Atlas Page 94
By Sir T. Cockburn-Campbell

The first division, conveniently placed in the centre of which lies the capital of the colony, is as yet the most important. Until some twenty-five years ago settlement was exclusively confined to this little strip of the wide West Australian territory, while even at the present day the population resident outside it is in number but as one to twenty of those resident within. Only in this division, also, is any cultivation carried on. How the limits within which the husbandman can operate with profit may be extended by farther advance in the art of irrigation the future alone can show. At present in no other portion of the colony do, conditions of soil and rainfall enable cereals and other products of temperate climes to be successfully grown. Speaking generally, this tract of country may be described as one vast forest, more or less dense in some parts, more or less open in others, with occasional plains to vary the monotony In the south, on the inferior soils and the innumerable ironstone and gravelly ridges, jarrah is the prevailing timber, gum-trees, white, blue, and yellow, also abounding with the giant karri in the neighbourhood of the Leeuwin. Better soils occasionally sustain the red gum, while the grassy country is a favourite of the "raspberry jam," manna-gum, wattle, and other shrubs of similar kind. Ti-trees fringe the lakes and river-pools, and the shea-oak crowns at times the sandy knolls above the latter. Grass-trees —locally known as "blackboys" —are also met with in abundance, and in places, notably on the Blackwood, have taken possession of the country covering the hills with a dense growth of short black stems and feathery fronds. Throughout the areas below the Murchison, nature has clothed by far the larger part of the soil-surface with various shrubs and plants as a substitute for grass. Many of them provide food for stock, but some are comparatively useless. In the dense forests this "scrub feed" is often succulent and good. On the sand plains it is less nutritious; but here, as a compensation, wild flowers in their season spread masses of variegated colour over the cold grey soil, paled in midsummer by the fire-red glories of the "cabbage-tree." This vast sea of wood and undergrowth is broken, as it were, by islands of grass, —yellow oases in a vast desert of dark green.

These grass lands in the Champion Bay, district are of some extent, as well as on the Irwin, the Victoria Plains, the valley of the Avon, the Williams, Kojonup, and Eticup. About these localities stretches of fair park-like country may frequently be met with, covered with waving silver-grass, pale green in spring-time, but rapidly bleached by the warming still. Elsewhere, also, grass frequently carpets the riverbanks and stray deposits of alluvial soil in creeks and hollows. Stretches of grass, as opposed to the shrubby or weedy undergrowth which West Australians describe as "scrub," may indeed be discovered here and there throughout the south western districts. But "scrub" is the more common covering of the soil, grass the less common. Its patchiness is the great drawback of this portion of the colony; patches of grass and patches of sand, patches of light forest and patches of thick forest are everywhere intermingled. Arable land is seldom found in areas of any great extent, capable of supporting a large and closely settled population. Outside the localities already mentioned, and some portions of the Blackwood district, good soil is scattered here and there in creeks, pockets, slopes, and flats of comparatively small capacity. Settlement, therefore, is also scattered, and free selection is the only principle on which it call successfully proceed. On the Greenough Flats, near Geraldton, about Gingin, on the Swan, around the eastern district townships, and in a few other localities farther south, there are farmers grouped in villages or with contiguous holdings. But elsewhere, as a rule, the agriculturalists are dotted about the country in isolated spots, often occupying leased lands around their farms and combining stock-keeping on a small scale with purely agricultural pursuits. Settlement is closest on the lightly timbered "jam" country, a belt of which runs almost continuously north and south at the back of the coastal ranges. On this belt much of the soil is good, though generally shallow, and clearing is easy and comparatively inexpensive. Far better land may be had on the Blackwood and in the Karri forests, but the timber is heavy, and the grass trees thick in places, and preparation for the plough requires arduous labour, and considerable expenditure of money. The climate of this division of the colony is essentially pleasant and health-giving. In the Victorian and Irwin districts the summer temperature is somewhat high, but farther south the heat is seldom exhaustingly oppressive, and although the seasons are often dry, a fair amount of moisture may generally be expected, and serious droughts are almost unknown. Southwest Australia can never hope to compete with any of the world’s great granaries in the growth of cereals; clearing the ground requires too much capital, the rainfall in the best corn districts is not of the requisite certainty, nor can farming be carried on upon a sufficiently large scale. The country, on the other hand is essentially adapted for South European culture, and for the growth of all fruits of a temperate clime. The vine flourishes as it does nowhere else, yielding fruit in rich abundance and of splendid flavour even in some of the poorest looking soils. The olive-tree also finds in the colony a most congenial home, and the orange bears profusely in the sand gardens of the Swan, the moist bottoms of Gingin and of Ellendale, and wherever, in fact, its cultivation has been tried under suitable conditions. Fruit of every kind grows in profusion; and wine, oil, raisins, oranges, dried apples, peaches, plums, and garden products generally, preserved and prepared, should largely swell the West Australian exports of the future. Hitherto there has been little trade worth speaking of in these commodities. Wine, for sale, is made to a small extent at some of the vineyards on the Swan, at Pinjarrah, and on the Blackwood.

But as a rule the grapes and other fruits, when grown at all, are grown by the settlers for the use of their own households only, and even in the capital are both scarce and dear. Stock thrives fairly well in these south western districts, but the poison plants and the native dogs are enemies which do much to restrict its increase. The poison, of which that known as the "York Road" is the most deadly, is oftenest met with on the better kinds of country, where it is common on the tops of the hills and the outskirts of the pastures. It is most dangerous after bush-fires, when springing up juicy and tender amongst the new green feed. On the inferior scrub country poison is seldom met with to any large extent; but here native dogs play havoc with the sheep, and are difficult to get rid of, owing to the vast untenanted breeding-grounds they unfortunately possess. To sheep breeding the attention of the south western farmers is chiefly devoted. Generally, however, their operations are on a comparatively small scale. Fencing until quite recently has seldom been resorted to, chiefly from want of capital, and partly also owing to the native-dog pest, and to the fact that runs are rarely held in compact and convenient blocks. The sheep-farmer as a rule picks areas of a few thousand acres here and there, where he finds the best available country with requisite supplies of water, and travels his sheep from one leasehold to another as conditions of feed necessitate. Now, however, some of the larger squatters are commencing to fence, and improving the quality of their stock by the importation of stud animals of a superior kind, and gradually are basing their operations more upon the models offered them by pastoral tenants in the eastern colonies. Horse stock thrives well, but is not bred to any large extent; wild horses, however, are numerous in some of the scrubby lands. Cattle are chiefly reared about the Blackwood, the Warren, and the Vasse, where dairying to a small extent is carried on. On the whole the pastoral prospects of the south western portions of the colony are fairly good, but capital is much required for employment in fencing, ring-barking, water conserving, and other means of developing the resources of the land, and of increasing its stock-carrying capabilities.

THE second division of the colony, of which a general description has already been given, includes the country from the Murchison to the De Grey, with the towns of Roebourne, Cossack, and Carnarvon. Drained and watered by the Murchison, the Gascoyne, the Lyons, the Minilya, the Ashburton, the Fortescue, the Yule, the De Grey, the Oakover, with their tributaries, and by many other smaller rivers, this large extent of territory, tropical and semi-tropical, contains magnificent pasture-lands of varied character capable of sustaining stock in countless numbers. The climate is hot, but dry and healthy. There is not, as on the corresponding eastern seaboard, a fever-breeding belt between coast and range. The rivers take their rise in the far interior. But if these Nor’-west areas gain thus in healthiness they lose in rainfall, and except in small patches by utilising springs or raising water from river-pools, the settlers have been able to irrigate, attempts at cultivation have not been successful. On the Murchison and Roebourne plains, and on all the rivers, there are tracts of land which, with sufficient moisture, should under ordinary conditions yield cereals and other products in rich abundance, but the irregularity of the rains and general dryness of the climate has hitherto been considered a barrier to the establishment of agricultural industries in this portion of the colony. It is further asserted that the soil, about the Murchison and Gascoyne, impregnated with chemical ingredients which would unfit it for cultivation, even were other conditions favourable. This statement, however, can scarcely be said to be based upon irrefutable evidence. Again, in the Roebourne district, dryness alone does not prohibit cultivation, the "willy-willies" doing their part towards discouraging the attempt.

These dreadful hurricane storms would destroy any standing crops, sweeping them away with the first fierce blast. Indications of the approach of the "willy-willies" are generally given in time to make some preparation for them. The pearling boats run for the creeks, or put out to sea if no such shelter should be within reach, while on land the settlers make everything secure and protect themselves from the furious tempest to the best of their ability. Some notion of the force of these winds may be gathered from the fact that at Cossack the windows of the houses have, after a "willy-willy," been found to be frosted with sand almost as perfect as if a glazier had done the work, the fine particles being driven into and firmly embedded in the glass. Much destruction of property —houses blown down on land and small stock killed and injured, with wrecks at sea and more or less loss of human life —is often the result of these visitations. Fortunately, "willy-willies" of serious severity are not of annual occurrence; every year or two, however, a disaster may be expected. The force of these storms seems to be chiefly felt between the Nor’-west Cape and Roebuck Bay, south and north of which points their destructive power is not much apprehended. Enough, however, is not yet known of Kimberley to proclaim its immunity from "willy-willies"; and as traces of the fearful tidal waves with which these hurricanes are occasionally accompanied have been seen as far south as Shark’s Bay, it cannot positively be said that they confine their destructive activity to the Roebourne coast.

The "willy-willy" district is the oldest settled portion of the Nor’-west country. Describing this area in 1872, about ten years after its first occupation, Governor Weld spoke of it as "interesting from its singularity. Never rising into mountains, and only wooded sparsely and on the river banks, it in places nevertheless almost verges on the picturesque. . . . Looking upon the country geologically it at once becomes evident that it is only now in the course of that process of transformation which will fully prepare it for the occupation of man. Piled-up masses of rock, split and rent by the action of tropical suns and showers, rich with red, purple, orange, and black lines, burnt in by the sun or the action of old volcanic fires, are resolved by degrees into heaps or hills of broken stones of all shapes and sizes; they again are further reduced by the same process to shingle or gravel, then to the fine red dust, which is caught by the tufty spinnifex and forms plains and valleys of rich soil, only wanting an admixture of decayed vegetable matter and irrigation to be ready to grow the most lavish wealth of tropical produce." Such fertilised soils, Sir Frederick goes on to say, are already not infrequent, some plains over which he travelled being of a deep bright-red character, quickly covered after rains with wild yams and melons, convolvuli, and fine and luxuriant grasses. The Roebourne country has steadily grown in estimation for stockbreeding purposes. At one time threatened with abandonment, it has proved a good provider for those who had faith in it, and nowhere else in Western Australia have pastoral pursuits proved more remunerative. Fencing has been largely resorted to by the Roebourne settlers and many of their stations are well-equipped, well-managed, and equal to high-class establishments in the eastern colonies. Sheep is the stock principally bred, but cattle are kept to some extent, and some horses are reared to meet the demand of the Indian market, but not for the present in any very large numbers.

On the Ashburton, Minilya, and Gascoyne, south of the Roebourne district proper, there is now a considerable amount of pastoral settlement. Few of the stations, however, have been established for any length of time, the past dozen years having witnessed most of the pioneering on these rivers, and comparatively little has been done as yet towards fencing and effecting permanent improvement. Shepherding and a great part of the station work is in the hands of natives, who were more troublesome on these rivers during the early period of settlement than in any other portion of the colony. On the Ashburton, indeed, they proved so hostile that after a first ineffectual attempt to cope with them they were, for a time, left masters of the situation. Perseverance, however, with kindness and firmness, eventually won these savages, and they are now good and useful servants where they have not lost their unsophisticated character by contact with the policeman and the law courts. The Upper Murchison, contiguous to the Gascoyne, is fast becoming the show district of the colony. A dozen years ago a young West Australian, Mr. E. H. Wittenoom, searching for fresh pastures, rode through this country which lies some two hundred miles to the eastward of Shark’s Bay. He was, in all probability, the first white man seen on the vast salt-bush plains he then discovered, now all occupied by flourishing stations. Mr. Wittenoom and his brother Frank, the Upper Murchison pioneers, were soon followed by other West Australians and by enterprising young Englishmen and Victorians —amongst them the brothers Lacey and the brothers Darlot —who are stocking up the country, fencing, well-sinking, and establishing prosperous pastoral settlement. The Murchison country, situated outside the poison belt, is of magnificent quality for stock, as is also the whole of the "Nor’-west." There is scarcely a plant or shrub covering the rich soil which sheep or large stock will not greedily devour, and on which they will not thrive. Salt-bush is, however, the main stand-by of the squatters, and of this there is ample growth on the broad plains. Of water also there is a perennial store close beneath the surface, which the wells tap at a shallow depth. The Murchison squatters are chiefly grouped between the Sandford branch of the river and Mount Hale; but there is room for large expansion of pastoral settlement, for the good country extends into the far interior, where, on the head-waters of the Murchison, Ashburton, and Gascoyne, at the point where those rivers separate, fine pastures have been found watered by lakes and springs.

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