WOOL.
Whatever interests may for the moment be uppermost in the thoughts and
words of Australian legislators and speculators, wool still remains
and for many years will remain the staple produce of the country at
large. In Victoria, indeed, wool is for the present second to gold. And
in South Australia wool is second to wheat. The wheat grown in South
Australia during eleven years up to 1871 has fetched an average of
£1,283,630 per annum, whereas the wool exported from the colony,--in
which is included a small amount exported from South Australian ports
but grown in other colonies,--has fetched an average of £987,194
per annum. The wool produced has, in fact, been worth no more than
three-fourths of the wheat grown. But the produce of a country which is
exported always receives more attention than that which is consumed at
home. Who thinks anything of the eggs that are laid around us, or of
the butter made? In calculating the wealth of the country, who reckons
up the stitching of all the women, or even the ploughing and hedging
and ditching of the men? The calico and cutlery and cloth which we
export, and the ships which take these things away, are to our eyes
the source of our commercial wealth. I remember being told in America
that in the year before the war the hay produced in the single State
of Maine had been worth more than all the cotton exported from all
the cotton States in that year. South Australia is perhaps in a safer
condition than any other of the Australian colonies, because she can
feed herself. But not the less on this account does she regard wool as
the staple of the country. It is the business of Australia to supply
fine wools to the world, and South Australia thinks that she performs
her part of that business very well. South Australian farmers simply
live comfortably and die in obscurity by growing wheat; but South
Australian squatters make splendid fortunes or are ruined magnificently
by growing wool.
In the last two years things have been going well with the
wool-growers; but for some years before that things were not going
well, and there was much magnificent ruin. Owing to the drought to
which the country is subject, and to the very limited rainfall in
the large northern pastoral districts, squatting,--which is always
precarious,--is perhaps more precarious in this colony than in others.
In 1865 there was a great drought. In 1864 very little rain fell in
the districts north of Goyder’s line, and in 1865 none fell. When 1866
came many of the South Australian squatters were ruined,--and others
were broken-hearted. The records of this time are terrible to hear. It
was not so much that sheep were perishing from want of water. The wells
did not run dry, and in that district no squatter trusts to surface
water for his sheep to drink. But there was not a blade of grass, and
the animals were starved. The owners did not know in what direction
to stir themselves. Hundreds of thousands of sheep were driven south
in order that they might find pasturage as they wandered. It must be
understood that a squatter may drive sheep anywhere over unpurchased
land,--that is, over land which is simply leased by other squatters
from the Crown. But he is bound to give notice of the coming of his
flocks, and to move them along at the rate of not less than six miles a
day. It has not been an uncommon thing in any of the colonies for small
squatters, when short of grass, to have their sheep driven about over
hundreds of miles,--say in a wide-spread circle, so that at last they
should be brought home again,--in order that thus they might be fed.
In ordinary years this is not regarded as a thoroughly honest kind of
grazing. It is difficult to prevent the usage, as the owner, though he
must give notice of the coming of his sheep, is not bound to explain
why they are on the road. They may have been sold and be travelling to
the purchaser, or they may have been sent out for sale. But though the
practice cannot be stopped, it is known and understood, and the large
squatters who are the sufferers are often indignant. But in 1865-66
the larger the flocks were, the more urgent was the necessity which
compelled the owner of them to send them forth, lest they should be
starved at home. Mob after mob of wretched animals streamed down from
the then barren plains, 300 miles north of Adelaide, to the southern
districts near the sea and round the lakes,--perishing by the way, or
doomed to perish when they got there. Those who started first,--whose
owners, either by themselves or their servants, had been the first
to see the necessity of going,--were saved. I heard one squatter’s
overseer tell how he had taken some 10,000 sheep down to the sea-side
and brought them all back again. When I suggested to him, before his
tale was at an end, that he had lost many of them,--I had heard more
then of what had been lost than of any that were saved,--he answered me
with indignant denial. He at that time had been a hero. But there were
few such heroes. As the mobs followed, one upon the heels of another,
the grass disappeared before them. They were driven hither and thither,
till they died; but there was no grass. And it is easy to conceive
the sort of welcome which these intruders would receive at such a
time,--how the shepherds would be desired to move on, and do their six
miles a day whatever might become of them afterwards, how hated they
would be, coming with their flocks like locusts upon a country that was
bare enough at that time even without such strangers! And the life of
those who followed their flocks week after week and month after month
could not itself have been very pleasant. Among Australian graziers
young men are accustomed to this work. It is no uncommon thing that a
flock of sheep,--they call them mobs in Australia,--perhaps four or
five thousand strong, should have to travel six hundred miles, either
being brought home by a purchaser or taken to some city for sale. There
must be necessarily five or six men to accompany them, with seven
or eight horses, and probably a cart. They kill their own meat as
they go; but they carry their flour and tea, and perhaps a tent. They
enter no houses and spend little or no money. They travel on their six
miles a day;--and though their work be very tedious, it is endurable
as long as each day’s work is a portion of a successful commercial
operation. But at this terrible time there was no idea of commerce.
As they went along, the country was strewed with the bodies of the
useless animals, and the only effort was to move on in some district
giving still sufficient grass to keep the flock alive. Thousands were
slaughtered to reduce the numbers in the scanty herbage, and I heard of
one flock-owner who at last adopted the course of drowning a thousand
in the sea. In Adelaide a large flock was offered to a merchant, who
was also a squatter, at 1_s._ a head. He offered 6_d._ for them, and
rejoiced afterwards that his bidding was not taken. At that time sheep
were simply an encumbrance. There was imposed on each owner the duty
of trying to save his property, but without the hope that he should
succeed in doing so. It was a bad time then, in South Australia, for in
the same year,--the season of 1865-66,--the wheat crop was also low.
But the price of wool was high;--and therefore, though many squatters
fell,--they who were already weak on their legs or in debt,--the strong
men won their way through, and survived their losses.
After that came a great depression in the price of wool, and the colony
was again at a low ebb. In March, 1866, unwashed South Australian wool
fetched 1_s._ 2½_d._ a pound. In March, 1869, it fetched 8_d._ In
looking at the difference between these times, the reader must remember
that the squatters’ liabilities were the same with the low price as
they had been with the high. The normal squatter generally owes money
to his banker or merchant, for which he pays some rate of interest
varying from 8 to 11 per cent.,--and not unfrequently a percentage
even higher than that. I have endeavoured in the former volume to
explain his condition in this respect. With unwashed wool at 1_s._
2_d._ or 1_s._ 3_d._ a pound not only will his interest not trouble
him, but his debt will diminish apparently without any effort on his
own part. But with wool at 8_d._ his debt, if it be at all heavy, will
grow. The sum he realises from his wool will not pay the expenses of
his men, keep himself, and pay his interest. After a year or two with
such a result the merchant will feel that he is becoming insecure
and will foreclose. Then the squatter is no longer a squatter, but
takes probably to the care of sheep for some more fortunate man. In
March, 1869, 8_d._ a pound was the price for unwashed or greasy South
Australian wool; in 1870 it was 8½_d._; in February, 1870, it was again
8_d._ These had been three bad years, and many men were either ruined
or on the brink of ruin; but in July, 1871, it had risen to 11_d._ a
pound; in September, 1871, to 1_s._ 0½_d._; and in March, 1872, it
was as high as 1_s._ 2_d._ and 1_s._ 3_d._ Twenty thousand sheep is
by no means a large flock. On the contrary a squatter with no more
than 20,000 is a small man. But a difference of 6_d._ in the pound on
unwashed wool from 20,000 sheep amounts to about £3,000. It will be
exactly that sum if each sheep give 6 lbs., which is a high but not
an excessive average for unwashed wool. The expense of maintaining a
run with 20,000 sheep, including the cost of the squatter’s own home,
may be put at £2,000 per annum, being £100 for every thousand sheep.
It will at once be seen how rich the poor man may at once become by
such a change in the circumstances of the wool trade. And it will be
seen also how speculative and precarious such a business must be. The
wool-grower of Australia watches the price-list for England with an
intense and natural anxiety. He can do little or nothing to regulate
the market. He cannot understand why it is that the fluctuations should
be so great. But he obeys the market, too often with an implicit
confidence which it does not deserve. When prices are high he increases
his flocks,--and with his flocks he increases his debt also. He is
almost negligent how much he may owe if wool be high. The temptation is
so great that if his credit be good he will almost assuredly increase
his flock to the bearing capability of his run. Three years of high
prices will, perhaps, make him a rich man. But a fall again,--a speedy
fall,--will bring him to the dust. It must be remembered that many of
these men are dealing not with 20,000 sheep, but with more than five
times that number; sometimes with more than ten times that number.
When the large squatter really owns his flocks,--when he owes nothing
to his merchant,--then even at the worst of times, with wool even at
8_d._, he does well; and in that condition, when wool rises he becomes
a millionaire. Things, as I write now, are all rose-coloured with the
squatters;--but it may well be that before these words are published
there shall come a change.
I went about two hundred miles north of Adelaide, so that I might get
outside of Goyder’s rain-line, and see something of the country in
which rain is so scarce. I cannot say that the country is attractive to
a visitor. There is very little to gratify the eye, and almost nothing
to satisfy the taste. The South Australian free-selecter makes for
himself a plentiful and I hope a happy home;--but he does not surround
himself with prettiness or even with neatness. The greatest part of
our journey, however, was beyond the free-selecter’s limits, through
a country that was brown, treeless, and absolutely uninteresting.
I was frequently told that the run through which I was passing was
excellently well adapted for sheep, and that the squatter who owned
it was doing well. But I saw no grass and very few sheep. A stranger
cannot but remark, throughout the pastoral districts of Australia,
how seldom he sees sheep as he travels along. As in this country they
do not carry above one sheep to ten acres, and as the animals would
hardly be observed if each sheep maintained solitary possession of his
own ten-acred domain, the result is not wonderful. But the traveller
expects to see sheep and is disappointed. It may be that he will also
expect emus and kangaroos, and he will generally be disappointed also
in regard to them. Kangaroos I certainly have seen in great numbers,
though by no means so often as I expected. An emu running wild I never
did see. Tame emus round the houses in towns are very common, and
of emus’ eggs there is a plethora. On this journey I saw hardly any
living animals. We went with four horses, at about six miles an hour,
through a brown ugly district, which was bounded, nearly the whole
way, by low hills, and on which there is no sign that timber has ever
grown there. We put up for the night at the station of a non-resident
squatter, in seeking which we lost our way in the dark. For an hour or
so I felt uneasy, thinking that we should have to “camp out,” without
any preparation made for such a picnic;--but at last we were attracted
by lights, and a party of us who had gone forth on foot reached the
house. We met there a young man who was waiting for a companion, with
whom he intended to make his way from the centre of Australia to the
western coast. It seemed that his party would be lamentably deficient
in means for such an expedition, and that he had hardly the energy for
such an undertaking. In this work of Australian exploring men have to
carry flour and tea with them, and to be satisfied to live upon flour
and tea,--to protect themselves from the blacks,--to run the risk
of failing water,--and to be constant, from month to month, without
excitement to keep their courage warm. Our new acquaintance seemed to
be going because he might as well go as let it alone;--but it may be
that under that deportment were hidden all the energies of a Marco
Polo, a Columbus, a Sturt, or a Livingstone. We fared sumptuously at
the absent squatter’s station, and went on our way the next morning.
I had not then seen a salt-bush country, though I subsequently passed
through such a region in a part of New South Wales, of which I said
a few words in speaking of that colony. Here, in the salt-bush of
South Australia, there was not a blade of grass when I visited it. The
salt-bush itself is an ugly grey shrub, about two feet high, which
seems to possess the power of bringing forth its foliage without
moisture. This foliage is impregnated with salt, and both sheep and
cattle will feed upon it and thrive. It does not produce wool of the
best class,--but it is regarded as being a very safe food for sheep,
because it rarely fails. At the period of my visit the country was in
want of rain; and I was assured that when the rain, then expected,
should fall, the surface of the ground would be covered with grass. I
can only say that I never saw a country more bare of grass. But for
miles together,--over hundreds of square miles,--the salt-bush spreads
itself; and as long as that lives the sheep will not be starved.
Sometimes this shrub was diversified by a blue bush, a bush very much
the same as the salt-bush in form, though of a dull slate-colour
instead of grey. On this the sheep will not feed. There is also a
poisonous shrub which the sheep will eat,--as to which there seemed to
be an opinion that it was fatal only to travelling sheep, and not to
those regularly pastured on the country.
The run which I visited bears about 120,000 sheep,--and they wander
over about 1,200,000 acres. For all these sheep, and for all this
extent of sheep-run, it is necessary to obtain water by means of wells,
sunk to various depths from fifty to one hundred and twenty feet. The
water can always be found,--not indeed always at the first attempt, but
so surely that no land in that region need be deserted for want of it.
The water when procured is invariably more or less brackish;--but the
sheep thrive on it and like it. The wells are generally worked by men,
sometimes by horses; but on large runs, where capital has been made
available, the water is raised by windmills. Such was the case at the
place I visited. The water is brought up into large tanks, holding from
30,000 to 60,000 gallons each, and from these tanks is distributed into
troughs, made of stone and cement. These are carried out in different
directions, perhaps two or three from each tank, and are so arranged
that sheep can be watered from either side. If therefore there be
three such troughs, the sheep in six different paddocks can be watered
from one tank,--the well being so placed as to admit egress to it from
various paddocks, all converging on the same centre. In this way 10,000
sheep will be watered at one well. As these paddocks contain perhaps 40
square miles each, or over 25,000 acres, the animals have some distance
to travel before they can get a drink. In cold weather they do not
require to drink above once in three days;--in moderate weather once
in two days;--in very hot weather they will lie near to the troughs
and not trouble themselves to go afield in search of food. On the run
which I visited there were twenty of these wells, which, with their
appurtenances of tanks, and troughs, and windmills, had cost about
£500 each;--and there had been about as many failures in the search of
water, wells which had been dug but at which no water was found;--and
these had not been sunk without considerable expenditure. It may
therefore be understood that a man requires some capital before he can
set himself up as a grower of wool on a large scale in South Australia.
The state of the meat market in England is already affecting the
South Australian squatter very materially,--as also the squatters in
the other colonies. I left England in May, 1871, and at that time
Australian meats had only begun to make their way in the London
markets. In speaking of the Queensland meat-preserving companies as I
found them in August and September, 1871, I spoke almost with doubt
of the trade;--for there was doubt when I was in Queensland. But when
I was in South Australia in April, 1872, the trade was established,
and squatters were already calculating that the carcase should not in
future be made to give way altogether to the wool. Meat, which is in
round figures 10_d._ a pound in London, costs but 2_d._ a pound in
South Australia. Then arises the question whether meat can be carried
half-way round the globe in a good condition, or whether its nature
makes it impossible that good mutton should be imported from Australia
as well as good wool. That bad mutton may be imported,--that is, mutton
which has been changed from good to bad by processes of cooking and
packing previous to exportation,--we have known for some time. That any
Australian meat has as yet reached the English market in a state that
would enable it to compete with English meat, I do not believe. I feel
sure that none has done so. But every mail during the latter months of
my sojourn in Australia brought out tidings that the trade was on the
increase,--so that when I left the colonies sheep were worth 3_s._ or
4_s._ a head more for butchers than they were twelve months earlier,
when I arrived at Melbourne. Three shillings a head is certainly not
much on a sheep in England,--where the animal at twelve months old may
be worth from £3 10_s._ to £4. But in Australia, where 10_s._ a head
is even now a good price, the difference is very large. When I reached
Melbourne in July, 1871, I was told at a meat-preserving company that
they could not afford to give more than 6_s._ a sheep. All that goes
home to England is, after all, but a morsel to the markets of that
little island; but to this wide continent the preparation of that
morsel is most important.
In the district of which I am speaking the sheep are all
“paddocked,”--that is to say, kept in by fences,--so that shepherding
is unnecessary. I hope that I have already made clear to my reader the
difference between shepherding sheep and paddocking sheep. I found
that brush fences had been made at the rate of about £23 a mile. A
brush fence, made of loose timber and wood, is not so neat as a wire
fence, but it is equally serviceable for sheep;--and when fences
have to be made by hundreds of miles, the difference in expenditure
is considerable. A wire fence that will keep in sheep and lambs, can
hardly be put up for less than £40 a mile. Five wires would suffice for
sheep, but the lamb requires a lower wire to restrain his innocence.
Nothing, I think, gives a surer proof of the wealth of the Australian
colonies generally, than the immense amount of fencing that has been
put up within the last ten years. A run of twenty miles square, or
containing 400 square miles, equal to 256,000 acres, is by no means
excessive in size, though it is about as big as a small English
county. The squatter who intends to paddock his sheep instead of
hiring shepherds to go about with them, has to divide his area into
perhaps twenty different paddocks. Should he do this, with the smallest
possible amount of distance of partitions, he would have to make 240
miles of fencing. At the station which I visited we had come again upon
timber, though the country was by no means thickly wooded. But when
there is no timber near, the cost of fencing is more than doubled.
It is of course understood that the normal squatter is a tenant of the
Crown. In Victoria the great wool-growers now own for the most part
their own lands;--and the purchase of pasture lands has become general
elsewhere under the pressure of the free-selecter. But the genuine
squatter is he who sits upon government land for which he pays a rent
to the colony; and in South Australia such is still the condition of
the larger wool-growers. Outside of Goyder’s range,--which is the South
Australian squatter’s proper region, the rental varies according to
the value of the land and the nature of the pasture. A computation is
made of the number of sheep the land should carry, and the squatter is
charged 6_d._ a sheep on the best land, 4_d._ on the second best, and
2_d._ a sheep on the poorest. If he should keep more sheep than the
number computed, he pays at the same rate for the excess. But for the
number computed he must pay, even though he should not keep so many. I
found that this arrangement gave satisfaction even to the squatters,--a
result which has certainly not been common in the Australian colonies
generally. On runs within the line of rainfall, this rule as to
the rate at which sheep are pastured does not prevail; but such
runs have generally been purchased, and are the freehold property
of the wool-growers, or are occupied as commonage by the owners of
neighbouring freeholds.
I feel it to be impossible to describe with accuracy the effect upon
pastoral speculators of a rise in the price of wool amounting to 80 per
cent., the whole difference going to profit. My readers may perhaps
be able to imagine the present condition of the squatter’s mind. “Non
secus in bonis Ab insolenti temperatam Lætitia,” are words which not
unfrequently rise to the minds of the observer. It is, however, very
much to the advantage of the colony at large that this prosperity
should be continued. When wool is low every interest in Australia
is depressed. Even mining shares do not go off so readily under the
verandahs when the pockets of the squatters are not full of money.
I also visited a large cattle station in the south of the colony, on
the eastern side of the lakes. It belongs to a rich Scotch absentee
landowner who sits in our parliament, and I will only say of it that
I think I ate the best beef there that ever fell in my way. Like
other things beef must have a best and a worst, and I think that
the Portalloch beef was the best. I heard that there was beef as
good,--perhaps even better,--up at a large cattle station far north;
but the information reached me from the owner of the northern station
who was with us at Portalloch. As I found his information on all other
subjects to be reliable, I am bound to believe him in this. If it
be so, he must be the very prince of beef-growers. On the road from
Adelaide to the lakes,--on the lake side of the Mount Lofty hills,--we
stayed a night at the little town of Strathalbyn. Afterwards, on my
route back to Victoria, which I made by steamer from Port Adelaide to
Macdonnel Bay, and thence overland across the border, I stayed also at
the little town of Gambier-Town, under Mount Gambier. I mention these
places because they were the cleanest, prettiest, pleasantest little
towns that I saw during my Australian travels. I would say that they
were like well-built thriving English villages of the best class, were
it not that they both contained certain appliances and an architectural
pretension which hardly belong to villages. When the place in question
is dirty, unfinished, and forlorn,--when the attempt at doing something
considerable in the way of founding a town seems to have been a
failure,--the appearance of this pretension is very disagreeable. But
at Strathalbyn and Gambier-Town there had been success, and they had
that look about them which makes a stranger sometimes fancy in a new
place that it might be well for him to come and abide there to the end.
They are both in South Australia. Perhaps I was specially moved to
admiration because the inns were good.
The country around Mount Gambier is very pretty, and un-Australian.
There are various lakes,--evidently the craters of old volcanoes,--lying
high up among hills. And among them and about them the grass is green,
and the ferns grow wild,--much to the disgust of the owners of the
land, upon whom they have lately come as a new infliction. And the
trees stand about in a park-like fashion. The country here was some
time since given up to agriculture, and the Gambier-Town people were
proud of their wheat. But the grass grows again now,--artificial grass,
and a large herd of Lincoln sheep is in fashion,--partly from the
increased price of mutton, but chiefly because at this moment the long
coarse staple of the Lincoln wool is high priced. The weight of wool
given by these sheep is very much greater than that of the Merino.
Squatters say just at present that the Lincoln sheep pay better than
the Merino, where the land will carry the former. I doubt, however,
whether this state of things will last.
I was told, when in the neighbourhood, that the farmers from
Gambier-Town had gone across the border into Victoria, tempted by the
terms on which free-selecters there were allowed to buy land. Many no
doubt had done so, settling themselves in the western district of that
colony. But when I was again in Victoria, I was told that there was
another exodus of farmers commencing, and that men were going back to
South Australia under other temptations offered by the South Australian
laws. Considering the condition of the population and its sparseness,
considering also the great blessing of settled prospects, I could
not but feel daily how great was the pity that there should be six
different sets of Australian laws for the people of the six colonies.
There are in all about 1,700,000 of them, and they agree to be united
on no subject.
I will venture here to allude to a matter very far removed indeed from
the general scope of this book. Before leaving England a friend of mine
had put into my hand a volume of ballads, which had been sent home to
him from Australia, called “Bush Ballads, or Galloping Rhymes.” He told
me that the author had been a young Scotch gentleman who had gone out
young, but had not done well. He had taken to a sporting life, and had
then fallen into a sad melancholy, and had--died. I read the ballads,
and was greatly struck by their energy. It was evident that the writer
of them had lived out of the literary world, and that he had lacked
that care and spared himself that labour which criticism and study will
produce, and which are necessary to finish work;--but of the man’s
genius there could be no doubt. There was one called “Britomarte,”
which alone entitled him to be called a poet. I found that he had lived
in this neighbourhood, near to Mount Gambier, and that he had been
well loved by many friends. For a while he was in the South Australian
parliament, but parliamentary work had not suited him. He was given
to the riding of racers,--and was prone to write about horses and
the race-course. In the literary traces which I found of him in the
neighbourhood, there was but scanty allusion to other matters, except
to racing, and to the melancholy, thoughtful, solitary, heart-eating
life which a bushman lives. His horse had been his companion when he
was alone,--and when he got back to the world horses were his delight.
They are seldom safe companions for a man prone to excitement. I heard
wondrous tales of the courage of his riding. As a steeple-chase rider
he was well known in Melbourne; but few seemed to have heard of him as
a poet. It is as a poet that I speak of him now. His name was A. L.
Gordon.