i8 



fruit would be none the worse for travelling a dozen miles or so to 

 the tables of the people. It was some of the choicest of this land 

 on the rising grounds approaching the range, that Messrs. M. E. 

 Jull (Under Secretary for Public Works) and \V. L. Owen 

 (Warden of Menzies) obtained, on which to establish what is now a 

 most flourishing and encouraging vineyard and orchard. 



At Woongong there is a tine bit of level country consisting 

 mostly of flats nearly as level as a table, and about a mile wide. 

 Here there is another oasis in the miles of virgin forest country that 

 we have passed through, in the form of wheat iields, where about 300 

 tons of chaff was cut last year, and there is also a very nicely kept 

 orchard. To the west, the Messrs. Bateman, the owners of 12,000 

 acres, have been sedulous in laying down pastures in artificial 

 grasses, a branch of the improvement of land that is more neglected 

 in the '.vest than in any part of Australia. They are operating on a 

 stiff, rather low lying clay soil that shares with the Canning the 

 patronage of metropolitan stock owners in order to give their 

 animals the essential annual clay change. The grazing paddocks of 

 the Messrs. Bateman are especially good towards the end of the 

 summer, when there is, as a rule, a scarcity of feed. On the Darling 

 range, about three miles east of Woongong, Mr. Butchers has 'an 

 orchard of a few acres, the prolific character of which will be 

 realised when it is stated that this season he declined 100 for the 

 fruit of four orange trees. He has also, on a plateau or the range, a 

 patch of lucerne which makes a marvellously quick and continuous 

 growth. 



Passing Cardup an attractive farm of 1,500 acres under the 

 shadow of the range, where now, just after the sowing season, the 

 young corn is sliooting through the chocolate soil with a bright, 

 strong growth that augurs well for another ton and a hall of nay 

 per acre the average of last year's reaping Whitby Kalis, one of 

 the most notable properties in the south-west, is neared, and it is 

 worth breaking the journey till next clay to inspect what has been 

 accomplished hy means of irrigation, whose potent forces arc al- 

 most unapplied in Western Australia. Whitby Falls was purchased 

 i i years ago by Mr. William Paterson, now manager of the Agri- 

 cultural Land Bank, and has since been purchased by the (iiivcrn- 

 ment as a site for a lunatic asylum. The orchard at that time was 

 neglected, but when Mr. Paterson relinquished it a few months 

 aj;o it wa- one of the most productive in the colony. The site has 

 many natural advantages. From the range there trickled a rivulet 

 of water that suggested great possibilities of watering the orchard 

 by gravitation, but in the hot weather there was only a trickle. 

 Ring-barking the timber, however, in the neighborhood of the 

 orchard and along the course of the stream, greatly increased the 

 supply and enabled artificial watering to be carried on all through 

 the summer. 



