126 



garden produce for the use of their families. These suburban 

 blocks range from 10 to 15 acres and they are sold at IDS. 

 per acre. The Western Australian Land company used to charge 

 the purchaser with the cost of surveying suburban lots ; the charge 

 had to be paid in instalments, the first of which was due when the 

 application was approved. The Government makes no charge for 

 surveying any Crown lands, except areas which are applied for 

 under the poison regulations, in which case the consideration which 

 the Lands department receives beyond the benefit that accrues 

 from the clearing of the ground from poison is merely nominal. 

 Ettacup \vas one of the first places in the southern district where 

 settlement took place, some of the grants being nearly as old as 

 those which are associated with the history of York, from which 

 the early pastoralists came to settle nearer the coast. The 

 Governor of the colony, having visited these settlers and their 

 children in 1884, wrote : " Many of the farmsteads I saw are 

 such as their owners may well be proud of. They represented 

 years of arduous toil and of courageous struggle with many 

 difficulties. I found some of the grey-haired early settlers of the 

 colony still strong and hale, although nearly half a century of 

 colonisation had, I was rejoiced to see, enabled them to rest from 

 their labors, and to enjoy increasing comforts and easier circum- 

 stances, while the farm or the station was looked to by the stalwart 

 sons. Wherever I went I perceived that Western Australia, though 

 not a country of rich men, is nevertheless a land in which the 

 honest, energetic worker, of a shrewd wit, has rarely failed to gather 

 round him, as time went on, the possessions which constitute a 

 modest competence, and perhaps something more. . . 1 did not 

 find feverish, brand-new, shifting, and disappointed communities. 

 Each little township resembled an English village rather than the 

 colonial assortment of stray atoms one is familiar with elsewhere." 

 There is still a good deal of unoccupied land near Broomehill, for 

 the KwlyamarUip agricultural area of 46,000 acres is in the vicinity 

 of this f'lrining centre. While this book was in the press Mr. W. 

 H. Angove, surveyor, of the Crown Lands department, had 

 recommended the Minister to subdivide part of Location ^57, 

 which formerly belonged to the Western Australian Land com- 

 pany, for agricultural purposes. The western boundary of 

 this "location" is the Great Southern railway, and it is only 

 a little to the east of Eltakup. The Gordon river touches the south- 

 west corner of" the land, which is of a superior quality. In Mr. 

 AngOVe's Opinion the " location ' Would make a first-class agricul- 

 tural area. The Minister has Mr. Angove's proposal under con- 

 sideration, and in the meantime the ground is open for selection in 



,ed block that will suit the applicant, who is not restricted by 

 the survey lines in marking his boundaries. A little to the eastward 



ition 257 there are two lar^e properties which Mr. J. F. T. 

 Hassell and Mr. T. \Y. Powell bought from the West Australian 



