6 Irrigation Farming in Australia. 



This agricultural development has proceeded along lines 

 natural in a vast and sparsely-populated continent, which the natives 

 had never attempted to cultivate. Originally the white man had to 

 begin Australia at the very beginning. So he ranged his sheep and 

 cattle over whole provinces, which he could almost call his own; 

 he sowed wheat roughly and broadcast over fields as big as a town. 

 As settlements increased, these old squatters have had to resign in 

 favour of smaller farmers, who used the country to the advantage 

 of bigger communities. Mildura irrigation settlement in Victoria 

 to-day, for instance, contains a population of 5000 or 6000 people, 

 and produces over $1,440,000.0 worth of fruit a year, where in its 

 natural state the district could not support five people. The Goul- 

 burn irrigation districts in Victoria and the Murrumbidgee plains 

 in New South Wales are similar and bigger examples springing up 

 to-day of the wonderful results of irrigation. The State Govern- 



THE FARMER'S CHILDREN ENJOY A DIP IN THE CHANNEL. 



merits have simply stepped in, bought out many of the old squatters, 

 laid irrigation canals through the country, and are throwing open 

 the holdings, subdivided into small blocks, for intense cultivation. 



Irrigation in Australia is an art learnt from America 

 The first two irrigation settlements were established along 

 the River Murray in South Australia and Victoria by the 

 American company of Chaffey Bros, in the later eighties 

 of the last century. These settlements, Mildura and Ren- 

 mark, are to-day flourishing communities, producing almost 

 every sort of fruit to the value of over half a million annually. The 

 Chaffeys had been irrigationists in California, and were the first men 

 to realise the rich opportunities which the Murray valley offered. 

 They secured large grants of land from the Victorian and South 



