CHAPETR IX. 



THE SWAN DISTRICT. 



The Swan district, geographically considered, is a large one, 

 extending from the mouth of the Swan river, the York road, or 

 the Eastern railway, on the south, to the westerly course of the 

 Moore river on the north ; on the east to Bindoon and Bailup (or 

 half way from Fremantle to Northam), and to the shores of the 

 Indian ocean on the west. From a producer's point of view the 

 Swan district may, roughly gauged, be said to comprise only the 

 rich alluvial fiats of the Swan river in the neighborhood of Guild- 

 ford, a strip of country that is not more than three miles wide and 

 eight long. These alluvial flats are bounded on the east by the 

 Darling range, and on the west by sandy stretches of coast lands, 

 which up to the present have only been improved by the removal 

 of banksia timber for the supply of firewood for Perth. The flats, 

 with the river frontage to the Swan, were much coveted in the 

 early days of the settlement of the colony ; there were many eager 

 claimants for this fecund spot. Governor Stirling, the arbiter, 

 solved his invidious task with wise impartiality on the partition 

 principle, and gave to each applicant only one acre in twenty-five 

 fronting the stream. The long narrow parallel lines of the first 

 grants made near Guildford are still known as Governor Stirling's 

 " ribbon blocks." En passant it may be remarked that the present 

 system of the Lands department, in dealing with water frontages, is 

 to make that frontage one-third as wide as the depth of a block, 

 with the reservation, however, of the water for public purposes. 

 For years no survey has approached nearer than one chain to the 

 edge of a river ; along that chain the public and stock are free to 

 travel. If fences are erected across that reserve they may be law- 

 fully cut down. The " ribbon blocks " on the Swan did not reserve 

 water rights for public use. 



The pioneers of Western Australia who set such store by the 

 goodly territory of the Swan did not over-estimate its value and 

 productiveness. More than half a century's experience has fully 

 approved the judgment of those who first trod the forests of 

 flooded gum that had thickly crowded on the kindly soil along the 

 course of the river. The Swan was for years the granary of Perth ; 

 it is now the great orchard ground of the metropolis, and it is 

 equally luxuriant in the heavy crops of cereals and fruit it abundantly 

 produces. The pioneers who sought to dwell in this Arcadia, 

 forecasted its fertility from ordinary observation ; the artesian bore 

 has in later years furnished the geologist with the materials for con- 



