lo Aug., 1909.] Problems in Irrigation DcvclopDicid . 491 



soil or express any confidence in the value of water. This is all the more 

 remarkable becau.se the Commission knows that on the closer settled, 

 intensive!)' cultivated portions of the district irrigators have had the most 

 gratifying success. The returns this season from small areas of Zante 

 currants reached ;^5o an acre; and the average return from a considerable 

 number of orchards was over ;^36 per acre ; while the average return 

 from irrigated farm croj)s on small holdings not intensiveK cultivated was 

 over ^4 an acre. 



Distrust like confidence is contagious. The truth of the old adage 

 about giving a dog a bad name was never more fully \erified than in the 

 influence exerted by this statement by land-owaiers in irrigated areas on 

 the minds of landowners in areas to be irrigated. They have heard so 

 much about being taxed off the land by charges for water that irrigation 

 is beginning to assume the aspect of a plague. This was illustrated at 

 Shepparton last Saturday, w-hen a large deputation from the parish of 

 Kialla waited on the Minister of Water Supply to protest against their 

 lands being included in the East Goulburn Scheme. The spokesman for 

 the deputation said that they had opposed the scheme for 20 years, and 

 that if water was offered them for nothing they would not use it, and that 

 if irrigation was forced on them they would sell their holdings and leave. 

 A really pathetic picture was drawn of the pioneer settlers of that district 

 who had carved homes for themselves being driven oft" their land bv this 

 proposed extension of irrigation. 



That the farmers in an area contiguous to Rodney should be frightened 

 at the bogey of irrigation after the letter just quoted is onlv natural. 

 Irrigation to the beginners means the abandonment of a kind of agriculture 

 they understand and beginning a kind in which everything is strange and 

 new, and there is no wonder they are panic stricken when they read that 

 water would ruin the land. No one could talk wdth the land-ow-ners from 

 Kialla without realizing the weight of anxietv and dread with which they 

 are watching the progress of the East Goulburn works. To say to owners 

 of good soil that this apprehension is groundless does not remove it, nor 

 does it lessen the menace which this distrust presents to the development 

 of the State's irrigation resources. The position of the majority of the 

 deputation from Kialla was well taken. Their land is not suited to 

 irrigation. Even if it had been kept in the district, water would not have 

 been allotted nor would any charge for water have been imposed, but 

 there is also good land in Kialla — land which will under irrigation pro- 

 duce ten times as much as it will without, yet not one of the owners of 

 this land appeared to protest against exclusion, or to claim a share in the 

 benefits of the State's generous outlay on irrigation works. 



The Goulburn Irrigation Scheme, of which the East Goulburn referred 

 to is a part, has cost the State an immense sum of money. Developed 

 on right lines, the returns from this expenditure will be all that can be 

 desired. The district has a great combination of natural advantages, and 

 I have never known a new irrigated area where the prosperity of farmers 

 under irrigation is more assured. Notwithstanding this, it is possible 

 here, as it has been in the Rodney district, to have these natural advantages 

 count for nothing, and to have the Goulburn Scheme saddle the State 

 with a loss similar to that incurred in older irrigation districts. The 

 reasons for this are clearly set forlli in the Age of last Saturdav, a por- 

 tion of which is as follows:-— 



It is true enough that an immense amount of money has been poured out in 

 constructing irrigation works and building channels ; but bevond that — nothin". No 



