738 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



extends westward from Townsviile on the Pacific coast, through 

 Charters Towers, Hughenden, Richmond and Cloncurry to 

 Camooweal. 



Within the more strictly defined area of the Peninsula, the 

 population problem still awaits a solution. The first experiment 

 towards its solution is now being made by the Queensland Govern- 

 ment. Its essential principle is the resumption or repurchase and 

 nationalisation of the leases which cover practically the whole of 

 the available pastoral land. 



I cannot imagine any trade less adapted for communistic 

 management than that of the grazier or squatter. Hitherto the 

 runs have been held by the pioneers or their successors, with a 

 limited staff of stockmen, some of whom are of pure aboriginal 

 blood, although the majority are white. The life of " cattlemen," 

 as I have seen it again and again over the length and breadth of 

 Queensland, contains times of the most strenuous exertion such 

 as no human being could maintain all the year round, and which 

 even an Australian could not maintain but for the compensation 

 of long spells of leisure. How will it be when the runs are worked 

 by associations of men who fix their own wages and hours, who 

 scorn contracts and declare for day labour only, who demand two 

 Sundays in the week, a " bank-to-bank " reckoning of time, the 

 abolition of night shifts and compensation for getting wet ? A 

 squatter with whom I argued on these lines replied lightly that 

 " it has not come to that yet." Not yet, but it may come to 

 that as the doctrines of the Workers of the factories, planta- 

 tions, mines and meatworks gather head, while they press on 

 towards their Utopia of all pay and no work. I can foresee no 

 end to the State stock-raising experiment but fiasco and reductio 

 ad absurdum. 



I look more hopefully to the discovery of some means of utilising 

 the " desert " and making it attractive to settlers, in fact, to a 

 demonstration that the desert is not a desert after all. 



A horse, or a rider whose life depends on the ability of his horse 

 to live on the country, may be forgiven if he labels the interior of 

 the Peninsula a desert, for there is no grass for the horse. Still, 

 there may be grave doubts if grass or something equally useful 

 could not be made to grow where scrub, brushwood and " heath " 

 flourish luxuriantly (" jungle " would be a better word than 

 " scrub," as the distinction between scrub and brushwood is not 

 popularly recognised). My impression is that there is no grass 

 between the trees and scrubs of the jungle, " heath " and brushwood 

 simply because the ground is littered with leaves, which, under 

 the atmospheric conditions prevailing in the district, become tan. 

 Grass is not likely to grow on a tan track. Is it not at least possible 

 that the clearing of the present rank vegetation would be followed 

 by the growth of grass, or that something else of value could be 



