Irrigation Farming 1 in Australia. 



ii 



In dairying, the rule is for the farmers to sell their cream to the 

 butter factories, keeping the skim milk to feed the pigs.. A settler 

 on a 40 to 50 acre block, with 20 acres under lucerne, can feed a 

 milking herd of thirty cows, and the returns for cream and from the 



TOWNSHIP IN AN IRRIGATION AREA. 



skim milk should easily bring in a revenue of $48.0 a cow per 

 annum. As showing the value of co-operative factories to the 

 farmers, it may be mentioned that the latest-erected co-operative 

 factory at Rochester in five weeks paid the same prices for cream 

 as big proprietary factories were paying, and in addition made a 

 profit of $825.0, which it returned to the farmers, its shareholders. 



The thickest settlement of small farmers at present is in the 

 Shepparton and Rochester districts. Men with $1440.0 or $1920.0 

 capital from all parts of the world, but chiefly from the British Isles 

 and United States, are settling on the 30, 40, 50 or 60 acre irrigation 

 blocks into which the Victorian authorities have subdivided the big 

 estates. The total irrigable area of these Goulburn district settle- 

 ments is 374,000 acres, of which about 140,000 acres are at present 

 being farmed. 



Other irrigation areas in Northern Victoria are situated on the 

 Murray below the Goul'burn Junction, at Kow Swamp, Cohuna, 

 Nyah, and at Merbein, near Mildura. These are not so far advanced, 

 however, as the Goulburn district works.. Kow Swamp holds nearly 

 2000 million cubic feet of water available for summer use, chiefly 

 by pastoralists. At Cohuna water is procured from the Murray 

 by pumping; about 20,000 acres there is watered, 5000 for lucerne 

 and other green fodder crops, and the remainder for cereals and 

 pasture. 



