AUS-VIC-GIPPSLAND Mailing List
Australia, and the Comparative Merits of Some Of Her
Provinces.
(From a Correspondent)
From a newspaper cutting of an article in the London Morning
Post,
Saturday, 27 August 1842
Transcribed by Geoffrey Woollard, Cambridgeshire, England.
We have been favoured with the perusal of a letter written by a gentleman who has lately traversed some of this now debatable ground, on the various comparative advantages and demerits of the Sydney, Port Phillip, and Gipps’ Land districts, with a glance at Moreton Bay; and as information, unbiased, disinterested, and useful on the subject of the Australian colonies is unfortunately as rare as the converse has been but too overwhelmingly abundant, we think that we cannot do better than place the following extract before such of our readers as may find an interest in these modern leviathans of the antipodes: -
Sydney, March 30, 1842.
The Sydney district, or New South Wales proper, comprises, as is generally known, but nineteen counties. Viewing it as a grain growing country, I may safely aver, that, with the exception of Illawarra, and the alluvial soils of the Hunter and Hawkesbury rivers, there is little land where grain can be raised with any certainty except that of loss. Owing to the warmth of the Sydney climate, wheat raised there is coarse, thick-skinned, and deficient both in quality and quantity; and when the rate of wages is considered, the great outlay to clear land so heavily timbered, and the frequent and withering droughts, the produce per acre is far too insignificant to cover these heavy outgoings. Whether these natural drawbacks are in themselves sufficient to smamp the energies and exertions of a numerous body of colonists I will not take upon me to determine; but it can no longer be disputed that the Hunter’s River settlers are now in a state of insolvency and ruin.
So much for the condition of the agricultural interest in the most favoured localities of New South Wales. Shall we find, and I beg you mark the term, the land owning grazier in a better position? Certainly not; he has become a large purchaser of tracts, which, owing the arid character of the climate, rather than to any inherent badness of the soil, are absolutely unfitted for any but pastoral purposes, and this, at an average cost of from twelve to fifteen shillings per acre. Now, when it is borne in mind that three acres of such land are required to feed one sheep throughout the year, it seems tolerably and self-evident, that, at the usual rate of colonial interest (ten per cent), this unfortunate landowner and flock master is paying, besides the shepherd’s wages and rations, six shillings a-year for what? The maintenance, the simple "ingesta" of each sheep, from who back he gets a return, perhaps, three shillings’ worth of wool - the thing is monstrous, but the vanity of being considered a landed proprietor, coupled with the want of forethought so conspicuous in this class of men, daily proves the ruin of many, added to which the purchases are mostly effected on the fearful system of credit.
Last, not least, in the catalogue of these Sydney incurables, we come to the squatters, or occupiers of Crown land lying beyond the limits of the nineteen counties. The wise officials at home, struck no doubt by the quaintness of the name, and ingeniously profiting from their gleanings from the pages of a Yankee novelist, have compared these gentlemen in a recent most luminous despatch, to the backwoodsmen of America, styling them "Pioneers of civilisation," and "these people," as if they were a set of half savages and woodcutters, whilst, in reality, they are both by birth and education the real aristocracy of the colony. The only fault of "these people" is, that they spend too much of their time in Sydney, dine too often at the club or the mess, ride too many races and steeplechases, drive tandem too much, drink too much champagne, and consequently neglect their more important affairs. However, "revenons a nos mondons," a phrase, by-the-bye, peculiarly apropos in this sheepish country, which might be advantageously stuck up over every chimney-piece in Sydney - it might strike the conscience of those who ought to feel that their time should be differently occupied. Our squatter, then, or settler, as he is here indifferently styled - the latter term I presume to have been waggishly given him by his Sydney agent, with whom he makes it a rule to settle as seldom as possible - pays, besides some trifling headmoney, 10 l. per annum to her Majesty for permission to range over an extent of country which was originally limited only by the requirements of his flocks and herds. This squatter is, or rather might have been, the prosperous man, so long as wool maintained a fair price; the distance of the port where he was compelled to carry it for shipment, and from whence he had to draw his supplies, was comparatively nothing. So long as he could find purchasers for the surplus produce of his stock at a high price, the enormous wages that he paid to his men was of no importance. He had then, moreover, plenty of convict labour at almost a nominal cost. This state of prosperity is now to be numbered with the things that have been. Champagne corks have ceased to fly - wool has fallen in price - real capitalists have become alarmed, and buttoned up their pockets - bankers will no longer discount - the man of straw, the fictitious capitalist, to whom these vile bankers had been looking only for their own immediate and enormous profits on discounts, utterly reckless of the ultimate consequences to the colony, and whom they had most wickedly bolstered up and encouraged by every means in their power - this man can no longer make his wild purchases and speculations, and his alarm and exaggerated fears deter the newly-arrived capitalist from affecting those cheap and really favourable purchases now to be so advantageously made. Wheel is thus locked between wheel, and no one can tell where the "Schmeere Gelt" is to come from that will set them all in motion again.
This is certainly a most deplorable state of affairs; but with respect to the younger Australian colonies, I think the evil is only temporary; they have youth and stamina on their side, and when once the present difficulties are surmounted, it is only fair to expect that will experience the same current of prosperity as has characterised the older settlements.
With the Sydney district the case is different, there exist two fatal bars to her future prosperity; one, the abolition of the assignment system, which, while it lasted, was equivalent to an annual bounty or gift of 600,000 l. in the shape of labour, thus enabling the inferior soil and arid atmosphere of New South Wales to compete successfully with the richer lands and moister climate of Van Dieman’s Land and Port Phillip; the other, and the still more fatal, because irremediable, drawback is the fact, that nearly all the available land of this part of the colony is now taken up and fully occupied, indeed overstocked, and there are no longer any fresh stations or grazing grounds which can, as it is here termed, be "given in" by the would-be disposer of his surplus produce, and without which such produce is generally quite unsaleable.
So much for New South Wales. Let us next consider that part of Australia Felix of which Port Phillip may be considered the nucleus. This district has become pretty extensively known, and is beginning now to as justly appreciated as it was once overrated; and when we compare its luxuriant, lightly-timbered, and park-like scenery with the dense monotonous and worthless forest, the product of the sandy regions around Sydney desolate and even appalling. In its silence and sterility, we can scarcely wonder that at first it should, by comparison, have been so over estimated. When Australia Felix was at length thrown open to the accumulating flocks and herds of the elder colonist, it proved to him for a time an "El Dorada." Capitalists from England poured in and bought largely the woolly treasures, thus realizing the ancient fable of the golden fleece, their fortunate owners becoming all at once immensely rich.
As a pastoral country this district of Port Phillip can scarcely be excelled; but as an agricultural and grain growing province, it was soon found that though immeasurably superior to her elder sister, Port Phillip had still to contend with two serious evils, which experienced colonists are alone capable of fully appreciating.
These are, first, the extreme prevalence of the hot winds occurring about the time the wheat is in blossom, and but too frequently in a day blasting the hopes, the labour, and the expectations of many months - a serious liability - which the newly arrived immigrant scarcely deigns to consider; and, secondly, the physical impossibility that a country so wanting in that first necessity of life, fresh water, can ever become densely populated, or eve extensively cultivated. The great deficiency or running, or even stagnant fresh water, is a peculiar and striking characteristic of the Port Phillip district, and is a fact very much overlooked or misapprehended at home. Indeed, few people, once fairly committed to a locality, are willing to make known its disadvantages; and thus has this very important deficiency been stifled and concealed. Could fresh water be procured, even at the expense of sinking wells, the objection would be in some degree removed; but, as far as experience goes, water, even when obtained, which is rare, unfortunately is not simply brackish, but as fairly salt as the briny ocean, and frequently holding alum in solution. These, then are the fatal objections which, however carefully concealed for a time, must eventually come to light, and put a check to that marvellous prosperity which has hitherto so strikingly existed at Port Phillip.
Moreton Bay I have not visited; but from frequent intercourse with many settlers in that locality, I should say, compared with the old districts, it appears to offer some inducements at least to those who can bear an all but tropical sun, 110 degrees in the shade being the average summer heat. There is rich land near the Bay fitted for the culture of tropical productions, such as sugar can, yams, bananas, &c.; probably coffee, cotton, and other valuable plants might be there raised to perfection, if the settlers had but the one thing needful - cheap labour. There is coal and limestone near the coast. Sheep do well on the elevated table land of the interior, where the heat is not so oppressive; but the extent of available grazing land, owing to the want of water, is extremely limited.
We now arrive at the last, and by far the most important district, which has yet been discovered in New Holland - I mean Gipps’ Land. The only unfortunate thing about it is its name. This noble territory extends from Cape Howe to Corner Inlet, and runs back nearly 100 miles to the Australian Alps. The soil is for the most part a chocolate loam, of an alluvial character, entirely free from even the smallest stones, gently undulating, lightly timbered, fertile to excess, yet sound enough for sheep. It is watered by many large and deep rivers, with numerous smaller streams, which, having their sources in the lofty Alps, and being fed by the never failing moisture of dissolving snows, are not, as is the too often the case in other parts of Australia, mere beds of shingle, showing the occasional rush of devastating torrents. In the possession of this very important feature, a central spine, or back-bone, of stupendous elevation, Gipps’ Land, it will be observed, differs most essentially and remarkably from every other known portion of New Holland, where, in general, nature seems to have stopped prematurely short in the laborious process of up-heaval, and where the want of ranges of sufficient elevation to precipitate moisture, has cursed the country with eternal barrenness.
Count Streleskey’s observations make the altitude of Gipps’ Land chain vary between eight and ten thousand feet, snow lying on the summits during summer, while in no other part of this vast continent is there any known mountain range of one-half the height. These mountains are also, from their great elevations, quite near enough the coast to precipitate the moisture from the ocean, yet sufficiently removed to attract and draw its vapours over an extensive line of fruitful country. There is yet another, and by no means the least advantage, which the noble mountain crescent gives to the fair and wide-spread plains, that lie, as it were, sheltered in its majestic bosom and half encircled in its stupendous arms, it guards them thoroughly and effectually from the withering hot winds that, sweeping from the vast interior wilds, is as baneful as the simoon of the Arabian desert.
The numerous fine rivers from the mountains, after crossing through, and of course well watering, the extensive alluvial plains before alluded to, empty themselves into a noble fresh water lake, about thirty miles long by about ten miles wide. This fine expanse of water, with its many tributary streams, some of them navigable for miles, is fortunately in the centre of the most valuable land, and will be a means of conveying produce to within fifteen or twenty miles of Port Albert, or as it is more often, but erroneously, called, Corner Inlet, which harbour, though inferior to that of Sydney or Hobart Town, is second to none other in this part of Australia, Port Phillip not excepted. Taking into consideration all three elements of future greatness and prosperity, and speaking in a spirit of the strictest and most sober truth, I can safely affirm that there has not yet been discovered any portion of Australia so calculated to ensure a certain and large profit to the industrious agriculturist of moderate capital as Gipps’ Land, and one, at the same time, so congenial in climate and so peculiarly suited to habits and feelings of Englishmen.
The plains, by which I mean land naturally clear of timber, are numerous, yet not too extensive, well sheltered by the many river belts of noble trees, said by those who are judges of colonial timber, to be of the most valuable description for splitting and sawing, and to use the words of an old settler, who has seen all parts of the colony, "there are tens of thousands of acres in which a ploughshare might be driven for miles through the finest vegetable mould the world ever saw, without the possibility of striking against a stick or a stone." Such is Gipps’ Land, and what a country to have lain so long undiscovered, and unproductive to man! This tardy discovery is the more extraordinary, when we consider its central position, between the ports of Sydney, Hobart Town, Launceston, and Port Phillip; and it certainly does not add much to the credit of the late Home Government, that the interior of this valuable province should have been first explored by a wandering foreigner, and its harbour discovered and made available by the enterprise, and at the expense of a few stirring Port Phillipians, (who, by the bye, as a reward and as an incentive to future exertion) have since been ousted from the land they honestly bought and paid for in the neighbourhood of Port Albert.
In a week or two I am off by sea to Port Albert with supplies, to meet the overland expedition, which I some time ago dispatched with seven thousand sheep, and when I get settled in this Land of Canaan I will write again.’
Comments by Geoffrey Woollard
Dr. George WITT and his brother-in-law, Dr. George Dixon HEDLEY, both settled in Australia around about 1849, the former at Sydney, the latter in Gippsland. I have recently acquired a photo-copied scrapbook kept by Dr. WITT up to the time he left for Australia, and in it is this newspaper cutting from the London Morning Post dated 27 August 1842 containing contemporary observations on both the Sydney area and "Gipps' Land".
Comment by Linda Barraclough
The idenity of the "Correspondent" is not known at this stage but, given the time the letter would take to reach London, it MAY be W.A. Brodribb, a member of the Gippsland Company and later author of Recollections of an Australian Squatter.
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