Our First Half-Century Part 14

A new Act in 1902 offered those who elected to take advantage of it a fresh lease, at the expiration of the current one, of from ten to forty-two years, according to cla.s.sification; and farther resumptions were made for closer settlement. The cla.s.sification, which was decided by the Land Court, was governed by the degree of remoteness from railway and the demand for land in the neighbourhood.

The low range of hills surrounding the Darling Downs encloses over 2,000,000 acres of land of a quality that invites the plough to convert it into the granary of the State. As the railway to the New South Wales border takes its rather serpentine course southwards, coasting round many of the undulations to avoid cutting through them, the traveller looks upon a land which he must recognise as capable of maintaining a large farming population. What he actually saw till quite recently was paddock after paddock of sheep on each side, then a paddock of cattle and horses, and again more sheep. It was palpable that this could not continue indefinitely. The railway built at the cost of the general taxpayers had greatly increased the value of these estates and rendered their working more profitable. The owners of these flocks and herds had done good service to the State, and deserved the most generous treatment. Successors of the original pioneers, they had bred the stock that helped to occupy the West, and had founded studs that enabled others to replenish their flocks and herds from the purest sources. It was important above all things that no legislative interference should hara.s.s men who deserved so well of Queensland, and that no step should be taken to dispossess them which could be suspected of any taint of harshness. In time, doubtless, they would themselves have parcelled out their estates for tillage, but the process would have been slow, the easy terms of payment possible to a Government borrowing money at a low rate of interest not being generally convenient to an individual, and time in the development of a young country is important. Parliament therefore took the matter in hand and decided that where possible these landholders should be bought out on a valuation made by an independent tribunal. A number of properties have been bought by the Government, cut up into farms of from 80 acres upwards, and sold to farmers on liberal terms, payment extending over twenty-five years. Mixed farming and dairying are the chief purposes to which the land has been put, and busy townships have sprung up at the railway stations where a few years ago the stationmaster, his family, and an a.s.sistant porter formed the bulk of the resident population. Breeding lambs for export is found to be a profitable branch of the pastoral business on the Downs, and the breeding of crossbreds is consequently increasing, the Lincoln or Leicester being mated with the merino. Southdown and Romney rams have also been tried, but the Lincoln cross has been generally preferred.

Crossbred lambs three to four months old bring 10s. in Brisbane, the railage costing from 1s. to 1s. 3d.

So far little mention has been made of cattle. It may be generally stated that where country is suitable for sheep, or, more accurately speaking, where they can be profitably run, cattle are only depastured in very small herds. The coastal belt and the Northern Gulf region are exclusively cattle country, and in the extreme West, although sheep thrive excellently, the long carriage causes cattle to be preferred, the expense of cattle management being much below that of sheep. The product of these distant pastures travels on the hoof to market, the Western cattle being noted for their great weight of flesh and the distance they carry it without great waste. Most of the herds have been improved to a high degree of excellence by importation of some of the best blood in England, and high-cla.s.s stud herds have been long established in the different States from which drafts of herd bulls are drawn as required at from about 10 to 15 guineas per head.

With a population of little over half a million occupying a territory of 670,500 square miles, it will be realised that the yearly cast of "fats" greatly exceeds local requirements. The Southern States take a large number. New South Wales and Victoria are the best customers, as, with a combined population of roughly five times that of Queensland, the total of their cattle is only slightly in excess of the Queensland herd. South Australia is also a regular buyer of "fats." The "stores"

that go South to be fattened beyond the State are almost exclusively bullocks of three to four years. Amongst the "fats" of ripe ages is a proportion of dry cows, and a limited number of breeders and mixed cattle also find sale with Southern buyers. But these outlets would have been quite inadequate for the absorption of the Queensland annual surplus had not meat-preserving come to the rescue of the stock-owner.

Before freezing works were established, boiling down was the one resource, the tallow, hides, and sheepskins giving a meagre return, whilst the valuable carca.s.s went to the pigs. The late Sir Arthur Hodgson, a leading pastoralist, used to relate with humorous comments his experiences with a first draft of sheep from his Darling Downs station (Eton Vale), brought to Brisbane to be boiled down at the Kangaroo Point works. During the process the owner--educated at Eton, and subsequently a Minister of the Crown in Queensland--went round daily with a handcart selling the legs of mutton at sixpence apiece.

Such commercial enterprise has long fallen into desuetude.

To bring the surplus meat of Australia within reach of the eager millions of Europe has not been an easy problem, but it has at length been fairly solved by freezing the carca.s.s, though much has yet to be done in discovering the best method of distribution of so perishable an article and its proper treatment from the freezing chamber to the spit. The various works buy cattle at about 18s. to 20s. per 100 lb., the weight of bullocks averaging about 750 lb., though many mobs, notably the huge beasts from the West, go as much as 200 lb. beyond this. The works are also buyers of fat sheep, a 50-lb. wether two or three months after shearing bringing from 9s. to 10s. In the six years 1901-6 the exports of frozen meat from Australia totalled 353,514,135 lb. of beef and 371,692,090 lb. of mutton.

An occupation the profits of which are capable of such large additions by increasing numbers is apt to foster a spirit of gambling. In a season of bountiful rainfall it is almost impossible to over-stock country, and owners too often take the risk of availing themselves to the full of Nature's prodigality. Such a policy is most dangerous.

When the time of more limited rainfall comes the owner of over-stocked pastures pays a heavy toll for his improvidence, whereas he who has regulated his numbers on the a.s.sumption of fair average seasons comes scathless through the time of trial.

Dairying comes more within the department of agriculture, as crops must be grown for feed, the dairy-farmer being necessarily the occupant of a very limited area. The benefit dairying has been to the small stock-owner can hardly be exaggerated. In old days the owner of a herd of 50 to 100 head could look only for a poor living, working for wages for part of the year whilst his family looked after the herd. Now he is a rich man. The monthly cheque from the creamery for a man milking 25 cows easily reaches an average of 20. Except in the few cases where the business has been conducted in a large way by capitalists, it is mostly an enterprise for small men. The work is unremitting, the herd having to be milked twice a day, but the rewards are sure and ample. b.u.t.ter and cheese factories have sprung up like mushrooms in the last few years, there being now 79 in the State. The yield of b.u.t.ter for 1907 totalled 22,789,158 lb. As returns depend on the amount of b.u.t.ter-fat produced, owners have converted the ordinary breeds of cattle to good dairy herds by plentiful introductions of the true milking strains--Jersey, Alderney, Ayrshire, Holstein, and milking Shorthorn.

Many will probably wonder how cattle grazed over an area of many hundred square miles of country, which in the outside districts is probably unfenced, can be mustered or even kept on the run. Cattle are docilely subservient to custom, and once broken into "camps" will voluntarily seek repose in these shelters. On a well-managed station the crack of a whip will start any mob within hearing trotting for their camp, formed in a clump of shade on the creek, or, if shade is available, on some better galloping ground. Others, seeing them on the move, head towards the same well-known resort, there to pa.s.s the day till the shadows lengthen, only moving off in the cool of the evening to feed. If they are being mustered for branding, the cows with calves are "cut out" and brought to the stockyard to be dealt with; if for a butcher to select a draft of fats, these only are taken and delivered either on the spot or where arranged. At the general muster, which is only made every few years, as the cattle are brought in they are put through a lane in the yard, the long lock at the tip of the tail being cut short; they are thus easily distinguished on the run, so that only long-tails are brought in subsequently. A "bang-tail" muster is recorded in the station books, and, as all sales and other disposals are carefully noted and an allowance made of from 3 to 5 per cent. for deaths, it is not necessary to repeat an operation taxing horseflesh so severely at nearer intervals than three to five years. Stock-horses become very clever, and will turn and twist with a beast through the mob, the rider's whip playing on either side till the animal is run out. Large tailing yards are maintained in different parts of the run to avoid much driving, and at weaning time the weaners are herded for a month or six weeks and yarded at night, which has a quieting effect they never forget. A well-managed herd is noted for absence of rowdyism amongst its members. On a well-improved station the bullocks, heifers, and weaners will be in separate paddocks, and at a certain season the bulls are taken out of the herd and put in a paddock by themselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WOOL TEAMS, WYANDRA, WARREGO DISTRICT]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAULING CEDAR, ATHERTON, NORTH QUEENSLAND]

Much has been written of the Australian squatter's life, both in fact and in fiction; yet the charm it exercises remains unexplained. The invigorating influence of perfect health doubtless has something to do with it, as well as the utter freedom and escape from all conventionality. Much of the bushman's time is pa.s.sed in the saddle, and his dress consists of moleskin trousers, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to the elbow, and a soft shady hat. He rises at daybreak and after an early breakfast starts his day's work. As frequently he will not return to the homestead till nightfall, his lunch is in his saddle-pouch, to be enjoyed in the shade by some waterhole, where he boils the quart "billy" that dangles all day from a dee on his saddle, and makes the inevitable brew of tea. Probably he has companions and is mustering a paddock half the size of an English county; bringing the sheep to the drafting yards, it may be to draft out the fats from a mob of several thousand wethers, or perhaps to take lambs from their mothers for weaning, or to separate the s.e.xes in a mob of mixed weaners, or to bring sheep to the shed for shearing.

Shearing is of all times the busiest. At this season men, each usually riding one horse and leading another packed with his swag, roam the country in gangs and undertake the work at contract rates, which of late have been raised from 20s. per 100 to 24s. There will be from ten to forty men on the shearing board, according to the size of the flock; and in most of the large sheds men write beforehand to bespeak a stand. Shearers earn great wages; a good man will do from 100 to 200 per day, though the latter number is of course exceptional. The introduction of shearing machines has helped to increase the shearer's daily tally. A host of other men are employed in the shed. Boys gather the fleeces which they throw on a table where they are skirted, the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs being divided into "locks and pieces" and "bellies," and the rolled fleece is thrown on another long table at which the wool-cla.s.ser presides. He is an expert, and orders each to its respective bin, according to quality--judged by condition, length of staple, and brightness. From the various bins so graded men feed the wool-press worked by two wool-pressers, who turn out, sew, and brand the bales, of an average weight of from 3 to 4 cwt. Wagons are waiting to convey these to the railway, horse and bullock teams being almost equally used. A whip cracks like a pistol shot, and with lowered heads, the bullocks straining at the yoke, the first team draws slowly off to the incomprehensible objurgations of the driver, an incredible number of bales in three tiers piled on the wagon and securely roped.

But this bustling activity is not confined to the shed. Shorn sheep have to be returned to their paddocks, fresh mobs brought in, and the morrow's shearing housed in the shed to escape the night's dew or a chance shower. From daylight to dark during this harvest time everyone is at full stretch. The shearers have their own cook and "find"

themselves, sharing together in a general mess; and as they earn good money they "do themselves" really well, denying themselves no delicacy obtainable at the station store. The whistle sounds at 6 p.m.; the last fleece has been gathered, and the men stroll to their camp to discard sodden shirts and moleskins and clean up generally before supper. The twilight is short, night chasing it swiftly from the world. The weird charm of a Queensland night in the bush penetrates with a calm satisfaction difficult to a.n.a.lyse. It is, let us suppose, spring or summer, and the stars appear to hang low from the deep clear indigo vault. The silence is unbroken, appealing to some indefinable emotion. No cry of beast or bird ruffles the stillness, save perhaps the faint tinkle of the bell-bird or the solemn plaint of the mopoke from some distant scrub. The men are sitting outside their hut smoking, or with tired limbs stretched on the short dry gra.s.s lying full length drawing the quiet night into their blood, its cool soft breath soothing the fatigue of the arduous day's toil. Very entertaining to a listener would be the symposium of experiences and amazing political theories of these rough good-humoured toilers, whilst in the pauses one might perhaps enjoy the fantasia executed by the musician of the party on his concertina.

Life at the homestead of many of the old-established stations differs little from that of a wealthy country home in other parts of the world. Froude in his "Oceana" draws a diverting picture of his antic.i.p.ations of a bush home and its reality. He had pictured a log-hut in the wilderness, and was taken to Ercildoune, where he was amazed to find a mansion amidst splendid gardens, with conservatories, elaborate drawing-rooms, well-dressed ladies, and all the appurtenances and customs of refined life. Expecting chops, damper, and tea, the culinary triumphs of a skilful _chef_ would strike an author in quest of the barbaric life with a keen reproach. Had Mr.

Froude visited Queensland, he might have found something more suitable for literary treatment. Although in the older settled districts, especially on the Darling Downs, the lessees live in comfortable, well-furnished homes, many bush homesteads are still very primitive.

The farther a station is from the railway the more the owner is inclined to dispense with the superfluous, till in many cases he restricts himself to the absolutely necessary. But every year sees an improvement in this respect. Hospitality is unlimited, any visitor being sure of a welcome and a night's lodging; he turns his horses into his host's paddock, and, if there are ladies of the household, his evening is enlivened with music and cultured talk.

Some of the more gigantic enterprises are conducted by squatting companies, the sheep numbering several hundred thousand and the cattle up to thirty or forty thousand. But these stupendous figures need not deter small investors. In the purchase of a station the goodwill is an a.s.set to be paid for, and in many cases this is valued at a high figure. The selector who takes up a grazing farm pays nothing for goodwill, and gets into what is possibly a going concern from the outset with no other payment than the year's rent and the value of the existing improvements erected by the former lessee before the area was resumed from his holding. It may happen that the country is bare of all improvements, in which case he has to fence it before he gets a lease, his neighbours being liable for half the cost of this work, which forms their common boundary. He pays a higher rent than the representative of the pioneer who created the goodwill which has descended by purchase. What more desirable opening can be found for a young man of limited capital than a farm that will carry 10,000 sheep or 1,500 cattle? He leads the healthiest life in the world, and, although it is full of hard work and includes what would be thought hardships in the home he comes from, a manly youth takes the latter with a frolic welcome, and if he works hard he also plays hard when the occasional races, cricket carnival, and festivities in the nearest township or perhaps at some neighbouring station give the occasion.

But above all things it is important that he should not invest till he has gained experience. There is no difficulty in acquiring this, as stockowners are without exception glad of the a.s.sistance of a willing young fellow who accepts the knowledge acquired and perhaps a trifling salary as an equivalent for his time and work. After a couple of years of this novitiate as a "Jackeroo," he will be equipped for facing the future on his own account, which with ordinary steadfastness, energy, and forethought he may regard with confidence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAIRY CATTLE ON DARLING DOWNS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHEEP, JIMBOUR, DARLING DOWNS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HORSES, IVANHOE STATION, WARREGO]

CHAPTER II.

AGRICULTURE IN QUEENSLAND.

Tripart.i.te Division of Queensland.--Climate.--Development of Agriculture in Queensland.--Wide Range of Products.--Early History.--Exclusion of Farmers from Richest Lands.--Origin of Mixed Farming.--Extension of Industry Westward.--Inexperience of Early Settlers.--Cotton-growing.--Chief Crops.--Dairying.

--Cereal-growing.--Farming in the Tropics.--Farming on the Downs.--Farming in the West.--Irrigation.--Conservation of Water.--Timber Industry.--Land Selection.--a.s.sistance Given by the Government.--Immigration.--Attractions of Queensland.

--Defenders of Hearth and Home.

Situated between 10 degrees and 29 degrees South lat.i.tude and 138 degrees and 153 degrees East longitude, Queensland covers 670,500 square miles, or 429,120,000 acres--greater than the combined areas of France, Germany, and Austro-Hungary. Of this immense territory 535 per cent. lies within the Tropics, and 465 per cent. within the South Temperate Zone.

The State may be divided into three belts--the tropical, stretching from Cape York to the 21st parallel in the neighbourhood of Mackay; the sub-tropical, between Mackay and Gladstone, about 24 degrees South; and the temperate, from Gladstone to the 29th parallel on the border of New South Wales.

These three zones lend themselves, in turn, to a tripart.i.te subdivision of littoral, tableland, and Western plain. Running generally in a North and South direction, and distant from the Eastern coast 30 to 100 miles, the Great Dividing Range separates the littoral from a series of tablelands having an alt.i.tude of 3,000 ft. at the two extremes, with a lesser elevation between Herberton in the North and the Darling Downs in the South. Almost imperceptibly the intermediate plateau sinks into a vast plain, which extends westward for hundreds of miles and into South Australia.

The mountain barrier between coast and tableland, though rarely exceeding 4,000 ft. in height, is still sufficiently lofty to cause the clouds of the Pacific to deposit most of their moisture on the Eastern slopes. The precipitation in this coastal belt ranges from a yearly average of 135 in. at Geraldton (at the foot of the b.e.l.l.e.n.den-Ker Mountains, in the North) to 40 in. between the Tropic of Capricorn and Brisbane, with a heavier fall wherever the mountains are in close proximity to the ocean. On the Western side of the Great Divide the rainfall decreases from 40 in. to about 30 in. at the Western limit of the tableland, and, gradually diminishing with increasing distance from the seaboard, averages only about 10 in. in the extreme South-west.

Temperature, rainfall, and soil necessary for the successful cultivation of almost every known crop are to be found in Queensland.

Pastoral pursuits and mining have been the princ.i.p.al wealth-producers in the past; but steadily agriculture is coming to the front, and, long before the present generation has pa.s.sed away, will occupy first place among the primary industries. That it has not done so already is due partly to the comparative youth of the country and its small population, and partly to its rich natural pastures and vast mineral resources. For many years the fascination of a pastoral life and the search for gold, with the hope of winning fortunes in those avocations, proved more attractive than the regular, uneventful life of the farmer, with its prospect of a competence; but the old-time glamour of grazing and mining is pa.s.sing away, and the independence of the farmer is now preferred to the lot of station hand or working miner.

On the inestimable value of a rural population to the permanent well-being of a nation Mr. Roosevelt, the late President of the United States, lays stress in these pregnant words:--

"I warn my countrymen that the great recent progress made in city life is not a full measure of our civilisation; for our civilisation rests at bottom on the wholesomeness, the attractiveness, and the completeness, as well as the prosperity, of life in the country. The men and women on the farms stand for what is fundamentally best and most needed in our national life. Upon the development of country life rests ultimately our ability, by methods of farming requiring the highest intelligence, to continue to feed and clothe the hungry nations; to supply the city with fresh blood, clean bodies, and clear brains that can endure the terrific strain of modern life; we need the development of men in the open country, who will be in the future, as in the past, the stay and strength of the nation in time of war, and its guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace."

Too large a proportion of the people of Australia is already congregated in the capital cities on the seaboard, and this centripetal tendency const.i.tutes one of the problems most difficult of solution in our young communities, as it is proving in the older countries of the world. Here, however, we are not confronted with the obstacle of high-priced land, and no effort is being spared to turn the tide of settlement to the true source of national virility and prosperity--the land.

The suitability of the State for agriculture is amply demonstrated by the condition of those engaged in that industry, for there is no considerable cla.s.s in the community so prosperous. Comfortable homes, well-stocked farms, overflowing barns, and other evidence of labour richly rewarded, bear witness to this fact. The abundance of a series of fat years more than compensates for the loss of crops and stock in occasional years of drought, and these losses it is possible to minimise by devoting attention to afforestation, the conservation of water, irrigation, and the storage of fodder.

Diversity of products is to be expected in a country stretching through 18 degrees of lat.i.tude, possessing an infinite variety of soils, and divided into a hot and humid coastal belt, an elevated tableland with cool climate and moderate rainfall, and a huge plain with light rainfall and dry, invigorating atmosphere. There is probably no country in the world with so wide an agricultural range.

To mention crops which can be, and are being, grown with gratifying results would be to set forth in detail nearly every crop of economic value found in the torrid or the temperate zone. Wherever Nature is so generous with her gifts there must be accompanying drawbacks in the shape of vegetable and insect pests, but, by the application of intelligence and industry, the farmers of Queensland are able to combat these petty foes.

Some of the princ.i.p.al objects of culture have a remarkably extensive distribution. Citrus fruits, fodder crops and artificial gra.s.ses, pumpkins and melons, flourish in every part of the State. Maize is very prolific throughout the littoral and on the tableland. Sugar-cane and tropical fruits grow luxuriantly on all the coastal lands. Most of the fruits of the British Isles and Continental Europe are at home everywhere except on the coast north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and reach perfection on the elevated lands of the Darling Downs. Cereals and root crops are produced in the Southern and Central West districts equal in quality and yield to the crops in the Southern States and oversea countries.

"Agriculture," says Professor Robert Wallace, of Edinburgh University, "is one of the oldest of human arts, dating from long before the dawn of history. The savage who lives on the roots and fruits he finds ready to his hand stands lower in the scale than the huntsman living by the chase. The herdsman leading a nomadic life belongs to a higher stage of human culture; but civilisation in any full sense only begins amongst men with settled habitations, who till the soil for their sustenance." Judged by this standard, Queensland has pa.s.sed through the evolutionary stages. Eighty-five years ago, when the first British settlers landed on the sh.o.r.es of Moreton Bay, the country was spa.r.s.ely inhabited by savages of the lowest type, dependent upon native roots and fruits and the chase for a subsistence. For a quarter of a century, settlement on the coast was confined to a few convicts and military guards stationed at Brisbane and Ipswich, and a handful of free settlers. In the year 1840 some adventurous spirits, searching for sheep country west of the Main Range, found themselves on the magnificent tableland which Allan Cunningham had discovered in 1827, and which, during the intervening years, had remained untrodden by the foot of a white man. Soon the whole of the Darling Downs was parcelled out into large sheep stations. Agriculture, until the advent of small selectors many years later, was only represented by garden patches of cereals, vegetables, and fruit trees, grown for the use of the station-owners and their employees.

On the Eastern side of the Range the industry was in almost as backward a state before the arrival of the first shipment of agriculturists in the ship "Fort.i.tude" in January, 1849. Gangs of convicts felled the scrub on the banks of the Brisbane River adjacent to the barracks; with the hoe they planted maize among the stumps and tree-trunks under the constant surveillance of armed guards, and, when the corn was ripe, dragged it in carts to the windmill on Wickham terrace, still a conspicuous landmark, though now used as an observatory. There the maize was ground into "hominy," an important item in the menu of those days.

A band of Moravian missionaries settled at what is now known as Nundah, and they and the majority of the "Fort.i.tude" immigrants were the real pioneers of agriculture in the infant settlement.

Land orders, free immigration, and the discovery of gold were all factors in the development of the country, and the demand for farm lands led to the unlocking of areas previously given over to grazing.

The pastoralists regarded agriculturists with disfavour, and in some cases with open antagonism. By the exercise of "pre-emptive rights,"

which their influence in the Legislature secured for them, they converted into freehold large blocks of the best land, as well as strategic areas by the possession of which they were able to close against settlement immense tracts preeminently suitable for farming.

This was particularly the case in the settled districts of Moreton, Darling Downs, Wide Bay, and Burnett, and to a lesser degree in Maranoa. To such an extent was the right of preemption used that many squatters seriously crippled themselves, the price paid being too high for grazing to be remunerative on their freehold lands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARVESTING WHEAT, EMU VALE, NEAR WARWICK]

When, in after years, it would have been to their advantage to subdivide and sell to farmers, it was not in their power to give t.i.tles. In the course of time railways were built through some of these large estates, but their earning power was seriously hampered by country capable of supporting a very large agricultural population being devoted to pasturing sheep and cattle. As the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty, successive Governments have repurchased a number of properties at a cost exceeding a million sterling, and resold them in small areas to farmers, with highly gratifying results both to the settlers and to the State.

The immediate effect of the exclusive policy adopted by the pastoralists, however, was to force many selectors to take up land in dense scrubs on steep mountain slopes and in river pockets which were useless to stockowners. They had literally to hew their homes out of the jungle. Having no roads, they were thrown upon their own resources, and were obliged to live very largely upon the produce of their farms. Erecting a rude makeshift fence around a clearing of a few acres, the "c.o.c.ky" or "c.o.c.katoo farmer," as he was contemptuously styled by those who regarded him as an interloper, planted maize and pumpkins among the remains of the scrub. Despite the ravages of bird and beast, he persevered, until at last success began to crown his efforts. A cow or two provided him with milk and b.u.t.ter, any surplus b.u.t.ter being sold to the storekeepers in the towns which quickly followed in the wake of settlement. Lucerne, sorghum, and other fodder crops formed part of his husbandry, live stock multiplied, and thus commenced that system of mixed farming to which thousands of the farmers of Queensland owe their prosperity. The coming of neighbours and the making of roads rendered life less lonely. With increasing prosperity, improved implements and methods were adopted. The plough succeeded the hoe; the harvester or the reaper and binder took the place of sickle and scythe; and the slab humpy or bark hut gave way to the comfortable farmhouse.

Though these early selectors were driven into almost inaccessible scrub, they were at least within the region of heavy rainfall, and, even where some distance from permanent streams, suffered little from drought. Settlers who went over the Range, profiting by the experience of the pastoral pioneers regarding the vicissitudes of climate, avoided the mistake of relying upon a single crop, or, to use a homely phrase, of putting all their eggs in one basket--an error which brought ruin to thousands upon thousands of the people who, between thirty and forty years ago, flocked from the Atlantic seaboard to the arid regions of America, west of the Mississippi. Mixed farming became the general rule on the further side of the Main Range, so that, if wheat and maize failed, the farmers had their flocks and herds and their shearing cheques as a standby until the next harvest was garnered.