234 



A USTRALASIA ILL L T STRA TED. 



the dominant pastoral occupation of the country ; indeed, the Liverpool Plains still 

 constitute one of the finest squatting districts of the colony. On this volcanic soil the 

 grass is always sweet, and after the most devastating drought the face of the country 

 is changed in a week by a good fall of rain. The rapidity of the transformation is 

 almost magical. Over an immense area, looking just before as bare as a road, there is 

 green grass, and in a few weeks it will be waving like a field of young wheat. In 

 many places it will shoot up as the cane-growth of a tropic swamp ; a horseman may 

 take some of the longest seed-stems and knot them above his head. Cattle are hidden 

 in it, and sheep have to be taken back to higher and poorer feeding-ground. A stranger 

 looking at this rhagnificent growth of grass could hardly believe that a few months or 

 weeks previously animals were dying for want of food. It is one of the troubles of the 

 Australian squatter that he is treated alternately to a feast or to a famine. Nature is 

 profuse at intervals, but she has also her seasons of niggardliness. What man has to 

 do in these climates is to learn the art of storing the surplus of good years, and making 

 it provide for the wants of scanty years. Nature here teaches the lesson of forecast and 

 prudence, and it is because this lesson has been so insufficiently learned that there have 

 been so many reverses of fortune that Australia has been alternately praised as a land 

 of plenty and denounced as a land of barrenness. Enough has already been done by 

 irrigation in some districts to show that by a moderate outlay in preserving water, and 

 pumping from the rivers, sufficient hay could be grown at a reasonable price to save 

 from destruction the choicest portions of the flocks. In a climate where the rain-fall is 



so uncertain, permanent 

 and productive settle- 

 ment can only be se- 

 cured by the storage of 

 water and the storage 

 of food, and this is the 

 double problem that lies 

 before the settlers of 

 the future. 



Tamworth or Armi- 

 dale ? Which is to be 

 the greater of these 

 northern towns ? The 

 question is one of local 

 interest, and provokes 

 some rivalry not alto- 



THE ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL AT ARMIDALE. gether U II W ll olesOlllC. 



Both show a closer re- 

 semblance to English county -towns than do most of the inland cities of Australia. 

 Both enjoy a fine and invigorating climate, both have about them fertile areas ample 

 for the support of large populations. Tamworth was the first settled, and in respect 

 to population still retains the lead. Like Maitland, it is a divided town Tamworth 

 East and Tamworth West. The western side is the first touched by the railway, 



