20 J. A. Gllrufh: 



III the next official report, 1890. the sit^nilicant statement occnrs : 

 " It is generally stated that redwater (so-called) does not attack accli- 

 matised or Territory -bred cattle." The chief complaint throughout is 

 that overlanded cattle travellintr from Queensland especially, alone 

 exhibit the symptoms of the disease, and die therefrom. To-day. when 

 the full nature of the disease is understood, these circumstances are not 

 at all surprising. By 1891 the report shows that cattle coming from 

 Queensland generally become affected between the McArthur and 

 Roper Rivers, Avhich proves that the disease was gradually spreading 

 backAvards towards the Queensland border alone: the stock routes. 



It must be remembered that at this time, and. indeed, prior to the 

 publication by Smith and Kilborne in 1893 of the records of their 

 exhaustive experiments, the relationship between redwater and ticks 

 was not appreciated. It will be understood therefore that the spread 

 of the visible parasite, the tick, was not associated in the public 

 mind with the specific and deadly disease redwater. Ticks always 

 appear in a new district for some time before there is any definite 

 occurrence of the disease redwater, and indeed their multiplication may 

 be so gradual that, beyond " tick worry," especially where the land is 

 sparsely stocked, as in the Northern Territorj^, the majority may 

 become gradually immune to the specifi'^ blood parasite, the actual 

 cause of redwater. conveyed by the tick. 



That ticks and consequently the disease redwater or tick fever 

 originally reached Queensland from the Northern Territorv. the 

 reports of the officers of the Queensland Department of Agriculture 

 leave no doubt. About 1894 Mr. C. J. Pound, Government i-iacteriolo- 

 gist, was commissioned by the Government to visit the Gulf district, 

 and report, on the so-called "' redAvater " disease, which was just then 

 commencing to devastate some of the station herds. 



From the exhaustive enquiries made by Mr. Pound, he arrived at 

 the conclusion that the disease was introduced into the Gulf cnuntrv 

 from the Northern Territory by cattle tick-infested, but themselves 

 redwater immune, brought to Qneenslnnd i\< the result of the establish- 

 ment of boiling-down works at Burketown and Normanton. (Queens- 

 land Agricultural Journal. June, 1907, Vol. XVIII., pt. 6, p. 283.) 



The whole of the evidence which I have been able to secure from 

 official and private sources, although varying slightly in detail, as is 

 to be expected, points to- the gradual advancement of the disease red- 

 water, which we know to-day to be tick-borne, and tick-borne only, 

 from the point of its original and earliest iippearance — Glencoe Station, 

 some hundred miles south of Darwin. This is exactly what might now 

 be assumed a priori would happen given the intmduction of ticks by 

 the Brahma cattle, which were turned out near ]\')rt Darwin in 1872. 

 They were taken to the Adelaide River, where they I'apidly nuiltiplied. 



