86 



found, where they have not been exterminated, as is the case in the 

 Newcastle district, at any rate near the town, by the progress of 

 settlement. The corkscrew grass is also very common about 

 Newcastle. This is good fodder, but its sinuous spines, from which 

 it derives its name, are troublesome to sheep, and injurious to the 

 wool. Still, in a part of the colony like Newcastle, that is too dry 

 for maize, and in which oats are only moderately successful, the 

 corkscrew grass, which does not die off in the hottest season, is a 

 serviceable root. Some oaten hay is grown, but chiefly for racing 

 stables. Not only at Newcastle, but in the whole of the eastern 

 districts, the staple hay crop is wheat, although it grows too thick a 

 stalk to satisfy horse owners in its natural state. But after the 

 wheat has been passed through a chaff-cutter, the cut of which can 

 be adjusted to any length of the sample, from a quarter of an inch 

 upwards, this process of artificial mastication prevents the coarseness 

 of the stalk being objectionable. 



The rainfall, which is about the same as York, namely r 

 15 inches, is less than the Newcastle people desire, especially 

 as the Avon is the only watercourse of any note in Toodyay, 

 and residents of back blocks have to resort to wells and dams 

 to tide over the latter end of the summer. The cost 

 of well-sinking is generally 2 per foot, and for excavating clams r 

 i/- per yard ; well water in most places is struck at a depth of 2< 

 feet. The earliest rains are expected in April and the latest at th< 

 end of September, but there is occasionally a thunderstorm before 

 the regular autumn rains set in, and sometimes a shower or two late 

 in October or the beginning of November. But as the average 

 season provides only a short, and not too abundant, rainy period, 

 summer ploughing is in favour wherever it can be practised, that is r 

 where the land is not too heavy and the teams available are strong 

 enough to do the work. The soil of the district may be clearly 

 denned as heavy and light ; the first is that which has been more 

 than once referred to in writing of the eastern division as " rich 

 forest land," that is to say, the country that grows the largest Yorl 

 gums, manna trees, and silver wattles. This formation can stand 

 the strain of yearly cropping if it receives a dressing of from twc 

 to three cwts. per acre of bonedust, phosphates, or guano. It i< 

 only by continuous cropping and starving that such land can be 

 exhausted. It produces from one to two tons of hay, or ten 01 

 eleven bushels of wheat, per acre, and those who possess cleared 

 areas of this soil are justly regarded as fortunate men. And even of 

 the rich forest country there are patches that are strangely and 

 superlatively good. When the writer was at York, Mr. Parker, one 

 of a family of very large farmers, and the owners of some of the 

 most valuable and fertile agricultural lands of which Western 

 Australia can boast, called my attention to what he called " the red 

 streak " running in a line north and south for a mile or more acros 

 the stretch of broad acres, through which the young corn was 



