2o8 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



squatting is the most profitable occupation in the colonies, but when a series 

 of dry years set in the squatter's lot is a heartrending one. He can do 

 nothing for the poor creatures he sees slowly starving to death, while over- 

 head, month after month — ay, and year after year — there is the cruel clear sky 

 and the bright hot sun steadily withering up all life. The birds and wild 

 animals die in thousands, and the few that still live are so feeble that their 

 wild nature seems gone out of them. This last drought is not an exceptional 

 event. Since Central and Northern Australia have been known, the country 

 has suffered from periodical droughts ; but every year the skill of the squatter 

 is exercised in providing fresh supplies of water for his stock, and that is 

 the great requisite in this climate. Given a good supply of water, and it is 

 wonderful what a little food will keep sheep alive on the plains of Central 

 Australia. I have seen sheep in excellent condition on country that to all 

 appearance was absolutely bare of grass. A stranger would not believe that 

 any animal could support life on such scanty pastures. 



' Under the new order of things that followed the discovery of gold 

 many large freehold estates were put together by the old squatters, and then 

 it was found that a different style of management was required to make the 

 properties pay interest on the capital expended on them. The runs were 

 fenced and subdivided, dams were constructed on the watercourses, and 

 where the country was too flat for dams tanks were made for supplying the 

 stock with water. Good houses were built, and fine gardens and pleasure- 

 grounds formed. As the proprietors of these estates became wealthy, they 

 erected houses that for size, style and convenience would rival the pleasant 

 homes of the country gentlemen of England. Often in a country that a 

 score of years ago was considered a remote district in the back country, one 

 will now meet with a handsome mansion surrounded by extensive gardens, 

 pleasure-grounds and plantations. Where in the old squatting days water 

 was often very scarce, there is now ample to irrigate a garden, and indeed 

 water is usually laid on all over the modern squatter's establishment. 



' Over a large area of New Sou.th Wales and Victoria the surface of the 

 country was covered by a dense forest of the eucalypt called the box-tree. 

 They were of medium size, and their timber was of little or no value. 

 Having surface roots, they robbed the soil of all substance, and the result 

 was that the box-forest country was always bare of grass. It was noticed 

 by a few observant bushmen that the soil in these forests was excellent, and 

 a few experiments were made in the way of clearing the land. The result 

 was satisfactory, but felling the trees was too expensive to practise on a 

 large scale, while the stumps were very apt to throw up a number of 

 vigorous shoots that did as much harm as the parent tree. What use to 

 make of the box-forest country was a puzzle, and most people regarded it 

 as worthless. At this time a firm of squatters astonished their neighbours by 

 purchasing a block of 20,000 acres of box-forest, at £\ per acre, that the 



