xiv Advertisements. 



WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 



GREAT PRODUCTIVE OPPORTUNITIES. 



VARIETY OF INDUSTRIES. 



MINERAL, PASTORAL, AGRICULTURAL, HORTICULTURAL AND 



TIMBER RESOURCES. 



SPECIAL INDUCEMENTS to DAIRY FARMERS and FRUIT-GROWERS. 



The great State of Western Australia, comprising nearly a million square miles of country, 

 offers at the present time excellent opportunities to investors and to agriculturists, especially 

 in dairy farming and fruit-growing. The progress in a great variety of industries during 

 recent years has been remarkable, and the work of development has so far penetrated but a 

 little way beyond the fringe of the possibilities. The present season, bright as it is to the 

 settler with the assurance of a bountiful harvest and a heavy wool crop, is but a foretaste 

 of the things which yet shall be when the full area of land adaptable for wheat-growing is 

 brought under cultivation, when the rich timber lands of the South, barely touched yet for 

 cultivation, are more widely cleared and brought under the plough and the spade. At present 

 the Government are concentratmg on the settlement of the South- West, and are pajdng 

 especial attention to the development of dairying and fruit-growing. But a number of other 

 industries are successfully carried on, and are rapidly expanding. In the wide areas east 

 of the Darling Range wheat-growing, combined with sheep farming and mixed farming 

 generally, is now conducted with excellent results, the yield of wheat having risen from 956,886 

 bushels in the season ended February 1902, to an estimate of 9,000,000 bushels for 1912-13. 

 In the same division, but more to the west and south, there are vast forests of timber, which 

 have provided the opportunity for an extensive industry in the sawing and preparation and 

 export of hardwoods that are used for commercial purposes in various parts of the world. 

 The timber export in 1911 was valued at £986,341, compared with £867,419 in 1909, and 

 with £511,923 in 1907. 



There is also a growing fruit industry in the Darling Ranges and in other parts of the 

 South-West to the ultimate extension of which it would be difficult to set limits. Altogether 

 over 65,000 cases of fruit were exported last year, as contrasted with 28,000 in the previous 

 year, while about 21,000 acres of land are now under orchards and vineyards, and the area 

 planted is increasing at the rate of 2,000 acres per annum. It is expected that about 90,000 

 cases of fruit will be exported this season. 



Wool-growing and sheep-raising are carried on both in the South-West and North- West 

 and in the decadel902- 1 1 the number of sheep in the State increased from 2,704,880 to 5,41 1,542. 

 Expressed in another way, the number of sheep in the State has doubled within ten years. 

 In the same period the nimiber of cattle, largely in the far North, but now advancing also 

 in the South, increased from 437,136 to 843,638, and thus nearly doubled. The export 

 of wool in the season 1910-11 reached a value of £1,047,456. 



Close cultivation of root and fodder crops is also carried out in the wetter portions of the 

 South-West. Many parts of this district of Western Australia are eminently suitable for 

 the development of a highly productive potato-growing industry, and the Government have 



