- B a 



4, " " Australia : The Dairy Country. 



<cheese for family use, is as old as the history of mankind, and in 

 that restricted meaning dairying has been carried on in Australia 

 since the arrival of the first settlers. But the industry as existing 

 there to-day is a vastly different matter, being already of great 

 importance, and promising rapid and extensive development. It is 

 a young industry, so recently out of its infancy that if this report 

 had been written fifteen years ago the section on dairying might 

 have been almost as brief as the famous chapter on snakes in 

 Ireland. 



"The live stock 'brought to Sydney by Captain Phillip in 1788, 

 and sent to propagate their kind at Farm Cove, consisted of one 

 bull, four cows, one calf, and seven pigs. Their descendants in 1908 

 included about ten and a-half millions of cattle, of which nearly two 

 millions were dairy cows. This is about one cow for every two 

 persons in the Commonwealth, which seems a large proportion, 



Cream Carts at the Factory. 



but as it means only one cow for every two square miles in Aus- 

 tralia, there is ample room for expansion. In Great Britain we 

 have about twenty-six cows for every square mile, and only one 

 cow for every fifteen people. These figures indicate that in pro- 

 portion to its population Australia is much more of a dairying 

 country than Great Britain, but that in proportion to its area, it 

 has developed the industry much less extensively, and is still 

 capable of making enormous growth. Until within comparatively 

 recent years there was little dairying anywhere in the Common- 

 wealth, and what little there was appears to have been carried on 

 by somewhat primitive methods. Modern developments, the spread 

 of scientific knowledge, the fostering care of Government, and, 

 above everything, the advent of the separator, of the milking 



