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hands of small farmers, who keep a few stock and grow cereals and 

 vegetables. The Hon. H. B. Lefroysays : " There are lots of good 

 patches where small holders could settle down between Gingin 

 and Dandaragan and make a living if they went in for growing fruits 

 and garden stuff, but there are no valuable large blocks available." 

 The sandy roads have been a drawback to this class of industry, but 

 the railway, which is not far off at this point of our journey, now 

 affords facilities for transporting crops either to the Perth market, 

 or to the goldhelds of Yilgarn or the Murchison, which consign- 

 ments can reach without leaving the rails once they are delivered to 

 the Midland company, for Government lines touch their railway at 

 its commencement and its terminus. After passing the Moore river 

 it is necessary to strike in a north-easterly direction to avoid the 

 waste of sand timbered with banksia which extends westward of 

 the road to the sea in order to see a change in the landscape, and 

 then the famous Yatheroo estate, the property of Mr. Edward 

 Roberts (who was a station hand as a boy upon the place), breaks 

 upon the view in all the beauty of its almost unrivalled pasture lands, 

 its luxurious homestead, its orchards, its irrigation resources, and 

 the large herds of beeves, that are in the primest condition. Yath- 

 eroo is a place upon which many thousands of pounds have been 

 spent on strictly commercial principles ; it earns thousands annually. 

 The property was originally taken up by a pioneer named Connolly, 

 who sold it before it had been much improved to Mr. Padbury, in 

 whose hands it assumed something of its present value and import- 

 ance. He held it for 39 years and then sold it for ^20,000 to Mr. 

 Edward Roberts, who had managed the estate for Mr. Padbury for 

 a long time. It comprises 16,000 acres in fee simple, nearly all iirst 

 class land. The best of it is limestone ridges, w r hich were never 

 heavily timbered ; they grew nothing but wattle, prickly bush, and 

 wooly bush, which grows about a foot high on the banks of water- 

 courses. A great deal of Yatheroo is, or rather was, red gum forest 

 country interspersed with banksias, these areas being of a light, 

 inclining to sandy, loam. Mr. Roberts is a most successful grazier. 

 His experience shows what the best portions of Western Australia 

 are capable of when care is taken to make the pastures good. He buys 

 store cattle and in a short time they are prime fat for the butcher. 

 " I have sold ^17,000 worth of cattle from Yatheroo during the last 

 12 months," he states, "and during the five years I have been the 

 owner of the place it has returned me more than ; 10,000, clear of 

 working expenses." This result has been achieved by the natural 

 goodness of the station, which, together with Dandaraga, is an oasis 

 in a wide region of sand plain. The feed is encouraged by the 

 ringbarking of the timber, the removal of the shrubs and small trees 

 from the limestone, and the burning of the paddocks in rotation 

 every year. The chief herbage plants are trefoil, clover and 

 dandelion. All the best indigenous grass grow luxuriantly. Cattle 

 do better than either sheep or horses at Yatheroo and Dandaraga ; 



