for three
successive days, they skated amid an "intense, appalhng
loneliness." *

More exotic sports are open to the squatter's family
in certain colonies. Once in twelve or fourteen years,
in the far inland parts of Canterbury, the Canadian recrea-
tion of tobogganing may be enjoyed. Then, after a
week's incessant snowfall, the foothills of the Southern
Alps — themselves an amphitheatre of snow-covered
mountains stretching for a hundred miles from north to
south and standing out a vision of Avhite as appalling as
rare — are covered with snow. A smooth slope down
one of them at an angle of 40 furnished a course for a
* Barker, Station Amusemenfa in Neio Zealand, ch. iv.

260 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

toboggan, and a level drift by its side was a monta^ne
russe. A home-made sledge, roughly put together
with a board six feet by one, two battens nailed on
it, a sheet of iron nailed under it and curved upwards
in front, and brakes made out of bits of A^dre-fencing,
connected with an iron chain. On this frail vehicle,
well poised at length, doMTi they flew at a pace of a
thousand miles an hour, writes Lady Barker, drawing
on her imagination, the descents ** showing every variety
of mishap," save broken bones.*

As old a recreation as either skating or tobogganing
was and still is at the command of the squatter in certain
provinces. On one of his voyages Captain Cook, in-
tending a service to the inhabitants, present or future,
liberated a number of pigs in both islands of New
Zealand. Like all domestic animals that have been bred
out of savagery, and new characters fixed in them by
human selection, they gradually reverted to their original
state when the process of selection was \^'ithdra^\'n.
They then became the prey of the colonial huntsman,
and, were the New Zealand bush as close at hand as
the Harz forest, might afford sport for an emperor
or an archduke. Called pig-sticking in New Zealand as
in India, because the boar is oftener killed with the
spear than with the rifle or the revolver, it is termed
pig-stalking by Lady Barker, who often bravely took
part in it. Quite as difficult as deer-stalking and in-
comparably more dangerous, for the wild boar is as keen
of scent and sight and hearing as the deer, it tests the
courage and tasks the endurance of the sportsman, who
may have to ride some miles in pursuit of his game
and then stalk him through a densely tangled under-
growth. The trained dog may bale him up against a
tree and get ripped open for his pains. Then the hunter
will close in on him, stab him with the spear, or end
his days with a revolver. Sometimes a single rifle shot
from an opposite hillside will bring down a " fierce olcj
* Babkee, Station Amiisementa in New Zealand, oh. v.

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 261

warrior," who is fighting for his own hand, Hke Hal o'
the Wynd, because, being too quaiTelsome, he has been
driven, hke a rogue-elephant, from the society of his
kind. Evidently, " life in the bush " has its compensa-
tions. It has also its drawbacks, which are the close
counterparts of its compensations. By resuming the
pursuits of primitive or mediaeval man, the squatter
sinks back to the mediaeval or primitive stage. The
corresponding sentiments, the politics, the rehgion, and
too often the manners necessarily spring up as accom-
paniments of the activities of an earlier stage. Station
life is a reversion to patriarchal life.

One thing to some extent saves the dwellers on a
station, or a portion of them. They are often within
practicable distance of a provincial metropolis, and then
the monotony and the miseries of the bush are tempora-
rily relieved by visits to Sydney or Melbourne, Brisbane
or Adelaide, Christchurch or Dunedin.

A station picnic had all the characteristics and was
clothed with all the charms of the bush. Its objective
might be a black unfathomable lagoon, hid in the heart
of the scrub, and never before visited. It was on horse-
back, and the procession wound up the range. Over
plains and timbered ridges it passed, and through a dense
scrub, " where the bottle-trees rose weird and white,
and the stately bunyas drooped." With their toma-
hawks blackboys " blazed " a track for the return of
the party. Up stony ridges, down steep gullies, over
breakneck rocks they rode. They camped for the night
on a plateau amid great volcanic boulders. The ladies
slept in the tent on couches of grass-tree tops ; the men
camped by the fire, wrapped in their blankets. At
sunrise they bathed and dressed by a running stream
in the gorge. The horses were then saddled ; the black-
boys tied the tomahawks and pint-pots to the dees of
the saddles ; the men boiled the tea, or baked johnny-
cakes in the ashes. Then they rode upwards along the
gorge, over a ridge where the golden wattle shed on

262 THE PA8T0BAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

them its fragrant pollen, and again into the scrub,
majestic, perfumed, gloomy, and wonderful. A deep
ravine blocked further progress. The riders dismounted,
and climbed, by the aid of compasses and poles, to the
Bungwhal Hump, through the virgin forest, where foot
of M'hite man had surely never trod before. They lost
their bearings in the hopeless labyrinth of the scrub.
In the intense gloom two of the party slipped, and one
of them fell down a precipice and was lulled. Thus
ends, sometimes, an Australian picnic*

After a bush wedding a whole cavalcade would leave
the station, consisting of the marriage party and the
family and friends, and t^A'o vanguards of blackboys ;
all on horseback. Four long cooees would sound the
farewell of the marriage pair.

Nothing is more characteristic of Australia than its
race-meetings, and nothing is more indubitably part of
the inheritance of squatterdom. The " Arablike love
for horses and their belongings that marks the pre-
destined son of the Waste " was found in Austraha,
remarks Rolf Boldrewood, " as duly as at Yemen or
the Nejd." The denizens of a station were " reared
in an atmosphere " of horses; f and each son and daughter
of the station had a riding-horse of his or her own.
Moreover, in most of the British colonies at the Antipodes
squatters have been the chief breeders of race-horses.
They were also long the organizers of race-meetings.
The introduction of Arab blood by Patrick Leshe en-
gendered a new sport in Queensland, and the whole
countryside gathered together from far and near. For
many years horses were ridden at races by gentlemen
jockies, and then, as he rode past the grand stand,
when he was greeted with smiles from under gay bonnets
(bonnets were still fashionable in those early Victorian
days) the young squatter's cup of bliss was full, and
his thirsty lips drank deeply of it. J The spectacle

* Mks. Campbell Praed, Dwellers by the River, pp. 38-77.
t BoLDKEWOOD, Old Melbourne Memories, ch. xxi.
I Russell, Genesis of Queensland.

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 263

was such as could hardly be seen elsewhere, and
the cavaliers of the Logan were no more distin-
guished a band of racers than the cavaliers of Western
Victoria.

A slightly different scene is painted by later observers
than the chronicler of Early Queensland. Now the
jockeys are stockmen, though some of these are still
men of good family. " Only those who have seen a
Christmas race-meeting in the interior can have any
idea of such a scene, with its motley crowd of niggers
[blacks] and stockmen from the adjacent runs, all
eager to knock down their twelve-months' cheque in
drinking or in backing the horses from their respective
stations." *

Race-time was a carnival equally for blacks and
whites. There might be as many as a hundred guests
at table. The bushmen rode up in spotless moleskins ;
the bush girls, too, were on horseback ; the blackboys
were picturesque in bright-coloured shirts. Racehorses
and heavily freighted buggies were driven up to the
station .

Station amusements expanded and refined with the
rising tide of pastoral prosperity. Large parties were
then invited to spend a week at a station, when picnics,
dances, and " all sorts of al fresco entertainments "
were provided. Each day's programme was prepared
and the necessary arrangements regally made. Drags,
mail-phaetons, carriages, dog-carts, and horsemen formed
a Derby-day -like procession, and traversed a mile-long
avenue. Races, riding-parties, shooting parties, fishing
excursions, kangaroo and opossum battues made the
week one of mirth and revelry. It Avas as a decameron
from Boccaccio, and never, by the confession of its
most gifted chronicler, did mortals drink more deeply
of the cup of innocent pleasure, or return with more
regret to every-day life. We may compare it with an
intoxicating day spent by Herbert Spencer with the
Valentine Smiths on their Highland estate, but the
* A. E., Overlanding, p. 76.

264 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

English party's sober delight was trivial to the dehrious
pleasure of the Austrahans.

Hospitahty is, perhaps, the most eminent virtue of
the pastoral state, and binds, as by a golden chain, all
the pastoral ages together. It is still such in contem-
porary Australia as much as it ever was in ancient
Chaldsea or modern Arabia, or South America. It is,
indeed, less a virtue than a necessity. Were it denied,
on stations separated from the next by a distance of
many — sometimes, as in the Northern Territory, a
hundred — miles, death would be speedy and sure. Thus,
at every Australian station, the wayfarer, of whatever
class or colour, receives a regular dole, which has come
to consist of a pound of meat and a pannikin of flour.
Such swagsmen are known as "sundowners," because
they usually arrive at a station about sundown, when
the labour of the day is ended, and they are less likely
to be required to do any work as a condition of receiving
food. Some professional vagrants are known as
" coasters," because they coasted up one bank of a
river and down the other (in the early days most stations
were placed on the banks of rivers or creeks), visiting
each station as they passed. These were malingerers,
who lived on the doles it was sometimes dangerous to
refuse. They are capable, in such a case, of doing
serious mischief. The description of a new, costly, and
thoroughly well-appointed wool-shed being set on fire
and burnt to the ground by some such miscreants,
whom the superintendent had angrily ordered off the
station, is evidently sketched from life.* A primary
virtue flouted, a clamorous need denied, thus avenges
itself.

How to treat such wayfarers was long a problem.
To supply them gratuitously with food ad libitum would
have imperilled the subsistence of the station-dwellers
and brought down on them a cloud of harpies. To meet
the difficulty the " traveller's hut " was invented.
There the swagsman would find an iron pot, a bucket,
* BOLDBSWOOD, The Squatter's Dream, ch. viii.

SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 265

and a kettle, with a supply of firewood, and there he
might cook as he pleased the pound of meat and the
pannikin of flour that were given him. Next day, if
no job were assigned him, he was expected to move
on to the next station.

Hospitality is a virtue that the patriarchal age has
bequeathed to the industrial.

CHAPTER XXXVII

PASTORAL MAKRIAGE

High authorities in Sociology suggest that there is
something in the pastoral life that peculiarly afifects
the relations between the sexes, and they adduce the
Todas of India and the Masai and the Bahima of Africa
to show that very great laxity in these relations, together
with very low types of marriage, may be found among
pastoral peoples.* Polygamy in particular, or, at least,
concubinage with native women of an inferior race has
been a character of the patriarchal or pastoral state in
many countries from the time of Abraham onw^ards.
^Vhen Penan affirms that the pastoral phase " bred
personal honesty and the family instinct " in olden
times, we must therefore understand by the family the
patriarchal, not the monogamous, family. The men
who founded the pastoral system in Australia were
Englishmen and Scotsmen who knew no other than the
monogamous family of advanced civilisation. Some of
the earlier of them, like the Berry brothers, were ascetes
in practice and died unmarried (but one Berry was
married), while others, like John McArthur, were noted
for the mutual fidelity of the parties through long years
of separation and the tender beauty of the marital rela-
tionship. The phase of purity, unhappily, did not con-
tinue, or was not universal. Lacking the power of
choosing life-companions among women of their own
class and sometimes their own race, and conscious of
holding a patriarchal position that raised them above the
♦ Fkazeh, Totetnism and Exogamy, iv. 139.
266

PASTORAL MARRIAGE 267

public opinion, the pioneer squatters in several of the
Australasian colonies gratified their needs or their
passions in an illicit or a vicious manner. The squatters
of New South Wales and Tasmania often placed the
convict women employed on their stations by the side
of their hearth, and their stockmen did not fail to follow
their example. A still more questionable form of the
relationship arose in colonies where there were no convict

women. " Mr. , of , near me," writes one of

the Victorian pioneers, " kept a harem for himself and
his men. The consequence was that he, like a good
many more, had to sell out " ; the " harem " of course
consisted of black women.* Both masters and men
grew dissolute through the power they possessed of
taking black women as their wives and concubines.
The practice was not confined to Victoria. Not a few
instances are known, where English gentlemen, happily
married to women of their own class, have become so
infatuated with black women as to make them their
mistresses and ultimately their wives and the mothers
of their children.

Partly, it may be, from old attachment, but also to
m.aintain a distinctive feature of a caste or class, some
of the squatters went " home " (back to England) for
wives, as those ancient pastoralists Isaac went, and
Jacob was sent, to their relatives in the distant Chaldsean
birthplace of the tribe for the same purpose. " I am
not surprised at your returning to Britain," writes one
squatter to another, " be it for weal or woe. As for
me, I suppose, as I made a fool of myself by going home
for a wife, I must also make a fool of myself a second
time by going home again with her." "f

* Letters from Victorian Pioneers, p. 31.
t Ibid., p. 141.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

PASTORAL MORALS

The pastoral stage in Australia, like the same stage in
ancient Palestine or modern England, has left or is
leaving an indelible impress on the character of the
people. It bred in them a spirit of rude independence
that permeates the Austrahan of all classes and profes-
sions, so as to make him resist dictation and resent
even being " spoken to." It bred the simplicity of life
where the multitude of ranks in the " Byzantine hier-
archy " of Europe has almost completely disappeared,
and there only exist at most the squatter or the manager
(when these are not of the same class as the others),
his overseer, and his stockmen, while the scarcity and
urgency of labour put the employee on the same level
as his employer, when they do not give him the upper
hand. It bred or elicited no less the capacity for grap-
pling with gigantic evils, such as floods, droughts, epi-
demics, and attacks by the natives. It bred also the
loafing disposition and the wandering spirit that still
canker Australian life, and if it also bred that indiffer-
ence to wealth and show that is but now being lost in
Australia, it was the root of that religious indifference
and lazy tolerance that strike the immigrant and the
visitor. It was an educator in self-help, in wilhngness
to dispense with the indispensable, and make the most
of life " under bare poles " or reduced to its lowest terms.
No less did it nurture a readiness to aid others, if only
because on no other conditions could existence be
carried on. Independence, unworldliness, equality, tol-

268

PASTORAL MORALS 269

erance, resistance to natural forces and great calamities,
self-help, and unsclfishnesp — a community could hardly
have a more solid foundation.

The morals of the pastoralist days had the simplicity
of primitive communities. " How honest," remarks
Boldrewood of the early pi'imitive forties, " were nearly
all men in those days ! " * Did a man wish to dispose
of a run, he rode with the would-be purchaser all over
the ground, and pointed out all its faults. It was far
otherwise twenty years later. Then, as Lady Barker
relates, the OAvner of a station would juggle a compara-
tive new-comer into the purchase of a run that was
not worth a fraction of the sum given for it, and could
hardly belived upon.f In the pastoralist Golden Age
of Western Victoria the uncommercial relations were
also at their sweetest and best. " How strong and un-
questioning was friendship ! . . . How divine was love!"

We must remember that the individuals were young
and the community was young. Those were days when
they tasted true happiness, and their like has never
been seen since. None were too rich. None could
afford to live in Melbourne. Everyone was his own
overseer. All were friendly and genial, cheery and
contented. J

At the same time, we must not accept Mr. Browne's
rosewater accounts too guilelessly. They may have been
true of the best class of squatters, and yet were not true
even of them without qualification. Among Rolf Boldre-
wood's golden men were the Hentys, and it was through
Mr. Henty that one of the Victorian pioneers, his neigh-
bour, lost a great portion of the land he had chosen for
a station. It was evidently of him that J. G. Robertson
was thinking when he said that "the most conflicting
evidence was given before the Crown Lands Commis-
sioner by unprincipled men. ..." §

* Old Melbourne Memories, ch. ii.

f Station Life.

X Old Melbourne Memories, chs. iii. xi.

§ Victorian Pioneers, p. 24.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE PASTORAL CULT

The most solemnly important scene in all history,
viewed from the Cliristian standpoint, was one where shep-
herds, afterwards aggrandised into shepherd-kings and
magi, having come from afar, did homage to the infant
in whom a large portion of mankind has seen the Saviour
of the World. No single event has been more besung,
more variously or more gloriously painted, more widely
or frequently or heartily celebrated. The " herald
angels " sang it in the sky ; children and " waits," con-
sisting of young men and maidens, still sing it on earth
on Christmas Eve, when the ground in Northern Europe
is white with snow, or when, at the Antipodes, if ever
the sacred dawn is there kept at all, it is kept to (or
rather by) the songs of birds and the gladness of all
nature in her richest summer attire.

It was altogether fitting that one of the earliest stages
of human history — the first, indeed, after man has arisen
out of savagery — and perhaps the finest and peacefullest
of all, should be inseparably associated with human
redemption. Yet man had hardly needed to be re-
deemed had he begun — had it been possible for him
to begin — with the pastoral stage, or could he have
remained at that stage. It was not to be. Man had
been a savage and a barbarian, a trapper and a hunter,
before ever he was a shepherd, and in future times he
was to be a warrior, a conqueror, and an industrialist.
Out of this oasis in his history between two seas of
blood have been selected some of the richest imagery

270

THE PASTORAL CULT 271

that has adorned the Christian faith. It furnished
Christ with one of His tenderest parables, out of which
grew the conception of Christ Himself as the Good
Shepherd.

If we ignored the pastoral state, truly says Professor
Patrick Geddes, " we should be losing sight of a main
fount of spiritual power." Some have even maintained
that down the pastoral hillsides first trickled the slender
stream of the rehgious life. We now know that religion
has lowher beginnings. Long before man has domesti-
cated the sheep or the ox, it strikes its roots in the grave
and blossoms over the tombs. None the less, the pas-
toral age is the great watershed of rehgions. On this
side and on that it has poured down the faiths of Chaldaea
and Palestine and Arabia, of ancient India and modern
Scotland. On all of them it has left its stamp. In
Hebrew times God was already a shepherd -god. Three -
fifths of the Psalter are understood to have been com-
posed after the return of the Jews from Babylon, but
the grand old Twenty-third Psalm is believed by Ewald
and other equally authorised critics to be of pre-Exilic
origin. Though it belongs to the pastoral period, it
has formed the consolation of hundreds of generations
in ancient Canaan and modern Europe and all over the
world. Is it quite obsolete in free-thinking Australia ?

" The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. He
maketh me to lie down in green pastures : He leadeth
me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul : He
leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's
sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for Thou art with
me ; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies : Thou anointest my head with oil ; my cup
runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow
me all the days of my Ufe : and I will dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever."

Sung on the bleak hillsides of Scotland by persecuted
Covenanter or Cameronian, a psalm so quietly trium-

272 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

phant must have filled their souls with peace and nerved
their hearts with fresh courage. In the hymns of Vedic
India, noble though they often are, is there aught to
compare with it ? Has the pastoral age produced any-
thing more affecting or more sublime ?

All through its history the pastoral age continues to
furnish materials for rehgious instruction. It supplied
Jesus with one of His tenderest parables, and made of
Christ Himself the Good Shepherd. " Feed My sheep,"
He commanded Simon Peter, chief of the Apostles, and
the loftiest of Christian painters has made the scene of
the injunction immortal. It has given rise to a religious
sect known as " the sheep-calling Baptists " in Alabama.
It is the theme of many a hymn besides the one IMr.Sankey,
the American musician-revivalist, rendered so potent in
effecting conversions. Alas ! it is also the refrain of
the despairing song shouted by KipHng's " gentlemen
rankers."

" We are lost sheep who have gone astray ;
" Baa, baa, baa ! "

A mythology could readily have sprung up in the
sunbaked deserts of AustraUa. " What were clouds in
the Riverina," writes Rolf Boldrewood, " but the heralds
of prosperity, or its synonym, the Rain-King, but the
lord and gold-giver of all the sun-scorched land ? "*
And precisely such feelings of exasperation and rebellion
as are expressed in one of the Vedic hymns come (we
are told) into the minds of the dwellers in drought-
stricken Texas, t and also (I am informed) into the hearts
of the Australian up-country men, as, day after day,
they see clouds drift across the sky and shed never a
drop of rain. To the desolate squatter, threatened with
ruin, the columns of dust, or moving cloud-pillars,
seemed the abodes of evil genii. And when we read
of men dying in the beds of dried-up creeks, or again,
in time of flood, of " the hungry, surging rush " of " the

* Boldrewood, The SqiMtter'a Dream, chs. xii. xxv.
t Raqozin, The Story of Ghaldea.

THE PASTORAL CULT 273

angry river," we do not wonder that, in Eastern coun-
tries, where these phenomena are to be witnessed on a
still larger scale, the Pantheon should be peopled with
sun-gods and storm-gods, and their terrifying deeds
dramatized — divinized or diabolized. In many an
Australian mind the rudiments of just such a mythology
must have been planted.

The natural religion of the squatter, apart from the
traditional beliefs and observances that he had brought
out from England, would be of the simplest character.
He would feel " the same dreaminess in the atmosphere,
the same crisp clearness, and the same vague conscious-
ness of haunting voices and of invisible benignant
presences which " Mrs. Campbell Praed had " never
found but in the Australian bush." Others have found
in the great Australian plains by night a scene the most
" able to enforce reverence from man." That conscious-
ness and the sense of infinite space the plains beget
are the base of all the higher religion.

It is not all brightness on the station. Indeed, a
character in one of Mrs. Campbell Praed's melancholy
tales sadly says : " Nothing of any consequence has
ever happened to us on the Ubi [in Queensland] without
death coming into it." No clergyman being, oftener
than not, at hand, sometimes an old squatter, well
fitted to be a layman-priest, would read the funeral
service — one who could both fight and pray, and had laid
his own dead to rest out there in the lonely desert plains.
Mrs. Praed is surely not wrong in thinking that " there
is something infinitely beautiful and solemnizing in such
simple burying amid the vast Australian solitudes." *

The pastoralist's religion long remained of this " allu-
minous simplicity," and his form of worship partook of
it. The head of a pastoral tribe was at first its priest
and sacrificer. So was the pioneer squatter his own
minister. Sir George Grey, the shepherd king of his
island in the Hauraki Gulf ; Sir Frederick Napier Broome
among the hills of the Southern Alps ; and other squatters
* Dwellers by the Eiver, pp. 298 , 305.
18

274 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

in the mountains and the plains, regularly "read prayers "
to their patriarchal household, consisting of their own
family, their man-servants and their maid-servants, their
stockmen and shepherds. Only on special occasions,
when there was a collective christening or a confirmation,
was a clergyman or the bishop, at distant intervals, called
in. The bishop having promised to come up and
cliristen the younger members. Lady Bountiful makes
white frocks for the catechumens. It is a beautiful
winter's morning. The drays roll up, bringing elders
and youngers, and each drayload is given to eat ; as
many as one hundred individuals arrive. The squatter
and his Avife stand sponsors. The children are lifted or
carried to the officiant. The bishop's commanding
figure and clear, penetrating voice (how well one remem-
bers the good old bishop !) ensure a reverent demeanour,
and his consecrating presence converts a secular abode
into a church. The simple rite administered, he delivers
a short sermon, and speaks helpful words to all the
groups, one by one. The tiny community is lifted a
degree upwards in the scale of civilisation.*

The squatters who settled in Australia went out into
the A^ilderness, carrying Avith them neither the teraphim
of the Semitic nor the household fire of the Aryan
migrant ; in rare cases they may have taken with them
their famity or pocket Bibles. We may well believe
that the religion which had been ingrained in them by
centuries of theological teaching and pious living was
still ahve within them, but in the records of those early
days we find but few mentions of the forms of worship
having been maintained. Away out in the wilderness,
a hundred or, perhaps, hundreds of miles distant from
a church, those of them who had had the habit of
domestic worship may have fostered it. The Aberdeen-
shire Leslies on the Darling Downs and the many Scots
elsewhere must have been brought up in it ; and who
can conceive Alexander or David Berry pretermitting
the venerable exercises of " the cottar's Saturday (or
* Baukeu, Station Lije in New Zealand, lottor xix.

THE PASTORAL CULT 275

Sabbath) night " ? To such men the Bible was their
chief moral nutriment, the generator and sustainer of
the inflexible principle that carried them triumphantly
through the hard and bare life, the temptations and im-
broglios of a pioneer settlement. Was it not David Berry
who said, " I find more comfort and consolation in the
Bible than in all else besides ? In thrilling interest it
surpasses all the novels ever written, and in all respects
concerning the true welfare of man, as regards this
world and the world to come, all other books bear no
comparison with it." The utterance is halting, but
the sentiment is respectable, and it goes far to explain
the inception and growth of the Shoalhaven estate.

Such sentiments and such practices were far from
being normal. Constant course and strenuous occupa-
tion with animals, gentle or fierce, or with material
things, deadened in most the finer sensibilities on which
religion depends. The lack of association with piously
disposed persons inhibited the further growth of the
rudiments that lie in all compact communities ; for,
do not the sociologists tell us that religion is but the
intensest form of the common (not the individual) con-
sciousness ? Most of all, the total absence of the forms
and ceremonies of the nominal religion, and of the con-
secrated individuals who administer them, is fatal to
that consciousness. The Sabbath, says Renan, is not
a patriarchal institution, nor is the Sunday a sacred
day in the Australian bush. Work proceeds on the
pioneer stations much as on other days ; it is a chance
if the name of the day is remembered. The immigrant
jackeroo, who may be hundreds of miles distant from
a church, listens in vain for the sound of church bells,
summoning him to prayer and sacred lessons, and he
feels an aching void when the long-wonted, mellow notes
no longer greet his ear.

The squatter and his family, with here and there an
educated immigrant, possess mental resources beyond
the reach of their employees, and, aided by the spiritual
ministration of books and music, which at length find

276 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

their way to the pioneer station, are able to nourish
the emotional mood that forms the core of religion. It
is otherwise with the stockmen and shepherds, the
shearers and rouseabouts. Alone in the sometimes fear-
ful solitude of the bush, those of them who are of Calvin-
istic rearing torture themselves with the problems of
predestination and election, and sometmies go mad
with utter bewilderment and terror. The others sink
to the level, not indeed of savages, but of primitive folk,
who have not yet risen to a dogmatic faith and a cere-
monial worship. They revert to the religion appropriate
to the pastoral phase — a religion without temples, cere-
monies, or priests, without material idols or those idols
of the cave or the mind that we call creeds.

CHAPTER XL

THE STATION AND SCIENCE

If the pastoral life in ancient Chaldaea begot the science
of Astronomy, we may almost say that in Australia it
has engendered Meteorology. The minute care shown
in collecting records of rainfall, when every drop of
rain is registered as if it were golden, and the unceasing
endeavours to generalise the observations and arrive at
laws or cycles, are the direct offshoot of the pastoral in-
dustry. One of the greatest meteorologists, Mr. Clement
Wragge, whose services were too lightly dispensed with
during a period of necessary retrenchment, and have
never since been again sought, was himself, qua meteoro-
logist, largely a product of one of the great pastoral
States .

The science of Geology has been advanced by the
search for artesian wells to replenish the pastures and by
the theories originated to account for them. Professor
Gregory's many volumes are remarkable equally for
their scientific depth and their popular style of pre-
sentment.

Some speculative advances are still more notable.
Many of the men and not a few of the women who
took up with the feeding of sheep and the herding of
cattle in the wilds or the solitudes of Austraha and
New Zealand were persons of culture, and would have
moved, or actually had moved, in refined circles. When
they also possessed talent, they were readily induced to
devote such leisure as they had to the writing of books
and in more than one instance to the composition of

277

278 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

works of art. Two such works do honour to AustraUa
and New Zealand. Samuel Butler, a grandson of
another Samuel Butler, who held the high office of
head-master of the famous Shrewsbury School and was
afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, was a jackeroo, or
cadet, on a sheep station in the Canterbury Province
of New Zealand and lived not very far, we gather,
from another station Avhich was adorned by a genuine
literary pair, Mr. (later, Sir Frederick) Napier Broome
and Lady Barker. Mr. Butler was one of the many
good scholars of Avhom New Zealand can boast, and,
like Andrew Lang, he rendered both the Iliad and the
Odyssey into simple and melodious prose. He was
also a philosopher, of the scientific sort, and, while
fully accepting the general theory of evolution, he
believed that Darwin's statement of the doctrines of
natural selection could be improved and supplemented.
Having a strong belief in the universality of inteUi-
gence, he apprehended that cunning, rather than chance,
as Darwin contended, was the key to the acquisition
by animal species of new characters. In a succession
of works, carefully numbered 0}). 3, 4, 6, etc., hke the
works of musical composers, he elaborated his not quite
novel, but freshly stated and independent views. He had
musical gifts and sympathies and wrote a cantata,
which was set to music. He was a painter and exhibited
at the Royal Academy, but, by his own candid admis-
sion, without ever attaining the success he dreamed of.
Lastly, he was an " original," and he was an attractive,
but paradoxical, figure in the London professional
society of the seventies. He appeared to be always
originating new ideas, and every time he was met with,
as Goethe said of Schiller, he had invariably something
fresh to communicate. It was, perhaps, less sound
than the developments of the great German poet, but
it was ever bold and striking. Once he was fuU of a
project for eliminating death by means of natural
selection ; it was but the evolution of an idea adum-
brated in Erewhon. That " development," giinily said

THE STATION AND SCIENCE 279

a New Zealand Premier, would consume some time in
its accomplishment ; but ridicule had little effect on
the good-natured artist, who has since found support
in scientific writers.

Most of these evolutions lay hidden in the womb of
the future, when Butler was still a cadet on a New
Zealand station. Still, two germs of his later specu-
lative activity Avere then deposited in a fruitful matrix.
The substance of the renowned book Erewhon was
conceived, and four of its most characteristic chapters
drafted, while the chief of his anti -Darwinian specu-
lations was then originated. The scenic background
of his most famous work, sketched in the first four or
five chapters, was drawn from his Canterbury surround-
ings. They are touched in with the eye of a painter
and the hand of a poet. " The beauty of the scene,"
he says on one occasion, " cannot be conveyed in
language. The one side of the valley was blue in
evening shadow, through which loomed forest and
precipice, hillside and mountain top ; and the other
was still brilhant with the sunset gold. The wide and
wasteful river with its ceaseless rushing — the beautiful
water-birds too, which abounded upon the islets and
were so tame that we could come close up to them — the
ineffable purity of the air — the solemn peacefulness
of the untrodden region — could there be a more dehght-
ful and exhilarating combination ?

There, as he gazed on the majestic panorama of the
Southern Alps, the idea of the book dawned on him.
The squatters had travelled ever further inland -sWth
their flocks, and still found a well-grassed country as
they penetrated nearer to the mountains. Might it
not be that, beyond the foot-hills where he dwelt, and
yet on this side of the snow-clad range that bounded
the horizon, there was another country where he might
discover new tracts that he could stock, or, it might be,
find copper or diamonds, silver or gold ? Nay, what
was there beyond that majestic range itself ? He
played with the thoughts, which haunted him, and half-

280 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

unconsciously dreamed a dream which, years after, he
wove into a tale that formed the setting of some of the
boldest speculations that have startled the world.

Perhaps the most audacious chapter in this book of
audacities was conceived and drafted under the vast
shadow cast by the great chain. The Book of the
Machines was fii'st pubhshed in a high-class New
Zealand journal, the Christchurch Press, under the
title of Darwin among the Machines. It is an argument
for the ultimate evolution of consciousness in machines.
No class of beings has made such rapid progress. They
already possess most of our faculties and structures :
they eat, drink, and sleep ; they have hearts, and they
feel ; they are susceptible of hope and fear, shame and
anger ; they remember and foresee. They employ a
host of servants. They have even a reproductive
system and breed other machines. They evidently
live, or at least possess germs that may be developed
into a new phase of life. They are plainly gaining ground
on us. Are we not alarmed at the prospect ? Reacting
no man, and making him, as they do, they may yet
overtake us, and we may one day be superseded by our
own creatures.

This glorification or deification of machines led the
author of the inglorious speculation into one that was
plausible in comparison. As others were doing in those
years in London, Butler contends for " the rights of
vegetables." The subtle thinker who could on so many
points identify mere mechanisms with the marvellous
framework of humanity was at no loss when he came
to vindicate those " rights " on the ground that vegetal
organisms have all the powers and sensibilities that
adorn the animal. In connection with it he first ex-
pounded his theory of organic memory. The action
that each generation takes, by recapitulating the history
of its parent organisms, can be explained only by the
supposition that it has been guided by memory, and
this implies that there is an organic memory transmitted
from one generation to another. The theory was long

THE STATION AND SCIENCE 281

a chokepear to the psychologists. It is no stumbling-
block now. Five years later (in 1870) the German
biologist, Ewald Hering, affirmed that " memory is a
general property of organic matter," and five years
later still Ernst Haeckel enounced the hypothesis that
molecules of plasm which have the property of memory
are the vehicles of heredity. Haeckel even does not
see how heredity can be explained without this
assumption. Verily, daring and ingenuity are justified
of their children.

The more hazardous speculation, identifying machines
with men, is now also passing into science. The suc-
cessor of Claude Bernard at the Sorbonne, Professor A.
Dastre, admits that science " envisages a vitality more
or less obscure in inanimate bodies." These, like
living bodies, consist of protoplasm, are organized, and
develop. Some of them, like crystals, have a specific
form and restore themselves by re-assimilation. Cry-
stals have also, in a manner, the faculty of nutrition
and even the power of reproduction. M. Dastre may
well write of " the life of matter."

A more fantastic speculation still had its birth in
New Zealand, when Butler conceived souls to be wan-
dering in " the world of the unborn," as Matthew
Arnold's soul fhtted " between two worlds — one dead,
the other powerless to be born." In Erewhon, however,
a way to the world of the born has been graciously
provided, and nowhere does the author's Addisonian
humour more playfully disport itself. The conception
of " musical banks," which is likewise of Antipodean
origin, was possibly suggested by certain political
proposals made in New Zealand. Lastly, the treatment
of disease as crime, which forms one of the most original
features of the book, had its origin in the colonies, where
rude health was, at that time, so general that ailments
brought there, still more than elsewhere, the penalties
of criminal offences.

Books are the parents of books, and Erewhon, taken
together with Lord Lytton's Coming Race, almost

282 THE PA8T0BAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

simultaneously produced, was a joint progenitor of the
large brood of IJtopian constructions — numbering over
a hundred, we are told — that have since been ushered
into the world. It is not a little singular that the best
of these — the loftiest, the most imaginative, and withal
the most philosophical — should have been produced
in that very Canterbury pro\ince ^^■here Erewhon was
conceived.*

* Limanora : the Island of Progress. By Godfrey Sweven
(Professor J. Macmillan Brown). New York : Putnams. 1903.

CHAPTER XLI

THE STATION AND ART

In no country save in Australia or New Zealand has
the pastoral age bequeathed much of a legacy to plastic
art. It has lent something to music, and the shepherd-
god who blew his reed-made flute in ancient Hellas
was perhaps the first of instrumental musicians, while
Pan cannot be said to be dead as long as goatherds
beguile the sunny hours by playing their " oaten stops "
on Sicihan hillsides. Even in modern Australasia the
plastic harvest would have been small were the country
only pastoral. The hands that are habitually employed
in drafting cattle or branding sheep or engaged in others
of the many manual occupations belonging to the
station have not yet developed the fine sensibilities of
the artist-finger. As a higher type of civiHsation gathers
around the simpler life, the elect individual is born,
perhaps on or near a station, who shall render on
canvas, in appropriate colouring, the more attractive
of station scenes, the more characteristic of station
events, and the typical aspects of station life. At least
a dozen of prominent Australian artists are eminently
painters of the station and the bush.

Their painting has a distinctive character. Not only
do two-thirds of the oils and nine-tenths of the water-
colours in the various annual exhibitions consist of
landscapes. Even in those where the organic elements
— trees, shrubs, grasses, and wild flowers — form the
most conspicuous part of the picture, it is still the action
on these of inorganic agents that is the real theme.

283

284 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

The effects of light in particular are the main concern
of many artists. They may well be. Hardly Greece
itself (and who that has voyaged in the Ionian Sea is
likely to forget how the splendour of the sunset or the
brilliancy of moon or stars is there heightened by the
limpid air ?) surpasses Australia in the ethereal brightness
of its atmosphere.

Australian painters have been slow to realize their
chief asset. The earher painters knew nothing of it.
These, it is true, were birds of passage, and foreigners
at that. The pictures of Chevalier and Von Guerard
are said to have no atmosphere — at least, the luminous
Australian atmosphere is conspicuously absent. The
trees, the mountains, the plains, even the skies, are
painted heavy and dark, which they seldom are. The
Bush is " stern and funereal," as it was to the first
novelists and the first poets — Marcus Clarke and
Charles Harpur, whereas, in literal truth it is commonly
flooded with sunshine. Homesick exiles, they had
missed its characteristic note. The Swiss Buvelot, a
disciple of Corot, mediated the transition to a greater
veracity. As so often happens with poets and even
with men of science, his more ambitious A\orks, his
oils, were the least true to their subjects, while his less
considered water-colours more truly depicted the
landscapes he really saw. His Bush in oils was Swiss
or French ; in waters, it was genuinely Australian.*

A succession of eminent painters has made this great
conquest for art, and adapted their colour-scheme to
the high key of light and colour that is the characteristic
note of the Australian landscape. Arthur Streeton
has painted the gaiety and the lyric beauty of the
Bush. For him the sun ever shines under a blue sky,
and the creek winds beneath shimmering trees. Mr.
Sid Long knows the hidden beauties of the Bush, as
Mr. Salvana paints the shy and secret places of the
Blue Mountains. Mr. Ford Paterson, of Victoria, is at
home among the tree-ferns and the mighty gum-trees of
* L, E., Sydney Morning Herald.

THE STATION AND ART 285

Gippsland ; and Mr. Lister -Lister, President of the
Royal Art Society of New South Wales, has seen, as
no other eye before his had seen, the Golden Splendour
of the Bush. All of such scenes are to be found within
the compass of a cattle-walk or a sheep-run, but the
distinctively pastoral landscape has not been forgotten.
A typical such picture was to be seen in the 1910
Exhibition of the Royal Art Society in Sydney. Neither
sheep nor cattle, it is true, are to be there in the painting
named, " A Type of a Coming Nation and a Land of
Cattle and Sheep," but only a grizzled bushman, stand-
ing beside his horse and dog, and gazing at the vast
expanse of sunbrowned herbage. There is little in
the picture, it may seem, and Darwin, seventy years
ago, found little in the scene. Yet on those brown
pastures are reared more than a hundred millions of
sheep, and out of them has come the greatest pastoral
industry in the world.

As is to be expected in a young country, where art
must traverse the same stages as it passed through
in older lands, Australian art is still weak in figure-
painting. Nevertheless, it has been successfully
achieved by some of the more eminent Australian
painters. The genre pictures of Mr. Tom Roberts are
understood to be his most characteristic work, and they
render various aspects of Bush life with truth and
energy. He is still largely inorganic, or, if animal
and human, at best muscular, as when he depicts the
effects of heat on a dusty Bush road, the rush of a
flock of thirsty sheep to a water-hole, or the strenuous
activity of sheep-shearing. Mr. Fred McCubbin has
delineated, with a pathos that reminds us of Millet,
the hard struggles of the pioneer with Nature. And
Mr. George Lambert, in " Across the Black Soil
Plains," powerfully exhibits a team of straining horses
pulling a wool-waggon.* Nor should the highly skilled
photographic artists of the weekly journals be left out
of account. The station-scenes and landscapes artisti-
* L. E., Sydney Morning Herald.

286 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

cally reproduced, week by week, in such Journals as
the Sydney Mail and the Australasian are on the
threshold of high art.

If, by such interpretations of Bush life and such
reveahngs of Australian landscape, Australian artists
have not estabhshed a new school of painting, as they
once claimed, or even laid its foundations, as is now
asserted, they have at least set up a happy variant on
English landscape- and figure -painting. With much of
the veracity and reflective depth of English painting,
the Australian school frames its new scenes and novel
subjects in a brighter scheme of colouring than is known
to English art. The great legislator of Enghsh art
aasthetics, Sir Joshua Re3Tiolds, laid an authoritative
ban on blues, yellows, and yellowy reds or whites ; and
Sir David Wilkie commended Raeburn for abandoning
his Prussian blues and Neaj)olitan yellows. The Austra-
lian school has adopted the French colour-scheme, its
reds generally excepted. Yellow and blue are dominant
colours in its pictures, because they are dominant
colours in the scenes that it paints.* As Austraha has
produced a Melba in song, it may yet brmg forth a
Turner in plastic art, who may find new colours on his
palette wherewith to paint more visionary scenes. But
the pastoral landscape and the pastoral life will have
been the base and the motive-power of the whole plastic
development.

* The Nation, New York, xci. 400-401.

CHAPTER XLII

THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION

The prospectors of new grazing-lands and the formers
of new stations in the wilderness must have been con-
scious that they were making history, and the conscious-
ness may have cheered them in times of trial or consoled
them under acknowledged failure. They must have
perceived that their work was of the same order, if on
a lesser scale, as that of the great explorers — the Sturts,
Humes, Eyres, and Leichhardts, and, like theirs, de-
served to find " a sacred bard." Some of them, we
know, kept journals. Patrick Leslie kept one, and,
many a year after his notable achievement, he confided
the vital portion of it to Henry Stuart Russell. John
Campbell, one of the two or three first pastoralists to
settle in Queensland, kept a diary, and, a still greater
number of years afterwards it was embodied, rather
than transcribed, in J. J. Knight's Early Days. In
general, the experiences of the early squatters, like these
journals, were slow to be converted into literature.
W. J. Brodribb, a squatter successively in New South
Wales and Victoria, pubhshed in a very interesting
and only too brief account of his personal experiences,
his efforts to form stations, his vicissitudes, the economics
of squatting, the effects of legislative changes (such as
the famous Orders in Council of 1847) on runholding,
some touching incidents in his domestic history, his
retirement from pastoral occupations, and his entry into
politics. Still later, another runholder, Henry Stuart
Russell, of Cecil Plains in the Darling Downs, published

287

288 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

a huge volume on The Genesis of Queensland. There,
amid mountains of slag, not a few grains of genuine
gold are crushed into a few brightly written chapters
on prospecting for runs, merging into exploring for its
own sake, the work of a station, its trials and hardships,
its many failures and its few triumphs, and (best of all)
social life on a station, with glimpses of station amuse-
ments, as when bright eyes flashed favour on the
gentleman- jockey if he Avon on the racecourse, or (like
the princess in Rossetti's poem) whether he won or lost.
With no other work describing run-finding and station-
making was the late well-informed Ernest Favenc appar-
ently acquainted, but the literature of the subject is
copious and valuable.

Some of the best books about station-life have been
written by women, who describe a side of it but little
known to men. Mrs. Campbell Praed's reminiscences
have a charm due to the imaginative style of the auth-
oress, who, writing in mature womanhood of the life
of her girlhood, clothes all with romance and tinges it
with a colouring derived from the mingled pleasure and
regret with which we look back on the days of our youth.
The book * records station-life as seen and known by
a bright and happy girl. It passes lightly over the
vicissitudes of her family and leaves the bulk of the
practical work on a station untouched. But the exotic
environment, often striking and sometimes glorious, is
picturesquely filled in. The pleasant relations with the
blacks when she was a child, such as many an ex -station
girl will still relate, are humorously told ; the relations
with the stockmen or the passing swagsmen or tramps ;
the intercourse with the poet, the speculative doctor,
the practical dean. The doctor's anecdotes are some-
times racy, sometimes pathetic. One of the latter class
may bear repeating. The doctor was sittmg by the
bedside of a woman who was at the critical stage of a
severe illness. The atmosphere was oppressive, as it

* My Aiistralian Girlhood. It is in good part, sometimes
verbally, identical with her Sketches of Australian Life.

THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 289

can be only in the tropics, or in the temperate regions
when a hot wind hamstrings the body and prostrates the
mind. A tropical thunderstorm was plainly impending.
The husband appealed pitifully to the doctor. " Doctor,
can you do nothing to carry her through 1 You know
that she cannot endure a thunderstorm." The doctor
could do nothing, but He who can do all, or almost all,
heard the prayers doubtless fervently made by the despair-
ing husband and the sceptical but sympathetic doctor.
The woman sank into a deep and healing slumber, and,
when she awoke, the storm had passed away.

True literature is also the little volume written by
Lady Barker on Station Life in New Zealand, though
(or because) it professes only to " record the brighter
and less practical side of colonisation." The letters of
which it consists photograph " the expeditions, adven-
tures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of a
New Zealand sheep-farmer." They leave exactly the
impression that her husband. Sir Frederick Napier
Broome, states that they are designed to convey — of
a simple way of life that is metaphorically as well as
literally at the antipodes of the " highly wrought civi-
lisation " of England. She too takes in her environment,
and attempts to delineate the phenomena in a Canterbury
sky which forerun a hot wind from the north-west,
although she confesses that " no one but a Turner
could venture upon such a mixture of pale sea-green
with deep turquoise blue, purple with crimson and
orange." She tells eloquently of the familiar arch in
the clouds over the mountain range to the Avest before
(she says, but surely also during) a violent gale from
the north-west. " It was formed of clouds of the deepest
and richest colours ; within its curve lay a bare expanse
of a wonderful green tint, crossed by the snoAvy silhouette
of the Southern Alps." That glorious chain of mountains
forms the panoramic background of the whole Canterbury
province. In the very early morning she would stand
shivering at her window " to see the noble outlines gradu-
ally assuming shape and finally standing out sharp and

19

290 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

clear against a dazzling sky ; then, as the sun rises, the
softest and rose-coloured and golden tints touch the
highest peaks, the shadows deepenmg by the contrast."*
Lady Barker's Station Amusements continues, and some-
times repeats, the sketches made in the earlier volume.
The earhest literature, of course, belonged to New
South Wales. Still one of the best books about those
early days — the late thirties and the first forties — is
Hay garth's Recollections of Bush Life. It is the produc-
tion of an educated man of some culture — an old Oxonian
who had found his way out to Australia before it had
become usual for cadets to seek a career on an AustraHan
station. Too late, perhaps, he realised the precious
savour of the delightful studies he had forsaken, and
the possible learned career or liberal profession he
had abandoned, in order to lead a new life in the
AustraUan bush. He keenly felt the hardship of the
life, its baldness and bareness, its total lack of refine-
ment, its mean drudgery and almost degrading toils. As
the Sunday came round by dead reckoning, he listened
in vain for the clang of the Sabbath bells, and was
conscious of a woeful blank when he could no longer
hear the consecrated words or witness the sanctified
ceremonies of the holy place. He did not know that
the sordid occupations and even the very things he felt
as a loss and a want would furnish him with an equip-
ment and a theme. With careful art and fine per-
spective, with completeness and accuracy, and often
with animation, he describes the station of the early
forties, its homestead and auxihary buildings, its daily
and periodic rounds of duty, its occasional striking
incidents (such as the prospecting for a new run and
the encounters of rival squatters), its occupants, their
types and their struggles. The book will live by his
delineation of the new and strange life that ho lived and
saw others live, while books of his describing far-off
countries and other times might have had far less of
truth and reaUty.

* Letter viii.

THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 291

Many other works embodying the experience of
squatters complete or complement the early history of
squatting in New South Wales. Captain Lancelott'a
two-volumed book again abounds in precious personal
details on the formation and development of a station,
the collisions with rival would-be squatters, the successes
and failures of those who had to buy experience at so
dear a rate. Light sketches by several French writers
(such as Hubert de Castella's Les Squatters australiens) ,
or studies by Germans like Semon's Im australischen
Busch, show how many sides the large subject possesses
and to how many interests it appeals.

None of the colonies has a richer squatting literature
than Queensland. Settled late in the history of Aus-
tralia, it has given birth to quite a number of Avriters
who have left no feature of its pastoral development
without a record. The descriptive literature of annals,
history, and reminiscences is hardly more opulent than
the constructive literature of poetry and fiction. Some-
times they are skilfully blended, as in Alexander C.
Grant's Bush Life in Queensland. The arrival of the
new chum in Australia, his first sight of a colonial city,
his journey up country, his initiation into bush life, his
experiences on a station, his visits to other stations,
where he makes the acquaintance of admirable families —
worthy men and attractive women and girls, station
life and work, the tragedies, the humours, and the
amusements of the station. All this is interwoven with,
or strung upon, a thread of personal romance that runs
through the work. A Bushman's Romance, it might
be called. Vivid pictures of the incidents and accidents
of station life leave an indelible impression on the
memory. It shows a complete mastery of the subject
that could have arisen only from actual reaHsation.
We have no difficulty in understanding that so experi-
enced a bushman and so skilled a writer should have
become the active head of one of the best-known stock
and station agencies in all Australia.

To Queensland also belongs Nehemiah Bartley's

292 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Pioneering Reminiscences. Nowhere else, till quite re-
cently, was there to be found so ample a narrative of
the discovery of new country (as that of the Clarence
River District) and its prompt settlement, the taking
up and the forming of stations in Queensland and New
South Wales, their abandonmeiit and resumption, their
vicissitudes and passage from hand to hand, together
with some attractive pictures of squatters' homes.
Two other works belong to the same historical class.
J. J. Knight's hi the Early Days is richly charged with
historical detail, and Ms contributions to the jubilee
number of the Queenslander in 1909 form almost a
complete history of the settlement of Queensland,
What he omits, for Northern Queensland, Edward
Palmer fills in, and the latter writer adds to the value
of his historical sketches by descriptive pictures of
typical bush figures — the superintendent, the overseer,
the stockman, the boundary -rider, the shearer, and
other station types.

A volume that has a still higher value and almost a
greater authority than these is part of the inconsiderable
literature of squatting pubhshed in Victoria. In 1853,
a few months before he retired from the governorship
of Victoria, Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe despatched a
circular to the Victorian squatters, inviting them to
furnish him with detailed accounts of their experiences —
their acquisition of their runs and settlement on them,
their stocking of them, their economics, their success
or failure, and above all (for this seems a prominent
feature in all cases) their relations with the aborigines.
Replies were promptly returned by almost sixty squatters
— some of them brief but significant, most of them
moderately full and richly instructive, and one of them
(written, as he confesses, by an uneducated man) of
great length and importance. These precious memorials
of the pastoral age in Victoria remained for more than
thirty years in the Victorian archives, where they lay
undisturbed, save by G. W. Rusden, who ransacked
them for evidence of the relations between the squatters

THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 293

and the blacks, and who cites from them several passages
in his History of Australia. Late in the eighties they
were edited by Dr. T. i\ Bride, then Principal Librarian
of the Public Library in Melbourne, and a large portion
of them was then printed. Not until 1898, for some
unnamed reason (probably the impoverishment of the
Colony), were the}' passed through the press, and for
the last dozen years they have still been unregarded.
Yet they are rich in authentic materials for the pastoral
history of Victoria. Simple, sincere, and manifestly
veracious, they are transcripts from real life, most of
it but a few years old. If they are not, in the proper
sense, literature, they are in one sense better than
literature. They show the pastoral life in its
reahty.

It would be unfair not to include the hosts of articles
in the Australian journals that have thrown light on
every aspect of station life in Australia and New Zealand.
Not a few of these deserve to be reprinted and published.
Those especially by the late Ernest Favenc, the explorer,
who perhaps knew the face of Australia more intimately
than any man of his generation, might form the substance
of many a chapter of colonial history. The physio-
graphy of Australia, on which the pastoral life of the
country depended and which governed it, the successive
waves of settlement, the overlander, the bullock-driver —
these and many more such topics have been the themes
of numerous articles contributed by him to the Sydney
journals.

Most of the poems written by the greatest of Aus-
tralian poets, Adam Lindsey Gordon, may be described
as station-poems, because they ^^ere composed on the
author's own station at MouiH Gambier, in South
Australia, on the confines of Victoria. The best of
them, especially, the gem of the collection, and perhaps
the only classical poem that Australia has produced,
vividly describes some of the more picturesque scenes
of station-Hfe by one who has lived it as stockman and
squatter, whose rhythm is that of the bush. The very

294 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

spirit of it exudes from the ringing verses which every
Austrahan knows, or should know, by heart.

" 'Twas merry in the glowing morn among the gleaming grass.
To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths

Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while.
*Twas merry 'mid the blaokwoods, when we spied the station
roofs.

To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard,
With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs ;

Oh ! the hardest day was never then too hard ! "

He sings, too, of his chase of the bush-rangers. He
recalls the " yarns " spun at the station and the songs
there sung, and he muses over the deaths of his old
comrades, most of them by such mischances as happen
on a station. On a station he desires to be buried.

" Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave,
With never stone or rail to fence my bed ;
Should the sturdy station children pull the bush-flowers on
my grave,
I may chance to hear them romping overhead."

The best, perhaps, of the longer Austrahan poems,
Convict Once, by Brunton Stephens, has also colonial
and, in a manner, station life for its basis, though its
theme is one of dark and turbid passion such as is
peculiar to no country. The scene of the tragedy is
an Australian station, and the two chief actors in it
are, the one a female ex-convict, the other the son of a
convict. The verse has a brave lilt and a vigorous
swing, and the story of a " convict once " — a young
woman of twenty-three who has served a term of
seven years for some unnamed offence — ^is artistically
told, by indirection mainly. Exultant over her re-
covered freedom, she resolves to lead a new life, and
outwardly she does reform, but the fates, that is, her
wildly passionate nature, are against her. Having
become a governess on a station, she wilfully diverts
to herself the love of the son of another station -holder

THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 295

(the latter another ex-convict), and thus wrecks the
Ufe of the eldest of her three young pupils, who was
affianced to him. The description of the " one supreme
moment," when she surrendered herself to the false
lover — " the one sublime bound to the copestone of
bliss, then the chilling recall," may be the high-water-
mark of Australian verse. The convict twice, as she
might well be, ends appropriately with brain-fever,
madness, and death.

Brunton Stephens's celebrated poem was composed,
Mrs. Campbell Praed tells us, by the shores of a lagoon
on a station where he was a tutor, but station-life has
not been favourable to the production of literature.
Years after the station-holder or the dweller on it has
left it he may put together his reminiscences of bush-
life, or work up the materials then gathered. Strange
to say, the one squatter in New South Wales, Wilham
Forster, once Premier of the Colony, who is known to
have produced verses has apparently written nothing
on station-life, but has found conventional themes.
It is otherwise in Victoria. There the chief literary
glory of the South, T. A. Browne (" Rolf Boldrewood "),
has masked a virtual autobiography behind A Squatter's
Dream, but though he has written a score of works,
chiefly novels, he will live, it is understood, by his
masterpiece — Robbery under Arms. For, though himself
originally a squatter, he had experience of other profes-
sions, and was for a time a resident magistrate, when he
had occasion to study the facts of both bush-ranging and
gold-digging at close quarters. He studied them to
some purpose. No other such picture of the bush-
ranging for which Victoria has an ill name, though
New South Wales was still more severely scourged by
it, has been painted. So humane and yet so true, it
harrows the feelings by terror, while it purifies them
by pity. It has perpetuated in literature a sad and
bad social type, which was the necessary sequel of
convict antecedents in Australian history.

Full many a gem of description or portraiture lies

296 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

scattered through the prose as well as the verse of
Australian literature. Rolf Boldrewood paints in
water-colours a picture of Mustering in Stormy Weather.
On a darkening winter's day a drove of heavy bullocks
lumbered over the sands or along the beach, the stock-
men riding behind them. One squatter-stockman
noted " the sad-toned, far-stretching shore — the angry
storm-voices of the terrible deep — the little band of
horsemen — the lowing, half-\^dld drove — the red-lit
cloud prison, wherein the sun lay dying." The Night
Ride to Portland was an Arabian night. The gaUop
along the shore, on the hardened milk-white beach,
by the side of the star-bright, illimitable ocean, the
lengthening silver pathway made on the sea by the
moon, and the flood of radiance it cast on the land, are
all as vivid as a painting.*

The first of great station-novels, in both time and

rank, is Henry Kingsley's masterpiece, Geoffry Hamlyn.

Though the earliest of all, it is considered the cro^^ning

glory of Australian fiction, and it deservedly takes this

position by the value and beauty of its kernel. Save

by its substance and subject, however, it belongs rather

to English than to Australian literature. Legend

relates that, and how, it was written on a Victorian

station, where the WTiter utilised the materials he was

in daily conversance with to paint a faithful picture

of station-life. This seems not to be the fact. The

scenes described in it are apparently drawn from

station-life in New South Wales of the fifties, though

towards the conclusion of the book the background

shifts to the mountain solitudes of Victorian Gippsland.

The book itself, it is authoritatively stated, was

composed by its gifted, but somewhat ill-fated, author

at the now-famous village of Eversley after he had

returned to England. The work has high merits. A

limpid style and pellucid simplicity of presentment

make of it a transparency through which the then

novel and strange life of the bush shines with a bright,

• Old Melbourne Memories^ eh. xxii.

THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 297

if not quite a brilliant, illumination. Characteristic
incidents, such as the bush-fire, are vividly narrated.
It has but one fault. Most of the personages are too
amiable- — in plain English, too good — to be salient, or
even true to their originals ; but underneath the smiling
surface there are dark abysses of tragedy — a convict
tragedy, with bush-ranging accompaniments, as was
fitting in those far-back days.

If Henry Kingsley paints station-life, his nearest
rival, Thomas Alexander Browne, alias Rolf Boldre-
wood, dehneates station-business and procedures.
A Squatter's Dream describes the pilgrim's, the rake's,
or the fool's progress of a young squatter from peace
and prosperity, through bankruptcy, back again to
prosperity and contentment. Few features of station
life or business have been omitted. The forming of a
station, its daily tasks, the building of a woolshed,
the flood and the drought and their ruinous conse-
quences, the transactions with the bank, the squatter's
insolvency, his wanderings in a far country and his
exertions on a pioneer station there, his return and his
marriage, all taken together, make the most complete
transcript of the station and all its multiform and
connected activities that has been flung into literature.

Mrs. Campbell Praed, a daughter of Colonel Murray
Prior and reared in Queensland, is the worthy third
member of the distinguished trinity of station-novehsts.
With her we get away from the outside s of bush life,
which figure as mere accessories, and are carried
straight to the very heart of things. The inner natures
of the men and women of the high bush, their love affairs
and romantic passages, their rivalries and entanglements,
their angry passions and wild deeds, the visitations of
death and the doom that seems ever to lower over
them all ; such are her multiple and yet uniform
themes. For trouble must have come into her own
bright existence and darkened her happy disposition,
while the sun was still low in the morning sky ; and her
melancholy stories reflect the hidden tragedy of her

298 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

life. In this respect she is the sister of George Eliot.
The great English novehst was happy ; how could she
have been else beside so genial a nature as George
Lewes I But the inner tragedy of her heart betrays
itself in every tale that she told ; and so it is with the
most charming of AustraHan romancers. She was born
for happiness, and happiness has eluded her grasp.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE SQUATTING TOWNSHIP

Townships of a novel character grow up at suitable
places to serve as receiving and distributing centres
for squatters' produce and supplies. Very commonly
they are found at the head or highest navigable point
of a river, like Cleveland and Ipswich in Southern
Queensland, or Grafton in Northern New South Wales,
or on the coast, like Mackay in Northern Queensland
or Moruya in Southern New South Wales. The pioneer
squatter was, indeed, the forerunner of towns. On
the Darling Downs Warwick grew up on the site of
the first station — Patrick Leshe's Toolburra. Drayton
and Ipswich had the same origin. Gundagai in the
Riverina is another example of the law. Condamine
town now stands on Bingham and Macdonald's head-
station ; Toowoomba on Taylor's Swamp. But indeed
half of Australian townships have no other beginnings.
Many a picture of one or another enables us to realise
the scene a squatting town presented in the old days.
All day long men kept arriving from the country or
departing thither, usually on horseback. Everyone —
men, women, and children — seemed to ride, and they
passed continually up and down the streets, or their
horses stood tied up at the doors of hotels, stores, or
private houses. For every house had its post, and
almost every one had its stockyard, or enclosure, where
horses and cattle were kept when driven in from their
pasture.

The squatter would ride in consequentially from his
station on his well-bred hack, attended by a blackboy

299

300 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

leading a spare horse or two. The practised stockman
cantered past with the easy carriage of the Gaucho —
a modern Centaur. The rail-spHtter or fencer and the
shearer, strong, bearded, and muscular, comfortably
clothed and often \\ith a packhorse by his side, would
come in to squander the cheque he had just received
for months of labour. The old shepherd — he too -v^ith
his cheque — would ride slowly past on a quiet old nag,
himself clad in an old blue-serge shirt, dirty white
moleskin trousers, and wearing a pouch that contained
his knife, lucifer-matches, and tobacco.

Laden bullock-drays constantly came and went to
or from the busy little township, and lined the streets.
They were drawn by teams of ten or twelve bullocks —
but there might be as many as 30 or 40 on special
occasions. Their drivers were sunburnt, healthy -looking
men, wearing flannel-shirts, moleskin trousers, and
cabbage-tree hats. Or, if two or more teams travelled
together, the second and third might be driven by
blackboys, who were dressed like the other bullock-
drivers, but more gaudily. Clouds of dust rose in the
hot, dry streets as they passed, the air rent with the
shouting of bullocks' names and the cracking of the
formidable greenhide stockwhip. Or they would stop
at stores, and there unload their bales of wool and load
supplies for the stations.

The pubhc-houses were busy. Squatters, merchants,
and professionals transacted their business over the
bottle, while the stockmen, shearers, and shepherds
found pleasures and liquor inseparable. Incessant
treating, or " shouting," was the rule, for having a
drink all round was then " the great national pastime."
A refusal to drink evoked an outburst of mock indig-
nation. " Oh, you're too damned proud to drink with
a poor man ! " It was at least a less savage form of
intercourse in a state almost of nature than the fierce
outbreak of the Western cowboy who shot the refuser
in similar circumstances. " Good God ! Can I never
come into tovu without shooting somebody ? "

THE SQUATTING TOWNSHIP 301

Ou the roads or in the streets would be seen parties
of aboriginals — tlie men in tattered clothes, the women
in shirts or skirts, sometimes wearing opossum cloaks,
and often carrying children on their backs. For some
kind of clothing was compulsory by law. Most of them
idly loitered. Sometimes the men chopped wood or
brought water. The gins might be engaged in domestic
duties. Some begged for tobacco or money. Others
sat or lay stretched alongside of a building, sleeping
or singing, " A merry, happy, tolerably well-fed, dirty,
greasy set of black people, with a peculiar smoky,
overpowering smell about them," is the judgment of
the new chum on the Australian indigenes.

Or take another picture of a squatters' township,
whose size and importance has been swelled by the
alleged discovery of a gold-field in the neighbourhood.
Like Ipswich, Rockhampton is a depot of supplies for
the stations that are being taken up and stocked in
the vicinity. It swarms with young men who belong
to these stations and who are down for supphes. Others
were about to start on an exploring expedition or had
Just returned from it, and were loading supplies and
waiting for the arrival of the Crown Lands Commis-
sioner to inspect their run. Others still were over-
landers, who were driving overland mobs of cattle,
sheep, or horses for sale or to stock runs. Crowds of
shepherds, stockmen, drovers, bullock-drivers, shearers,
bushmen, were recklessly spending their hard-won
cheques. Swarms of loafers hung about them. And
there was the usual cortege of Government officials,
bankers, merchants, and publicans who were dependent
on the squatting crowd. The band of young men who
were overflowing with vitality and high spirits, gave
the town a disagreeable reputation for rowdyism.
Drinking, fighting, practical joking, and blatant boasting
went on at all hours of the day, and in the intervals
a little business was transacted.*

Larger towns than either Ipswich or Rockhampton
* Grant, Bush Life, ii. 7-9.

302 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

— the provincial capitals themselves, Brisbane and
even Sydney — long bore the impress of the squatter.
Its largest business premises are wool stores, which
face the new arrival as he approaches the wharves. Its
leading firms are wool-brokers. The Exchange is at
first a Wool Exchange. The chief importers, filling
whole streets, supply the storekeepers in the small
country-towns who supply the squatters. Some of the
most sumptuous private houses are occupied by such
importers.

Ports were opened up by squatters to facilitate the
export of their wool. Such are Rockhampton and Port
Curtis. The squatters of Southern Queensland fought
desperately to make Ipswich, situated higher up the
river, the working capital of Queensland. It was nearer
the Darling Downs ; the export of wool and the import
of supplies would presumably have cost them less ; and
they would have been better able to control it. They
completely failed ; nature was against them.

Roads were made by the squatters, sometimes (as on
the Darling Downs) combining in a " working bee " to
clear the dense scrub. Hah-a-dozen such squatting
firms cut a track for wool-drays across the Dividing
Range.

Railways were first determined by pastoral needs.
Thus the first railway in Queensland was built to drain
the Darling Downs stations of their wool and supply them
with their desiderata. It had its terminus at Ipswich,
some distance up the Brisbane River, and Brisbane, the
provincial metropolis, was left out in the cold. Yet the
Times asserts that the railways of Now South Wales
were built in the interests of Sydney, to carry wool
from the interior.

CHAPTER XLIV

LATER DEVELOPMENTS

Ten years after its separation from New South Wales
Queensland took the step Lord Grey took on behalf of
the pastoralists of New South Wales in 1846-7. In
1869 the Legislature passed a Pastoral Leases Act
granting the persistent demand of the squatters for
fixity of tenure, by liberally issuing leases for 21 years
in parts of the country beyond the settled districts,
and making provisions that operated favourably for
runs in ill- watered districts. This wise enactment
doubtless led to the occupation of a large portion of
Central Australia. Or rather, it legalised and regu-
larised the occupation that had already taken place.
Recent explorations — those of Landsborough, McKinley,
Gregory, and Walker — had shown that, instead of being
a waterless desert, Central Australia contained vast
tracts of fine pastoral country. Following on the track
of these explorers, a band of enterprising 3'oung men
from the Southern colonies spread over and occupied
wide pastures in the North and West. Between 1870
and 1880 the pastoral districts of Burke, Kennedy,
Mitchell, and Warrego were taken up and stocked with
cattle. In 1880 one run — a very big ' run ' that — had
in the Mitchell district over 300,000 sheep.

In New South Wales an Act of the same year granted
to its pastoralists a lease of only ten years. This term
was made extensible for another period of ten years by
an Act of 1889, provided the lessee could convince the
local Land Board that he had improved his holding.

303

304 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

New South Wales was at length abreast of her daughter,
robust Queensland.

The Button Act of 1884 is credited with making a
new departure in pastoral development. These colonies,
till this time, had known the runholder on a large scale
with almost anything over 30,000 acres on lease from
the Crown ; and it A^as getting to know the agricultural
selector on his 200- to 500-acre farm. Now they were
to make the acquamtance of the grazier proper. A new
class of yeomen was created. Under the Act pastora-
lists might select grazing farms ranging from 2,560 acres
to 30,000 acres. They could lease these from the State
for a period of thu'ty years — the longest term, anyAvhere
in these colonies, yet granted to the pastoralist — and the
annual rent was to be not less than Id. per acre.
Residence was required, and the holding had to be fenced.
They answered to the improvement leases — leases held
at a low rate on condition of improvements being
made — that have for many years been in operation in
New South Wales, and in connection with which the
biggest official scandals of recent years arose. In the
one case, as in the other, it is admitted, such leases
have been answerable for the creation of a class of
graziers who have produced a large increase in the
quantity of wool groAvn and, as most of them were
capable and experienced breeders, finer wool and greater
weight of fleece.

In 1884-6, by the creation of grazing-farms, a new
race of pastoraHsts was engendered. These differed
from the old race of squatters, who could not tender
for the portions thus cut out of their runs.* The grazier
proper was evolved.

In another direction New South Wales has followed
in the steps of the northern State. So recently as 1895
Sir Joseph Carruthers passed an Act creating in New
South Wales the class of small grazier, and the Act is
stated to have been successful in placing on the land
large numbers of worthy settlers.

* Satge, Journal of a Queenaland Squatter, p. 348.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 305

Inheritance plays a modest part in the landed evolution
of Australia. The well-known race-horse breeder, James
White, inherited some two or three stations ; to these
he added station after station. Most of the large land-
holders have personally acquired their land, and they
seldom transmit it " in its integrity." The Australian
spirit is hostile to the laws of entail and primogeniture,
and it is indifferent to the founding of a family. Few
of the early squatters, we are told, are now represented
by one or more of their descendants ; fewer still see
sons of theirs on their old stations. Yet the statement
must not be exaggerated. Quite a number of such
cases are to be found in all the provinces. In New South
Wales there are still families that hold the lands that
were granted by Macquarie and Brisbane eighty or
ninety years ago.* Some of the oldest pastoral families
in Queensland still hold the stations they first formed.
The Archers are yet on Gracemere, which they dis-
covered, and a Bracker still dwells at Waroo, on the
Darling Downs. Their sons come to town and success-
fully build up branches of commerce, like the Joneses
and Burdekins, Dangars and Morts, or live on their
inherited wealth. Nor do they themselves continue
faithful to their elected pursuits. They retire from
rural life to the comforts and luxuries of the cities,
and become legislators, like Brodribb, in New South
Wales, or accept political positions, like Ebden in
Victoria, or get snugly ensconced in an influential
permanent political office, like Rusden, or are given a
magistracy, like " Rolf Boldrewood." We do not blame
them ; it was a natural result ; and their colonies
gained by their ripe experience and trained abilities.
Of the dwellers in that lost Arcadia the dispersion could
hardly have been more complete.

The evolution of landed property in Australia has
described the same cycle or geometrical curve, whether
we call it, with Dr. Gustave le Bon, a parabola or a

* Ida Lee, The Coming of the British to Australia, p. 215.
Browne, Old Melbourne Memories, ch. xi.

20

306 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

hyperbola, or, with M. Cheysson, an exponential equa-
tion, or even, it may be, a spiral, Miiere each ascending
curve repeats the curves below, but on a higher plane.
The essential point is that, after passing through a
succession of very different stages, the end of a social
institution repeats, but in a different form, its beginning.
This seems likely to be the law of the development of
landed property. All the land in Australia was at first,
or was assumed to be, virtually possessed b}^ the State.
The nationality of the land, which is now the ideal of
many land-reformers, was, in Australia, the first phase
of landed property. The next phase was when smaller
or larger pieces of land Avere granted as a rcAvard for
services rendered or for good behaviour. A third phase
arrived with the granting of large tracts to immigrants
who possessed the means of using them. Then, as
settlers overflowed the recognised boundaries of the
settlement, and sat down without " the pale," a license
was granted to such hitherto unauthorised squatters,
but revocably and annually (at least, in theory), and
conjoined with the payment of an annual fee, which
was the equivalent of the services, latterly nominal,
rendered by the vassal to his seigneur. Next, this
pastoral land was leased for a term — ostensibly limited,
but practically indeterminate — which signified in many
cases something like absolute property on the part of
the occupier. Property, indeed, it commonly became,
as absolute as British law ever allows it to be. Mean-
while, and still earlier, the practice of selling land by
auction was introduced, and in this way a large portion
of the agricultural land of the State, together with a
portion of its pastoral land, was parted with. Whether
broken up into large farms, or leased in vast tracts for
pastoral purjioses, the land of the Colony appeared
equally to be lost to the State. Then, after nearly forty
years of this phase, the return of the curve began. A
belief in the desirableness of nationalising the land
sprang up in the wake of Henry George's propagandist
works, especially his Progress and Poverty. The Govern-

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 307

ment of New Zealand made itself the organ of this
belief and desire, and through a succession of years it
went on buying back, or forcibly resuming, large landed
estates. Its example has been imitated by the Austra-
lian Governments. The Labour Government of the
Commonwealth has imposed a land-tax with the object
of breaking up the big estates, and in 1910 the Labour
ministry of New South Wales decided that no more
public lands should be sold, but all of them leased.
Let the process of resumption be completed, and in all
of the Australasian States the whole of the land will
once more become the property of the State. The last
phase of the evolution of landed property in Australia
will then, though on a higher plane, repeat the earliest.

CHAPTER XLV

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS

It was impossible that men possessing such forcefulness
of character as the early landholders, so well educated
as most of them, and sometimes of such commanding
talents as one at least of them exhibited, should not
actively intervene in the government of the colonies.
The story of the first great typical squatter, though he
was a proprietor and not a runholder, has been already
told. John McArthur was a political force in New
South Wales through three or four decades, and he
claimed in Dr. Lang's hearing to have been the means
of procuring the recall of the first four Governors, while
Dr. Lang believed that he was answerable for the recall
of the sixth. He went near to founding a dynasty of
poUticians. Two of his sons inherited a portion of his
faculty and his influence and continued his policy on
his own lines. In his days the Governor was still
virtually absolute, and such power as the strongest
landowner enjoyed was moral solely, due to the rectitude
of his cause, the ascendancy of his character, or the
weakness of the Governor. While the strong-minded
Macquarie was in the saddle, the large landed proprietors,
still very few in number, kept in the shade. McArthur
was forcibly detained in exile — that is, in England —
most of the time, and the Governor had peace. An
agitation for the creation of a council, resembling the
early privy council of the sovereign, was got up by
these, but temporarily failed, and the autocrat rejoiced
that the project had been abandoned. Its abandon-

308

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 309

ment could not be other than temporary. It was revived
in 1824, when Lord Bathurst requested that the names
of ten principal merchants and pastoralists should be
submitted to him. Three were selected, of whom two
were pastoralists, and when the Council was reconsti-
tuted in 1828, almost all the unofficial nominees were
pastoralists, as it was also from among pastoralists that
vacancies were filled. This close corporation was in
1843 liberalised by the substitution of a larger elective
element. These new members, elected by large con-
stituencies, such as the district of Port PhilHp, the
future Victoria, were, as we know from their names,
commonly great landholders, and, so far as their counsels
could sway the proceedings and their votes determine
the result, the Colony was then largely governed by
the squatting fraternity. But the presence and influence
of the permanent high officials, together with the pre-
ponderance of the Governor, almost invariably decided
the complexion of the legislation. In the forties, when
Governor Sir George Gipps ruled the Colony with a firm
hand, the squatting power could by no means have
things always its own way. When Wentworth endea-
voured to gain possession of a whole island, almost as
large as England, it was the Legislative Council, led by
Gipps, who was supported by the permanent members,
that thwarted the nefarious design. It was otherwise
a few years later. Dr. Lang's charge against Governor
Sir Charles Fitzroy is that he was governed by Went-
worth. During his Governorship, if Lang be right, the
Colony was governed in the interest of the squatters.
Wentworth was then, according to Lang, the virtual
dictator of the Colony.

The Legislative Council was, in 1851, made purely
elective, and the granting of the franchise was accom-
panied with such a distribution of seats as practically
threw a large part of the representation into the hands
of the squatters. A property quahfication of £2,000 was
required of a member of the Legislative Council, Ex-
aggerating the rule that assigns a larger number of

310 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

representatives to the rural districts than to the towns,
the new Act provided that 1,500 voters in the rural
districts, which were controlled by the squatters, could
elect one member, while 15,000 votes were needed in
Sydney to elect a single member.

One of the two cardinal principles of colonial evolu-
tion is that each colony severally repeats, in an abridged
form and with local modifications, all or most of the
phases through Avhich its metropolis or motherland has
itself passed.* So does the pastoral age in the British
colonies at the Antipodes recapitulate the corresponding
stage in the history of England.

For many centuries, but notably from the signing of
Magna Charta and the beginning of the thirteenth cen-
tury, the power of the great territorial nobility had been
steadily growing in England with the growth of their
landed possessions. In the seventeenth century the
King of England was still desperately contending for
the power that was slipping from his grasp, but the
djmastic revolution of 1688 for ever robbed him of the
reality of sovereignty, leaving him only the shadow of
it. From that date onwards till the epoch of the great
Reform Act the government of England lay in the hands
of the territorial nobles. They were the advisers of the
sovereign, premiers and Secretaries of State, ambassa-
dors and governors of dependencies and colonies. Save
for a few lucky lawyers, they monopolized the House of
Lords and membered the House of Commons. They
seem to fill the stage. What pamphleteer in our days
would persistently attack the leading nobles as Junius
assailed the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton ? The
higher subordinate ofhces, including the permanent
under-secretary ships, were filled with their connections.
The bench, more rarely, was occupied by their crea-
tures. The country gentry officered the army and the
navy. The greater prizes of the Church were in the hands
of the peer and the squire : they virtually created bishops

* See a series of seven articles (by J. Collier) on The EvolU"
tion of Colonies in the Popular Science Monthly, in 1898-99.

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 311

and deans, canons and prebends ; its richest benefices
were in their gift and were often held by their sons.
As constituting the " great unpaid '' class of honorary
magistrates, they administered a large portion of civil
and criminal justice. They controlled the government
of counties and parishes. They were the leaders of
society. The three classes or castes together — nobles,
county families, and clergy — constituted a paramount
oligarchy and possessed political, ecclesiastical, and
ceremonial supremacy.

The parallel between two social states is never com-
plete, and assuredly there is no complete parallel between
Australia in its pastoral stage and aristocratic England
during the long and varied period of the paramountcy
of the great territorial landholders. Yet certain
characteristic features are alike in both, and in both
they arise from similarities of structure. We observe,
first, in Australia and New Zealand, the ascendancy
of the great landowners. So long as there was a strong
anti-squatting Governor, who resisted their sway with
the aid of the permanent higli officials appointed by
the Crown, the large pastoralists necessarily remained
in opposition. Save for the occasional and accidental
alliance of an outsider, governed by pubhc motives or
by pique, they, indeed, formed the Opposition. Such
was the state of things in Austraha when Sir George
Gipps was king. His chief allies were Deas Thomson
and the officials ; the Opposition was led by Wentworth,
with the squatters at his back, and casually supported
by Lang. From the time of Brisbane — certainly from
the time when the Legislative Council was reconstructed
in 1843 and the elective element introduced, or a year
or two later, till 1861, when the squatting majority,
with the president at their head, dramatically walked
out of the chamber in order to make a dignified protest
against the Free Selectors bill, this element had the
upper hand, and virtually ruled New South Wales,
both through the legislature and the administration.
Some scattered references, where a detailed scrutiny

312 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

is impracticable, will reveal the extent to which the
great pastoraUsts controlled the State system.

His past deep offences forgiven and his eminent
ser%aces to the State at last duly recognised, John
McArthur was almost the first to be appointed to the
Council in 1824, when it was created. He held the
seat till he died, and his two civihan sons, James and
Wilham, succeeded him. All alike constantly pursued
(what may be called) squatting pohtics. One of his
colleagues was Alexander Berry, ex-doctor and ex-
navigator, reclaimer and dairy-king, and he retained
his seat through all the changes of constitution the
Council underwent— in 1828, 1843, 1851, and 1854,
till he resigned it at an advanced age in 1861. The
squatter-pohtician was, indeed, a conspicuous figure
after a measure of responsible government had been
granted to New South Wales, and the Legislative
Council had been made partly elective. Ebden, who
had first settled on the Upper Hume in 1836-8, and
next drove stock westwards to the Port Philhp country,
became a representative of the Port Phillip province
and fought for its separation from New South Wales.
He was afterwards Auditor-General in Victoria and
played an active part in Victorian pohtics. Henry
Mort, pioneer squatter in New South Wales and in
Queensland, sat for Queensland in the New South
Wales council. Then, when Queensland was severed
from the Mother-colony, he sat in the Legislative
Assembly as member for West Macquarie. From
1879 onwards he was a member of the Legislative
Council. Terence Aubrey Murray, born in 1810, was
at first a sheep-farmer on his father's land. From the
date of the reconstruction of the Legislative Council
in 1843 till his death he was closely connected with
public life. Squatter though he was, he was prominent
in all struggles for popular rights. He was rewarded
by being appointed Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.
From 1862, when Wentworth retired from his brief
tenure of the presidency of the Legislative Council,

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 313

till 1873 he was member and president of the Second
Chamber. Such a record was worthily croMned by
knighthood and enhaloed by the posthumous distinc-
tion of his son as a Scottish and English professor and
classical scholar. Out of the strong proceedeth sweet-
ness, as the old Hebrew riddle hath it.

We interrupt the beadroll of distinguished names to
mention a significant fact. In 1844 (September 17th),
so sympathetic was the Legislative Council with the
interests of the pastoralists that it passed votes of
thanks for his services to Charles Buller (Carlyle's old
pupil and then a rising member of Parliament) and to
Francis Scott (son of that advocate of the pastoralists,
Lord Polwarth) "for his masterly exposition of the
cause of the Australian squatters." Next year it M'aa
decided to appoint Scott its Parliamentary Agent.

It will show the extent to which the unreformed
Legislative Council was permeated by pastoralist
influences to state that the three nominated unofficial
members were pastoralists — Alexander Berry, John
Blaxland, and Richard Jones. Even when the Council
had been made partially elective, sixteen out of the
twenty-four elected members were connected with
pastoral pursuits.* It is true that two of these are
described by Sir George Gipps as barristers ; but Went-
worth had for some years ceased to practise, he owned
three stations, and he publicly said : " I am a squatter,"
though he never resided on his stations. And Wilham
Forster, who was afterwards Premier of the Colony,
though described as a barrister, was also a squatter.

Many country gentlemen, we are told, were returned
to the Legislative Council in 1843. Two years later
Henry Dangar, an extensive pastorafist, was elected,
and, in company with Wentworth and James McArthur,
he supported Earl Grey in his attempts to resume
transportation. In 1848 he was re-elected, and for
years after. In 1854 he was placed in the Legislative
Council of the new Constitution. Sir Charles Cowper
♦ See the names in the Mitchell MSS., vol. 42.

314 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

was bred to the bureaucracy, but belonged to the
squatter-class, and, after holding some minor offices,
appUed himself to pastoral pursuits, but never seriously
or with much success. His heart was in politics. He
did not therefore win the squatters* hearts. James
McArthur, son of the celebrated John and inheritor
of Camden Park, intrigued against him, when standing
for Camden, and succeeded in running him out.
Cowper's turn soon came. McArthur stood for the
county of Cumberland ; Cowper was new to the con-
stituency, if not to the constituents, but he defeated
his opponent by a large majority. Another hereditary
squatter. Sir John Robertson, who, along v,iih Captain
To\\7is and Sir Charles Cowper, "held immense tracts
of pastoral country ... on the Norman and Albert
Rivers near the Gulf of Carpentaria," was, as Wentworth
claimed to be, a champion of the freehold. How large
a part the recreant, as his fellow squatters doubtless
deemed him, played in landed politics, we shall subse-
quently see, " The father of separation," Edward Curr,
the reputed author of the severance of Victoria from
New South Wales, was manager of the Circular Head
squatting company in Van Diemen's Land.

After the introduction of responsible government
into the Australasian colonies in the middle fifties, the
squatting element in the various legislatures was by no
means proportionally diminished ; perhaps it was
increased. Squatters were freely elected to the more
popular chamber — by whatever name it was known ;
and the second chamber, or Legislative Council, became
their stronghold. W. J. Brodribb, who has told his
own story, may be taken as a type of the post-consti-
tutional squatter. Migrating from New South Wales
to Victoria, and standing for a suburban constituency,
he favoured the policy embodied in the Robertson Act
of 1861, and, as a Victorian legislator, he assisted in
passing the Duffy free-selection Act of 18G2 ; on no
other terms, doubtless, could he have been elected for
an urban constituency. Removing to New South Wales,

SIR JOHN ROBERTSON,

p. 314]

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 315

he sat there in the Legislature. He was a consistent
free-trader, and to this day the squatter remains a
supporter of free trade.

A more prominent type of pohtical squatter is repre-
sented by Sir John Hay (not to be confounded with
the dairy-farmer, who was never a legislator). He was
a steadfast representative of the pastoralists. He it
was who led the opposition to the Robertson free-
selection bill, and in the Legislative Assembly he carried
his hostile amendment to it by a majority of 33 to
28 votes. It was a Pyrrhic victory. On the strength
of it he became for a brief space Premier of New South
Wales, and, being a well-educated Aberdonian and a
polished speaker, he adorned the office, but he did not,
as a minister, survive an appeal to the country.

Queensland, with few and unpopulous cities for a
long while, at first afforded ample scope for the squatters
as both legislators and administrators. The " Squire
of Naraigin," Murray-Prior, was appointed Postmaster-
General of the Colony before responsible government
arrived, but retained his office when it did, and he then
was representative of the Government in the Legislative
Council. Sir Joshua Bell, another squatter, was con-
tinuously elected to the Legislative Assembly from
1863 to 1879 ; he was then President of the Legislative
Council till his death. From 1864 to 1867 and from
1871 to 1874 he was a Minister, under several Premiers.
As we run the eye down the list of the personnel of the
various Queensland cabinets, we find, especially among
the early ministries, the names of prominent squatters
everywhere — R. R. Mackenzie (Premier), Coxen, Wien-
holt, Gilbert Elliott (who presided over sixteen sessions
of the Legislative Assembly), Arthur Macalister, Murray-
Prior (more than once). Gore, " that fine old polished
gentleman," Archibald Archer, of Gracemere, Arthur
Hodgson, Oscar de Satge (whose son has proved one
of the historians, or novefists, of squatterdom), Sir
Arthur Palmer, (he, too, Premier), B.B, Morehead
(another Premier), C. B. Button, who was the Robertson

316 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

and the Duffy of Queensland, most of them more than
once, and others still. In the first nine parHaments
the squatters seem to have had an ascendancy ; in
the tenth, when Sir T. McIl-WTaith, was Premier, the
pastoral element almost disappeared, or, at least, was
greatly reduced. They had been Premiers, ]\Iinisters,
Speakers, and Presidents since the separation from New
South Wales, and in legislation and administration they
maintained the pastoral traditions long after they had
become extinct in New South Wales. Lawyers, mer-
chants, agriculturists, and Labour members took their
places. NoAv and then a squatter got into the Assembly,
like the popular George Story ; but he seldom strode
into office. The pastoralists' day was gone by, at least
in the first chamber. The Legislative Council, as the
native home of Conservatism, was the natural refuge of
the class that had been driven from the more powerful
chamber. In it they long held a prominent place,
there they steadfastly resisted the advance of the agri-
cultural stage, and there, in a large proportion, they still
remain.

James Taylor, who rose from being stockman to
being a squatter, represented the Darling Downs for
many years ; for a brief space he was Minister for
Lands ; and he was a member of the Legislative Council
till his death. Such men conceived themselves the
natural rulers of the community. The successful
manager of a large station, in Mr. de Satge's opinion,
might aspire to fill any position, from the dispenser of
justice " from his own bench of magistrates " (the
words are notable) to that of Premier.*

In 1881 the pastoral interests of Queensland were
still represented in the Legislative Assembly by twenty
out of twenty-five members. In 1891 it would have
been difficult to pick a dozen squatters out of seventy-
two.

Much the same story might be told of New Zealand,
which has witnessed the slow decline of the once all-
* Saxqe, Journal of a Queensland Squatter, p. 98.

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 317

powerful pastoral interests in the Legislature. In the
unreformed days the political leaders were chiefly
pastoralists. After a constitution had been granted,
pastoralists flooded the nominee Legislative Council
and copiously figured in the House of Representatives.
Comparatively few now sit in the Council, and, while
a number of squatters or managers sat in the House of
Representatives so lately as 1887-90, only two now sit
there. Three or four pastoralists have been Premiers
— Sir Edward Stafford, acknowledged to have been by
far the most capable Parliamentary leader New Zealand
has had ; the high-minded Weld, afterwards promoted
to a succession of colonial governorships ; and the
courteous Sir John Hall. A nominal Premier of a few
weeks' duration, till he was expelled from the Cabinet
by his colleague, the imperious Vogel, one Waterhouse,
was the most contemptible bungler that ever held the
office. None now count for less in the semi-socialist
politics of the island-dominion than the old pastoralists.
The Legislative Assembly grew ever more democratic,
but the Legislative Council in New South Wales, as
in most of the colonies, remained the stronghold of
the squatters. Wlien, in 1861, it threatened to repeat
its rejection of the Robertson land bill the year before,
the Government of the day appointed twenty-one
councillors — exactly the number required to give the
bill a majority of one. Thereupon the President, Sir
W. W. Burton, and nineteen members simultaneously
withdrew from the Chamber, and immediately resigned
their seats as a protest against the swamping of the
Council. With this creation, which carried into effect
a policy only threatened in connection with the House
of Lords in 1832 and 1910, the protracted ascendancy
of squatterdom came at last to an end. It made a
dying sputter when it resisted the Land and Income
taxes proposed in 1895. Then, however, the Chamber
yielded to the verdict of the general elections, which
the Chamber of 1861 refused to recognise. The Duke
of Newcastle severely condemned the action of Governor

318 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

Sir John Young in lending himself to so extreme a
measure, but his censure has not received the approval
of a later generation, while Sir John's appointment
as Governor-General of Canada, together with his
peerage (as Lord Lisgar), shows that the Colonial
OflEice \visety accepted the situation and tacitly approved
of the fait accompli.

The struggle thus dramatically closed has been
repeated, in one form or another, on other legislative
arenas. In the seventies the Legislature of Victoria
was the scene of a prolonged conflict between the two
chambers. The issue was not ostensibly one betAveen
the pastorahsts and the agriculturists, but the bone of
contention was substantially the same. On the one
side were the squatters, who scorned, and on the other
sat the democrats, who claimed to receive a honorarium
as members. Only men who had the large leisure of
the pastoralists could afford, without remuneration,
to spend months at a time in the provincial metropolis,
attending Parliament ; if the democracy, or even the
harder-worked agriculturists, were to come by their
own, their representatives must be paid ; and again,
by ** tacking " a bill for the purpose to a supply bill,
the new men eventually triumphed.

A new policy arose with the ascendancy of a new
class. New avocations — the cultivation of cotton and
the growing of sugar-cane, besides the agriculture usual
in temperate countries — must be created to counter-
balance the influence of the stockowners. This was
done almost single-handed by Dr. Lang, who flooded
Brisbane with free immigrants while the Home Govern-
ment was flooding it with convicts. The squatters now
saw themselves circumvented, and they fell back on
the proposal that immigrants and convicts should be
introduced in equal numbers. This concession was not
accepted. The anti-convictists grew and increased. On
no terms would they agree to the renewal of transporta-
tion. In order to strengthen their cause and assure the
auccess of their policy, and doubtless also for its own

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 319

sake, they began to agitate for the separation of the
future Queensland from the Mother-Colony. Again the
squatters bowed to the inevitable — perhaps also seeing
their interest in it — and formed a Separation association.
But they advocated separation on one condition — that
convicts should continue to be imported. The demand
of the squatters for unfree labour and the demand of
the people for free immigration dug an impassable gulf
between the pastoralists and the bulk of the citizens.
A succession of minor contests ensued. When Went-
worth's Constitution bill had become law in New South
Wales, and new constituencies were created, the popular
representatives in the Northern districts defeated the
squatters' nominees. These elections decisively settled
the questions at issue. The party of " Separation with-
out exiles " definitely triumphed.

Every political problem was entangled with the in-
terests of the pastoralists, who determined the solution
of it. Playing so large a part both in the industry and
the politics of New South Wales, the squatters formed
a huge factor in the movement that precipitated the
separation of Queensland from the Mother-Colony. Not
that they favoured the movement ; on the contrary,
they most strenuously opposed it. But it was eminently
their opposition to it, or, latterly, their adhesion to it,
coupled with impossible conditions, that made it prac-
ticable and inevitable. Dr. Lang believed that the
Clarence and the Richmond rivers district was retained
for New South Wales by them as a field " for the exten-
sion of the domain of squatterdom," and he roundly
asserted that the retention was "accomplished by
chicanery and fraud." * Yet it seems to be clearly
marked off as a necessary portion of a future Southern
Queensland, embracing a semi-tropical area, while the
northern and western portions of Queensland would
form other States. In some quarters he is held to have
contrived the inclusion of the Riverina in New South
Wales ; probably, he would have asserted that it too
* Lanq, Account^ etc., ii. 308 note.

320 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

was brought about by the same agencies and with the
same object. One has only to examine the map in
order to conclude that that great squatting area, with
Sir Samuel McCaughey's opulent principality in its
centre, is a predestined province of Victoria, as it is,
for all practical purposes, already Victorian. But
Dr. Lang had nothing to do with the decision. He was
absent in England between the years 1846 and 1850,
when the decision was taken, and his voice to the
contrary, had it been heard at the Colonial Office,
where he was not a persona grata, would have done more
harm than good. The real authors of it were the
squatting members of the Legislative Council of New
South Wales, with Wentworth at their head, doubtless
aided by the Sydney merchants, who hoped to control
the exports and monopolize the imports of the province.
It certainly is a fact that it was strongly urged by
Bishop Broughton, who was supported by his old fellow-
townsman and ever-loyal henchman. Governor Gipps.
Nor is it false that, as Mr. Rusden states. Governor
Gipps, the anti-squatting Governor, recommended the
Murray as the boundary to the Home Government ;
but the impression one receives is that Gipps acted as
he did from comradeship, and did not realise that he
was playing into the hands of the squatting majority
in the Council.*

Early in the sixties broke out the long-nursed reaction
against the pastoralists, their social predominance, their
administrative influence, their politico-commercial policy.
As an immediate outcome of it, in 18G3 Sir James Martin
formed the first Protectionist ministry, and in the
Assembly he carried a motion in favour of the imposition
of Protectionist customs' duties. The eloquent Irish-
man— like Mr. Gladstone, he " could not help being
eloquent " — made a lofty defence of his proposals. He
thought that " this most magnificent territory, teeming
with the elements of every kind of wealth . . . m as in-
tended for other purposes than a sheep-walk, like a vast

* Rusden, History of Australia, ii. 202-3, 379 (second ed.).

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 321

Asiatic steppe, or a mere commercial emporium, like
some small city of the Middle Ages." He considered
that there was in Australia an ample field to which the
starving thousands of the IMother-Country could be
removed. He could not ask the skilled British artizan
to come to a country where the necessaries of life were
dear [was not butcher-meat " dirt cheap," Sir James,
and the loaf of bread no dearer ?], and the articles he
manufactured imported at a price with which he could
not compete. There was a limit to the number of
shepherds and bullock-drivers, porters, "warehousemen,
and clerks, and the other workers concerned in the
pastoral industry, that -were required, and there Mere
many other occupations equally desirable and ennobling.
He knew that the greatness of England arose from her
manufactures as well as from her agriculture. Aided
by A\ise legislation [\vere they not hindered and some-
times throttled by it, Sir James ?], those small islands
became the abode of the greatest and most opulent
people on earth. Yet the metals, the wool, and the
soil that formed the foundation of England's greatness
lay here, too, and in larger measure. But while the
British Islands supported thirty millions of a population,
New Zealand maintained only four hundred thousand.
By its pastures and its petty commerce with the South
Sea Islands alone it might become a kind of Antipodean
Venice, but could never reproduce a manly, vigorous, or
numerous population. Only by the creation of manu-
factures could it hope to be peopled with such a popukx-
tion. Only in this way would there be scope for everyman
to raise himself. Only thus could everyone be comfort-
able rather than a few be rich. It was a noble appeal,
but it was made to deaf ears. The bill or motion was
rejected by the Legislative Council, always attached to
free trade, and at the ensuing general elections the
Protectionist Ministry was defeated. A Ministry with
a squatter-Premier came into office and passed a bill
imposing ad valorem duties. New South Wales was still
strongly anti-Protectionist. The squatters have ever

21

322 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

since remained the backbone of the Free-trade party,
and the comparative ease with which a Protective tariff
Avas carried through the ParHament of the Common-
wealth Mas partly due to the fact that not one squatter,
or a single representative of the class, sat in that assem-
bly. At this day the president of the Pastoralists'
Association amiually fulminates agamst the creation of
factitious industries by means of protective duties.

The foreign policy of the squatters was but an exten-
sion of their domestic policy. Surveymg the pastoral
races among mankind, the many conquests they have
made, the thrones they have overturned, and the terror
and devastation they have spread over the most fertile
and warlike countries, Gibbon confesses, with some
reluctance, that " the pastoral manners, which have
been adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and
innocence, are much better adapted to the fierce and
cruel habits of a military life." We must not rashly
import into our as yet peaceful Australia conceptions
that apply to less civilised races, but it is a fact that
the lives of the pioneer Austrahan pastoralists were lives
of warfare. In many parts of Australia the struggle
with the blacks was incessant. All the squatters had
fire-arms, and many of them daily went about armed.
Some entered into defensive alliances with one another.
Those who could not do so, or were of an unwarlike
temper, were driven from their runs. Gibbon also notes
that the necessity for keeping their flocks and herds at
night A\'ithin the camp gradually introduced the rudi-
ments of the military art into the distribution, ordering,
and guarding of the encampment. Just such precautions
were taken by the early Austrahan overlanders, who
were the survivors of the nomad pastoralists of Europe
and Asia, and by the pastorahsts Avho travelled in search
of runs. They were thus in constant training for war-
fare. Naturally, among such pastoralists sprang up a
force of volunteer cavalry ; the Austrahan Lancers were
at first composed of squatters or their sons ; the army
of the .Shepherd Kings in Canterbury, New Zealand,

THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 323

consisted of the younger pastoralists ; and when con-
tingents of rifle-carrying cavahy, or of mounted infantry,
were demanded during the 8outh African war, the sons
of the squatters rushed to the fray. Their addiction to
the chase, which is "an image and a school of war,"
was in the nature of military training. Their habitual
and often day-long riding in mustering cattle or in
pursuit of them was a no less valuable discipline.

Pastoralists Avho have been accustomed to " annex "
whole provinces, like the overseer or the foreign count
who discovered Gippsland, in Victoria, or the discoverer
of (the Australian) Kimberley, or the first occupiers of
strath or plain, of river-flat or mountain-plateau, can
perceive no reason why their colony or country should
not annex an unappropriated island or territory in any
quarter of the globe. Thus, Australian and New Zealand
pastoraHsts in general heartily approved of the annexa-
tion of New Guinea by Queensland, while they urged
the acquisition of Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia, and
were ardent supporters of the South African war. In-
deed, men who need ever- wider stretches of grass lands
for their ever-increasing flocks and herds are of all the
most clamorous for the appropriation of waste lands.
The agriculturist can find relief under pressure in more
intensive cultivation of the soil, and the industriaUst
demands only space enough to build his factories upon
or to find the iron-ores and coal-mines that are the
breath of his life ; but the cry of the pastoralist is, like
that of the daughter of the horse-leech : " give, give ! "

CHAPTER XLVI -

PASTORAL LEGISLATION

The legislation of the pastoral age has, at all times
and in every country, had a character of its omii. In
countries ^\ here the inhabitants were still nomads there
could be no ^^ritten la^^■s, but there yseie still unA\'ritten
usages, and these were binding. When the laws or
usages of a people are codified, these ancient customs
are often incorporated with the prescriptions of less
ancient times. Thus, " enactments intended for a people
with settled habitations, and dwelling in A\'alled cities,"
sa^^s Milman, " are mingled up Avith temporary regula-
tions, suited only to the Bedouin encampment of a
nomad tribe." The whole subsequent legislation has
its root in these usages. Just so had the written cus-
tomary, or common, law of Europe its beginnings
in tribal usages. The capitularies of Karl the Great, so
formidable to look at in the antique pages of Baluze or
the modern edition of Pertz, are in good part but the
instructions of the Emperor to the villici, or managers,
of his farms. Yet out of them have grown the landed
customs and the land-legislation of modern times.
According to Dar^N'in, General Rosas, in Argentina, first
gained his celebrity through the laws he made for the
government of his estancias.*

There were unwritten laws in the Australian bush.
(Some related to the occupation of land and others to
the ownership of cattle or sheep. Thus, it was tacitlj'
agreed among the \'ictorian adventurers as they arrived
that no one should take up a station within three miles
* Voyage of the Adventure, ch. iv.
324

PASTORAL LEGISLATION 326

of another ; the intermediate land being equally divided.
Out of just such understandings grew the written laws
of later years.

Such legislation was naturally concerned with the
primary interests of the pastoralists. In the early days
there were, as yet, no fences ; lonely shepherds tended
their sheep by day, and at nightfall drove their flocks
to fold. Liable to diseases to which all flesh, ovine and
bovine as well as human, is heir, sheep might contract
scab, catarrh, and foot-rot, and these wrought havoc
among the sheep. As a single sheep might stray into
another run, and infect a whole flock, the lack of isola-
tion might ruin a station. Many a law was passed to
protect the squatter against his neighbour, as in later
days to protect the cattle-owner against himself. The
new race of shepherds kept vigilant guard over the in-
tegrity of their flocks. Periodical musters were held, and
ever}^ herd counted. All animals were forcibly branded.

To remedy trespass impounding laws were enacted
and continually amended. Laws were passed to regu-
late the slaughtering of cattle, killed by dishonest men
preying on their neighbours. Xone could slaughter
without a license ; in Queensland, so late as the nineties,
a slaughtering- Act was re-enacted.

One of the most characteristic pieces of pastoral legis-
lation was brought forward by Went^orth in 1844. It
was carried successfully through the Council, and received
the Royal assent at the hands of the Governor. Its
object was to enable pastoralists to mortgage the wool
while it was still on the sheep's backs, and it was in-
tituled. The Lien on Wool Bill. It met -with a very
cool reception at the Colonial Office, which was then
controlled, as regards the future self-governing colonies,
by the masterful Sir James Stephen. It declared, in
sentences that bear the imprint of Stephen's pen, that
such transactions as were legalised by the Act were in
contravention of the spirit of English jurisprudence,
and the Office forbore to exercise the unquestioned
power of refusing or recalling the Royal assent, in the

326 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

hope that the measure would not be re-enacted. In
due course it was re-enacted, its author declaring that
if the bill Avere not perpetuated, he would leave the
Colony. The beneficence of the Act appears to have
been unmistakable. Wentworth's chief opponent. Sir
Edward Deas Thomson, Colonial Secretar}^ and long the
official leader of the Council, admitted that the operation
of the Act had saved many a squatter from imminent ruin.
Hitherto, the squatters had it all their own way. So
stamped with the brand of pastoralism was the legis-
lation of the foities and fifties in New South Wales
that Sir John Robertson, the son of a squatter, for
some years his father's superintendent, and latterly
himself a squatter, denounced it as partial and unjust.
Examined before a Parliamentary committee in 1855,
he declared that the object of it, or at all events, its
tendency, was to depress the agriculturist and, at
his expense, exalt the pastoralist. He asserted that
the two classes ought to be placed on a like footing,
and claimed that the facilities afforded to the one
should be granted to the other. He especially referred
to the Impounding Act, which gave the grazier an unfair
advantage over the agriculturist. The Lien on Wool
Act should be extended to agricultural produce. The
Mortgage on Cattle Act, which aided the pastoralists
in a similar manner, was another unfair discrimination
against the agriculturists. Lastly, he condemned the
system by which favoured pastorahsts occupied Crown
lands, for an indefinite period and at a nominal rent,
while tile agriculturist was subjected to more strin-
gent requirements. The doughty ex-squatter's denun-
ciation of the privileged class that he belonged to was
to raise a tide of feeling which embodied itself in
just such laws as he demanded. Hardly a lustrum
more and the agricultural interests were to gain the
ascendancy that had long been enjoyed by the pas-
toralists. Robertson himself who had become an
agriculturist on a large scale, was to lead the new
crusade.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER

There are countries where the soil is so barren that it
cannot produce root-crops, though the grass may be
nutritious and abundant, or may be sufficient in its
season. Such were, and are, the major portion of
Arabia and the valley of the Jordan, and no small part
of Central Asia. The bulk of the Transvaal and,
indeed, of all South Africa is well-suited to cattle-
raising, but wheat, oats, and barley are exiguous. Large
portions of Australia and New Zealand lie under a like
disability or enjoy a like privilege. Extensive tracts
of the Canterbury Plains in New Zealand, shaved bare
by glaciers in the ice-age, and the foot-hills above them,
are too light or too rocky to be suited to agriculture,
but on them the finest breeds of sheep thrive. The
great Western Division of New South Wales is in summer
a mere tract of blowing dust, but for six or eight
months of the year it can at least rear sheep. In such
countries no conflict between pastoralist and agricul-
turist can arise ; they remain for ever dedicated to
the peaceful pursuits of the pastoral life.

It is otherwise with the rich straths, the alluvial
tracts, the volcanic patches, the valleys and the plateaus
enriched by the decayed foliage of a hundred thousand
vegetal generations. At the epoch of colonisation
they are covered with scrub, ^\^th bush, with forest, and
while they so remain, they are the home of sheep, which
graze in the intermediate pastures, or of cattle, which
fatten on the succulent leaves or twigs. So long as

327

328 THE PASTOBAL AGE IN AUSTJRALASIA

population is scant}^ this is the predestined use of
such lands, and the shepherd with his flocks, or the
stockman v>'ith his cattle, is their rightful denizen.

As among the ancient Hindus described in the Vedas,
the pastoral phase passed easily into the agricultural
phase. The two were indeed simultaneous. In the
fifties there were in Austraha, side by side with the
extensive pastures, " cultivated fields well fenced on
nearly every station." * Small farms date back to
the very beginnings of settlement in New South Wales.
By grants to convicts and to settlers Governor Phillip
and Acting-Governor Grose created a " chain of
farms " between Sj'dney and Parramatta. Tlie first
two chaplains, Johnson and Marsden, devoted no small
portion of their unemployed time and energy to mixed
farming, namely, at once pastoral and agricultural.
Most of the military officers, who received from the
Government moderate grants of land, and some of
whom purchased on easy terms the farms of returning
convicts or disheartened settlers, were small farmers.
The greatest of early pastoralists, John McAi'thur, was
at first, in this sense, a mixed farmer, and it was out
of these confused attempts that his pastoral pursuits
grew, dwarfing his agricultural operations. In much
later years Dr. Lang found that, in the neighbourhood
of Bathurst, some of the great pastoral domains had
been broken up through the insolvenc}^ of their owners,
and subdivided into farms. f Everywhere too, in the
less settled districts, squatters (in the primary sense
of the word) were dropping down into nooks and corners
on the big runs, where they made themselves more con-
spicuous than agreeable. All of these types of small
farmer together had made sensible encroachments on
the integrity of the squatters' preserves.

Yet the dominion of the great runholders remained
unbroken. Over ^^rtually the whole of each province
in Australasia the big pastoralist had laid an unyielding

* Victorian Pioneers, p. 140.
■f" Accoimt, ii. 214-5.

SIR GEOROK GREY.

p. 328]

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 329

grasp. Did the farmer seek to plant himself doMii in
the estate over which the squatter lorded it, although
ostensibly he held it only on lease ? H^ bought them
up, one after another, wherever he could. Only here
and there could the small man effect a lodgment. The
land could be purchased, because no titles could be
given, beyond the boundaries of settlement. The State
must step in, if the monopoly of the modern Goetz with
the Iron Hand was to be broken. Sir George Grey
in New Zealand was doubtless the first of the icono-
clasts. As Governor of New Zealand he was placed
in an unprecedented position — unprecedented, at least,
for a British colonial Governor. The Secretary of
State virtually handed over to him the whole of the
Crown Lands in the Colony, and clothed him with power
to legislate for and appropriate them as he deemed
best. He felt it to be a high, but by no means an
exorbitant, prerogative, and he was prepared to exercise
it in a manner that must have gone beyond the inten-
tions of the minister who entrusted him with it. Alwaj'^s
a democrat at heart, he resolved to make an end
of the monopoly of the land by the great pastoralists
who had " barred the door against proletarian settle-
ment." On the eve of his departure from New Zealand
" he issued a proclamation embodying a plan of rural
administration and land settlement that . . . reveals
a clear conception of the end he had in view and a
firm grasp of the means by which it Mas to be gained.
There were to be three classes of lands ; limits
were to be set to the number of acres that could
be held ; and all were to be sold by auction. Above
all, lands that had hitherto been sold at £1, £2, and
£3 per acre were to be sold at ten shillings and five
shillings."

We need not be surprised that the revolutionary
ordinance "roused a storm of disapprobation." The
large pastoralists were still all-powerful in New Zealand,
and if the Governor could issue autocratic ordinances,
the carrying of them out depended on the squatterocracy.

330 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

They set themselves to thwart the ordinance of 1853.
While " Grey claimed that he had made an end of the
practice of closing the land against the poor," they
took effectual measures to show that he had only thrown
open the gates of large landed estates to the rich, " By
' gridironing ' the land and ' taking the eyes ' out of
it wealthy individuals were able to defeat the Governor's
designs. Just so had Earl Grey suspected that they
would be defeated." *

The history of the question in New Zealand rehearsed
its evolution in Australia — its visionary inception and
its long-delayed success. As in New Zealand, the chief
enemy of the large runholder was the free selector.
Here he was the creation of Sir John Robertson, in
New South Wales, and of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy,
in Victoria. In 1861 a minister who enjoj^ed the
prime qualification of a very complete practical acquain-
tance Avith the matter, if he had an exhaustive ignorance
of everything else, set himself to secure as a patrimony
for the people the landed estates that were the monopoly
of the wealthy and the privileged. The new Gracchus
came from the ranks of the squatters, and yet he had
already, years before, contended in the congenial pre-
sence of Sir George Gipps, the anti-squatting Governor,
for the rights of the selector. Ten years later, in 1856,
he pleaded for the right of free selection over all public
lands. In 1861 he introduced a bill that legalised this
principle. The potency or the sting of it lay in the
word, "free." It was a catchword that appealed to
the British colonist, who was proud of his freedom,
so much greater than he had ever enjoyed in the Mother-
land. Robertson used it to signify the selection of
land without previous survey. Wliat did this mean ?
Ten years earlier the sagacious Gipps had asserted that
a clear and sure tenure of un surveyed land was imprac-
ticable. Robertson scouted the idea. His object was
to save expense and obvious delay. He would thus
flood the country with freeholders who would acquire
* COLLIEB, Sir Oeorge Qrey, pp. 84-5.

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 331

their farms speedily and without cost. In 1860 a step
towards this result had been taken. An able minister
of the squatter class, Sir John Hay (no relative of the
recent millionaire) carried in the Legislative Assembly
a resolution to the effect that selection might be made
after survey. Concession though it was, the victory
was momentary. A dissolution of Parliament ensued,
and Robertson carried the elections on his own plat-
form. Free selection before Survey, the war-cry of the
new party, was to be the gateway to universal occupa-
tion of the untilled soil. The bill was again sent up
to the Legislative Council, which had previously rejected
it. The squatting majority still dominant there was
prepared again to reject it, when the Government
resolved to swamp the Council by placing in it twenty-
one new members who would more than counter-
balance the majority of twenty that w'as opposed to it.
The Governor, Sir John Young, yielded to the pressure
put upon him, but the Council would not yield. The
faithful Abdiels of squatterdom, with their honoured
President at their head, resigned their seats in a body
and left the Council in a dramatic manner. The Duke
of Newcastle, then Secretary for the Colonies, con-
demned the Governor, but did not dare to exercise the
royal veto, and in 1861 the bill became law.

The accounts given of its ^^'orking and its effects
are various and, indeed, contradictory. The historian
of the squatters, reflecting their prejudices and their
beliefs, damned it comprehensively. " It poisoned
the springs of Government, defrauded the revenue, was
the agent of demoralising the people, and scattered
them in places remote from production and subject to
evil influences." *

Dr. Lang, the inveterate opponent of the squatters,
speaks of the Act in very different terms. He describes
it as a piece of " salutary legislation" and as having
effected a beneficent revolution in New South Wales.

In certain districts, as even the spokesmen of the
* RusDEN, Hiatoryjof Australia, iii. 640 (first edition).

332 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

squatters admit, its operation was beneficial. According
to Nathaniel Bartle}^* it did most good and least harm
in the Clarence River district, and the adjoining river
basins. There, he says, " was no clashing between the
interests of selectors and those of pastoral tenants,"
and with reason. The good lands Avere too heavily
timbered with cedar to be fit for grazing, but they were
well adapted for farms.

Equally unfriendly historians relate that the worst
consequences ensued. Individuals selected pieces of
land only in order to sell to a rich neighboui-. Wealthy
squatters used others as " dummies," and added to their
estates. Children and relatives, real or fictitious, were
similarly used. Thus large properties were aggregated.
The condition of residence was evaded, or complied
with in mockery. Of 112,000 selections only 19,000
had residents. Deferred payments were not collected.
By 1880 a large proportion of the selections had lapsed.
Many had passed iiito other hands. The loss to the
Colony was tremendous. "j"

One of the chief promoters of the Act, Sir Henry
Parkes, admittedly " looked back with misgiving "
on some of its results. A species of dummyism, he con-
fessed, had grown up by which men " fraudulently gained
possession of large tracts of the choicest land with only
a mock compliance Mith the conditions of the law and
in direct contravention of its spirit and intention."
Yet he insists that Robertson's Act " did immense
good." It " brought hundreds of comfortable homes
into existence." And, after all the amendments that
have been made in it, its " chief principles are embedded
in the law of the Colony." %

Victoria eagerly trod in the footsteps of New South
Wales. In the following year that ardent democrat,
Sir Charles Gavan DufTj% carried through the Victorian
legislature a measure framed on the lines of the Robert-

* Pioneering Reminiscencea, p. 44.

f RusDKN, History of Auxtraiia, iii. 540 ff.

j PiVBKES, Fifty Years of Anatralian History, i. 161-4.

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 333

son Act. It had .similar results. All the evils that
ensued in the neighbouring Colony followed with greater
intensity in more compact Victoria. Wholesale
evasions of the Act took place. There arose a scramble
for land, which, as in New Zealand and in NeAv South
Wales, only ministered to the creation of large estates.
The author of the Act, Duffy himself, admitted that it
had failed. The " very class for whom we are legis-
lating," he confessed, " sold their inheritance for some
paltry bribe." Dumm3dsm, he admitted, was rampant.
The failure dejected some earnest well-wishers in
far-away England. In 1868 a great friend of Duflfy
— no less a man than Carlyle — MTote to him in doleful
terms : —

" A returned emigrant (newspaper editor, I think, but cer-
tainly a sensible and credible kind of man) gave me very dis-
couraging accounts not long since of the state of immigration
among you. ' Next to no immigration at all,' reports he ; ' the
excellent Duffy Land Law made of even no effect ' by scandalous
' auctioneering jobbers ' and other vulpine combinations and
creatures, whose modes and procedures I did not well understand.
But the news itself was to me extremely bad. For the roaring
anarchies of America itself, and of all our incipient ' Americas,'
juBtifj' themselves to me by this one plea, ' x\ngry sir, we couldn't
help it ; and we anarchies and all (as you may see) are con-
quering the wilderness, as perhaps your Friedrich Wilhelm, or
Friedrich liimself , could not have guided us to do, and are offering
homes and arable communion with mother earth and her blessed
verities to all the anarchies of the world which have quite lost
their way.' Australia, of a certainty, ought to leave her gates
wide open in this respect at all times ; nay, it were well for her
could she build a free bridge (' flying bridge ') between Europe
and her, and encourage the deserving to stream across. I pray
you, if ever the opportunity offer, do your very best in this
interest, and consider it as, silently or vocally, of the very
essence of your function (appointed you by Heaven itself) in
that Antipodal world ! And excuse this little bit of preaching,
for it is meant altogether honestly and well,"

Ever}^ colon}^ in turn took up the same difficult, if
not impossible, mission of actively interfering with the
necessary operation of the natural law s of supply and
demand. When Lord Cardigan rode down " the Valley
of Death " at Balaclava, he cried out to his over-

334 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

impetuous followers, ofdeers or men : "" Dont force the
pace." One after another, all the colonial Governments
determined to force the pace. They would forcibly
overcome the resistance of the great landholders, and
they would, by legislation and proclamation, satisfy
the just demands of the agriculturists. Four years after
Victoria and five after New South Wales, the new Colony
of Queensland trod in their foosteps. Large tracts of
pastoral land in the districts of Moreton Bay and the
Darling Downs were resumed by proclamation in 1866
Anth the object of setting them apart for agriculture,
and the first Land Act was passed, two years later,
making reserves for closer settlement to an extent of
thirty miles inland along the coast. The intention of
the Act was baffled in the same way as in New Zealand,
New South Wales, and Victoria. By unscrupulous
dummyism large estates were acquired under the Act,
and productive agricultural lands were reclaimed for
pastoral purposes. The legality of the procedure was
long contested in the courts of law, but historians admit
that the pastoral industry benefited by the aggrandise-
ment of estates. They were improved to a higher point
than smaller estates \\ould have been ; breeding was
perfected through the introduction of superior stock ;
fencing, the conservation of the \\ater-supply, and other
improvements were made ; and capitalists from the
southern colonies, equipped with modern methods and
taught by large experience, were induced to embark
on pastoral cultivation in Queensland.*

Sir George Bowen, the first Governor of Queensland,
guilelessly believed that tlie strife betAveen pastoral] st
and farmer, which raged before his eyes, had been
brought to an end by the early laws passed in Queens-
land, cutting off portions of the great pastoral tracts
in the interest of selectors. It was not brought to an
end then, and it has not been brought to an end since.
It will linger on till the last acre that is fit for cultivation
has been put under tlie plougli.

* i\ R. GoEDON, in The Quccnelander, August 9, 1910.

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 335

Thei« were collisions between the small cultivator
almost from the beginning. Writing in 1818, W. C.
Wentworth told how the large pastoralists, needing a
larger area for their stock, and fearing to trespass on the
small properties that, even then, were springing up in
the most remote and unpromising situations, had to
push further inwards and establish larger settlements.*
" Rolf Boldrewood," who is apt to see everything in
rose-colour, asserts, on the other hand, that there was
no "jostling or antagonism" between pastoralist and
farmer. Each had his own legitimate field. There were
no "disturbing forces." There were "no studied
schemes of resistance " on the part of the squatters or
of circumvention by them. On the part of the farmers
there were " no spiteful agrarian invasion, no black-
mailing, no sham improvements."

That large portions of the rich land occupied by squat-
ters in Western Victoria should be withdrawn from
pasture and placed under the plough was inevitable.
In all Australia no finer agricultural soil could be found.
To have kept sheep grazing where wheat could boun-
teously grow w^ould have been to fly in the face of
Providence. The pastoralists therefore assented — they
even co-operated — when the Government, from time to
time, surveyed the great runs, selected the tracts suited
for agriculture, and submitted them for sale. Tlie
pastoralists themselves bought up large portions of
their runs that were not suited for such a purpose.
Wlien the new farmers sat dowai beside them, they
quickly accommodated themselves to the changed situa-
tion. The farmers sold them flour and forage, and
sometimes supphed needed labour. In later days they
brought them hay and oats. The farmers reciprocated,
and bought milkers and steers from the squatters.
Between the two classes there was no unfriendly feeling.
There was no feud or litigation. Nor was there any
jealousy. Both met at agricultural shows and at races.

* Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of New
South Wales, i. 436.

336 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA

So far, the optimist Boldrewood. In New South Wales
the resentment has been deep and lasting. Speaking
in xlugust, 1910, the President of the Pastorahst Union
of Southern Riverina, ]\Ir, J. A. Campbell, said that
many graziers were forced " to buy a great deal of
purely grazing land that it A\"ould have paid them much
better to hold under lease." They had to buy land in
self-defence against the selectors. The}^ Avent into debt
to do this, and bought the land for more than it was
worth. Generally, he added, the settlement in small
areas in the Western Riverina has proved a failure.
The soil Avas not suited to agriculture in consequence
of "the uncertainty of the seasons and the smashing
droughts."

Lady Barker, in her Station Amusements, has drawn
a vivid little picture of the invasion of the great pastoral
holdings by the small selectors. Did a cockatoo or a
mining speculator cast a greedy eye on anj^ part of j'^our
run, he had only to go to the Crown Lands Office
and '' challenge your pre-emptive rights." You were
informed of the challenge and given six weeks to raise
the purchase-money. But it w as often hard for a run-
holder to raise some hundreds of pounds on short notice,
and few did. Hence, large runs in the best situations
were often cut up by small investors. People grew to
distrust almost any stranger seen riding about. That
was in New Zealand. In Queensland Mr. Grant asserts
that squatters often availed themselves of their pre-
emjjtive rights. Just so, when pastoralism begins to
decline, do younger sons leave the patriarchal home or
the station, and go out into the world. Many of them
become farmers, and thus initiate the agricultural phase.
Others remain connected with the pastoral stage by
founding its commercial branches in cities. Others still
adventure in industry or commerce. And still others
become legislators or take part in the work of adminis-
tration.

As in some ancient pastoral countries, after the no-
madic stage has ceased, so in AustraUa in later days,

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 337

the seceding members no longer necessarily depart to a
distance, or break off connection with the relatives they
have left behind them, or on the ancestral estate, but
settle in the neighbourhood. In later days, indeed, as
we are now witnessing in Australia, squatters are break-
ing up their great pastoral estates and cutting them
up into small pastoral farms, where their sons, it may
be, are placed as the tenant-farmers of their fathers on
their fathers' estates.

In Austraha one great agency played a potent part
in engineering the transition from pasture to agriculture.
The statesman, Wentworth, looking on the spectacle of
the gold-discoveries, with all his visionary eye could see
nought in the future but " ruin and disaster " as the
after-births of such a portent. He might weU dread its
advent. The whole class of squatters who saw their
runs deserted, their flocks and herds denuded of shep-
herds and stockmen, and the cost of all labour raised
to a prohibitive point, might loathe the discoveries and
condemn the encouragement given to them by the State.
They might as well have condemned the chemistry of
the earth which, by natural processes, engendered the
silver and gold that excited the cupidity of milhons.
" Before the gold " formed the great dividing line in
Australian history, the time-shed whence wealth was
to flow down on both sides, equally to the colonies that
possessed gold and to those that had none. The farther-
seeing Dr. Lang looked on it all with clearer eyes than
the great squatter, and saw in its immediate conse-
quences the downfall of the squatterocracy that had
ruled Austraha for so many years. It virtually con-
verted a pastoral into a pastoral-agricultural country.
The men who immigrated to dig gold remained to farm,
as in Victoria and New Zealand, or went back to the
colonies they came from and there farmed, as in South
Australia. Or the gold won sent their colonies ahead ;
public works were undertaken on a large scale ; and the
road-makers employed on them at 15 shillings per diem
took up farms, as in Otago of Southland in New Zealand.

22

338 THE PASTORAL AOE IN AUSTRALASIA

Nor did the squatters suffer without alleviation. The
farmers settled in their neighbourhood rendered them
special services, and received them in return. The price
of wool was raised through the greater demand for the
articles made out of it, as also through the manufactures
locally initiated.

How necessarily a pastoral district will be converted
into an agricultural district, according as it becomes
more remunerative to grow wheat than to breed cattle
or sheep, is shown by the fortunes of the second Land
Act in Queensland — the Button Act of 1884. The Act
was democratic in its intention, and its aim was to
break up the monopoly of the great squatters in the
interest of the small grazier and the agricultural settler.
The far-Northern and the far- Western divisions were
excluded from its scope as being on the outskirts of
settlement and still dedicated to pasture ; only the
more advanced Eastern and Southern divisions came
under its operation. In them the *' runs " were divided
by special commissioners into two equal parts. One of
these was " resumed " by the Government with the
object of setting it apart for agricultural settlement or
smaller pastoral occupation. The other was leased to
the actual runholder or Crown tenant for a period of
fifteen years, if it was situated in the unsettled districts,
or for ten years, if it lay within the more settled dis-
tricts. The tenant of the pastoral portion had, more-
over, the option of renting the resumed portion till the
advent of the free selector or farmer. As has been said,
it was optional ^vith the C^o^vn tenants in certain parts
of the Colony to bring their runs under the operation
of the Act. They showed no reluctance to do so. On
the contrary, we are told, the provision for breaking
up the runs was " all but universally accepted." * In
aU the Australasian colonies pastoralists have been
accused, sometimes with justice, of opposing the con-
version of pastoral into agricultural land ; here we find

* P. R. Gordon (who livod through the period), in the Queens-
lander, August 7, 1909, p. 12.

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 339

them facilitating the process. As a result, the lease-
holders or runholders retired to the distant North, driven
ever further away by the advance of the freeholders.
By 1891 the pastoral estates in Southern Queensland
were chiefly freehold. In Northern Queensland and the
watersheds of the Gulf of Carpentaria they were chiefly
leasehold.*

The passage from pasture to agriculture is a necessary
transition. Whenever it becomes more lucrative to grow
grain than to grow grass, the transition will necessarily
be made. Writers of the old individuahst school will
ask : why not wait ? To all appearance these eager
and pushing communities cannot afford to wait. Their
blood is on fire with the passion for wealth. All around
them are peoples striving to pass one another in the
mad race. The guerdon is not opulence alone. It is
the acquisition of all the comforts and luxuries, all the
potencies or capacities, that modern civilisation can
supply or satisfy. The smallest and youngest of these
colonies want railways and steamers, telegraphs and
telephones, schools cind churches, concert-rooms and
theatres, and these they cannot have unless they have
a growing population, which will not come without the
existence of industries and lands to occupy. On the
other hand, the great landowners are reluctant to break
up their princely domains. Their pride, their self-
consequence, their social importance, and their ambition
to rank with the magnates of Old England forbid them
to part with the broad acres that are the bases of their
state. " I pay property-tax to the tune of £10,000 a
year," complained one of the very lordly squatters of
New Zealand, in the days when the property-tax had
not yet been supplanted by the land-tax. " Happy
man ! " said a retired army-oflBcer. Good and upright
man though he was, our squatter yet did not feel quite
" happy." The previous year the Government of the
Colony had endeavoured to take from him by Act of
Parliament a huge cantle of his far-stretching estates,
♦ Satge, Journal, etc., pp. 357-8.

340 TBE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTtlALASlA

and he knew that his monopol}^ was doomed. Everj'
landholder in New Zealand was willing to sell out, said
a New Zealand squatter in 1884, could he do so on bis
own terms. As a matter of fact a large number of
pastoral estates were freely surrendered to the New
Zealand Government from 1893 onwards, but there
came a time, perhaps ten or t^^elve years later, when
the squatters stood out against the Government valua-
tion, and refused to sell at the price assessed by boards
of valuators, or, in some cases, to sell at all. Then
entered the element of compulsion — what is sometimes
called, confiscation — or, somewhat later, the thumb-
screw of a smashing land-tax.

The decline or the transformation of the squatter
has not even now been arrested. Not only has the
policy of the various Australasian Governments in
encouraging or providing for closer settlement necessarily
involved the breaking up of the larger estates. The
conception of the class of estates suited for breaking
up has been expanded. Land that, little more than
ten years ago, was reckoned to be sheep-country
because it was distant from a market, now ranks as
possibly agricultural land, suitable for small farms,
because lines of railway have been carried into the
interior, or because the new system of agriculture
imported from Cahfornia or others of the Western
States, and known as dry farming, has made the con-
version of pastures into wheat-fields practicable. A
panorama of golden grain now waves where lately there
were thousands of sheep in their pastures.

Disintegration is now rapidly proceeding. Every
year settlement encroaches on the old runs. The
harvester drones and the plough furrows where stock
horses once galloped. Yet there is no diminution of
the number of sheep. The combined farms into which
a grazing run has been cut up yield as many sheep as
their predecessor station held. The old graziers are
co-operating with the movement. Many of them,
especially on tho Rivcrina, have broken up the whole

THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 341

or portions of their runs into farms, while others,
extending a practice that has for a good many years
been used, are opening large areas for share-farmers.

Yet the process has not been free from tragedy.
Many of the squatters have lost their runs through mis-
fortune. They could not effect the transformation,
because the railway had not yet come near them.
Bad seasons, or a fall in the price of wool, or epidemics
in their stock, launched them into financial embarrass-
ment. The estate fell into the hands of the mortgage
companies. The family was broken up and ruined.
Now the trains run within half a mile of the station,
which is worth £75,000. But it is too late.*

The knell of the squatter is not necessarily the knell
of the pastoral age. Very strangely, the small farmer
who was given his farm to place it under crop, says Mr.
T. K. Dow, " has been so tempted by the attactiveness
of grazing pursuits . , . that wheat-growing has
engaged only a small share of his attention." If he
acquires agricultural land, says the same authority,
"it is to keep stock on an additional piece of land in
order to avoid the necessity of putting so much of the
farm under cultivation." If he begins by growing
wheat, it is in order to gain money enough to launch
out into stock-raising. Yet it was to encourage and
promote agriculture that facihties were granted for
the acquisition of pastoral lands, and Sir John Robert-
son declared in 1855 that he derived far more profit
from his investments in agriculture than from an
" infinitely greater " capital invested in pastoral pursuits.
He omitted to add that he had invested most of his
pastoralist capital in runs near the Gulf of Carpentaria,
which was prematurely settled and had to be in good
part abandoned.

A similar phase has lately been observed in New

Zealand. There many of the great runs have been

broken up and cut up into small farms. But it is

grazing farms that have taken the place of the great

* Sydney Herald, November 19, 1910,^

342 THE PASTORAL AOE IN AUSTRALASIA

pastoral estates. The high pnce of wool and the
deficiency of labour have made such farms still more
profitable than agricultural farms. It stands to reason
that grazing is most successfully carried on on a large
scale. But there are times when it is profitably con-
ducted on a small scale.

In all pastoral countries the transition to agriculture
is on foot, and sometimes with curious similarities.
The New Zealand " cocky," or cockatoo, has his homo-
logue in the American " nester." The nester nestles
on a small plot of land adjoining a ranch, as the " cocka-
too " perches on a small farm cut out of a run. To the
incurable grievance of their mere co-existence the
nesters, like some of the Austrahan cockatoos, add the
wrong of steahng cattle from the ranch. The tran-
sition obviously has its questionable sides. Yet the
free-selector is not seldom, as Mrs. Campbell Praed
shows, the equal of the runholder and an acquisition
to the local community. In any case he is necessary.
If people are to be brought together and no longer live
in isolation ; if a society is to be created in place of
the inorganic union of the pastoral stage ; if social life
and the conditions of existence are to be expanded and
improved, the advent of the agi'icultural farmer is
indeed inevitable. And those who facihtate that advent
may be truly described as makers of Australasia.

NOTES

CHAPTER II

PASTOBALIST SYSTEMS

Apparently, no systematic history of the pastoral state exists
though the materials for such a work abound. Among the
more compendious treatises may be named, Professor David
Duncan's volumes contributed to Herbert Spencer's Descriptive
Sociology, and Dr. Scheppig's Hebrews and Phenicians in the
same series. Dr. J. G. Frazer's work, Exogamy and Totemism,
contains descriptions of many pastoral peoples, especially the
Todas and the Gollas, the latter " the great pastoral caste of
the Telegu people." The Todas despise agriculture, while the
Gollas acquire lands and engage in farming. Among such
African peoples as the Herero, the Bechuanas, the Nandi, the
Baganda, the Banyoro, the Bahima, etc., the hunting, the
nomadic pastoral, the settled pastoral, and the agricultural
stages shade into one another. There are some pregnant re-
marks in John Millar's Origin of Ranks, ch. iii.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST QBEAT PASTOBALIST

John McArthur was born at Plymouth, in Devonshire, but he
was of Highland-Scottish origin, and he is represented as having
descended from the founder of the clan Campbell. Mr. Burfitt,
in the Wool Industry of Australia seeks to vindicate for McArthur
a monopoly of the merit of fovinding the industry at the Anti-
podes. He cites approvingly an article from the Sydney Morning
Herald, where it is contended that Samuel Marsden bred rather
for immediate profit than for prospective advantage. While
he augmented the value of pure-bred, fine-wool sheep, he used
them to improve the fleece of other breeds. With McArthur,
on the other hand, the production of fine Spanish merino wool

343

344 NOTES

was an ideal, and the breeding of sheep a passion. The per-
fecting of the merino was his objective. The small lot MoArthur
purchased at the sale at Kew of King George the Third's merinos
was not of the best quality. It was of a different type from
the lot purchased at the Cape. The English merinos were of
the Negretti type, and derived their name from Count Negretti.
There is an account of the sale of the King's merinos in Burfitt,
pp. 37-41.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PASTOKALIST AND THE CONVICT

The figures stating the proportion in the text of convicts to
free evidently need sifting, and perhaps the exact number of
convicts transported is unattainable. In ten years (1834-43),
saj's Rusden, " 39,844 deep-dyed offenders were transported
to Australia" {History of Aust}-alia, first ed., ii. 134). After
Romilly had purged the English criminal law the convicts must
have been of a thoroughly criminal type.

CHAPTER XV

THE PASTOKALIST AND THE NATIVES

All other causes — abduction of gins, punishment for theft of
sheep or mutilation of cattle or sheep — were incidental. The
deep, ever-acting, irremovable cause of the persistent enmity
of the blacks was, everywhere and always, the advance of settle-
ment, with the ine\'itable consequence that the tribes in occupa-
tion were either driven away or destroyed. It is idle to say
that the natives had no rights of property in the soil they did
not cultivate. Writing in 1832, Mr. Scott Nind afifirms that
the blacks " are very jealous as to encroachments on their
property, and the land is divided into districts, which are the
property of families and individuals." So strong is the practice
of inheritance in the female line that sons " have a right to hunt
in the country from which their mother was brought " {Journal
of Royal Geographical Society, i. 44). According to another
authority, Dr. Lang, they had tribal, family, and individual
rights. The territory of each tribe is subdivided among the
different families of which it consists, " and the proprietor of
any particular subdivision has the exclusive right to direct when
it shall be hunted over, or the grass burned, or the wild animals
destroyed." * The place-name mentioned at the birth of the
child is " the child's own countrj', its true home, where in future

* Lano, Queer^tland, p. 336.

NOTES S45

it will have the right to roam and hunt." * The latest and most
authorised inquirers into the laws and customs of the Australian
blacks, Messrs. Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, state that " every
local group is regarded as owning collectively the locality in
which lies its Ematulunga.''^ The boundaries of the locality,
they add, are well-known, and if its actual occupants die out,
a neighbouring group may enter in and possess, provided they
belong to the same ' class.' With the advent of the white man,
the food-supply of the black is restricted, for the white man
hunts and kills his kangaroos and emus. " In many cases he is
warned off water-holes which are the centres of his best hunting-
grounds, and to which he has been accustomed to resort during
the performance of his sacred ceremonies."!

CHAPTER XXXII

THE BREEDEE

An account of the origin of Australian breeds is given in
Hawkesworth's Australian Sheep and Wool.

* Frazek, Totemism and Exogamy, i. 538.
■j" Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 60.

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DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY— ENGLISH. Classified
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DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY— FRENCH. Classified
by Herbert Spencer. London, 188L

THE LITERATURE RELATING TO NEW ZEA-
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N.Z. Government, Wellington, 1889.

HERBERT SPENCER: AN ESTIMATE AND A
REVIEW. By JosiAH Royce. Together with a
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New York, 1904.

SIR GEORGE GREY: AN HISTORICAL BIOG-
RAPHY. Whitcombe & Tombs, 1909. 12/6 net.

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By David Collins. Edited, with an Introduction and
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THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. Ten articles.
The Popidar Science Monthly, 1898-9 ; Macmillan's
Magazine, 1903; and The American Journal of
Sociology, 1905.

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Knoioledge, 1902-4; and The American Journal of
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