238 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



and sluicing-gear for ploughshare and reaping-ho.ok. The miners furnish an immediate 

 market for the local produce, and even if the mining industry should fall off, the 

 farmers stick to their land and look for customers farther afield. This has been the 

 history of many a settlement in Australia which began with one industry and finally 

 gravitated to another. 



Tenterfield, the border town, is also to some extent agricultural, though the country 

 is granitic and the soil shallow. Minerals of several sorts have been traced about the 

 mountain spurs and the river-beds that lie to the east and north. Gold, silver and tin 

 have all been discovered in payable quantities. Some of the richest ores, however, are 

 rather untractable, and those which could be most easily worked are in somewhat 

 inaccessible positions. The thorough development of the wealth of this district awaits 

 the right combination of skill and capital. The next township to the north, Stanthorpe, 

 the centre of the Maryland tin-fields, is within the Queensland territory. On the border- 

 line is the junction of the railway systems, a break of gauge necessitating a stoppage 

 and a transfer. 



This high table-land, along which the Northern Railway runs, will always be the 

 home of a robust population. To the west the ground slopes away, and as the rain-fall 

 becomes smaller and smaller, agriculture gradually ceases, till pastoral occupation holds 

 almost undisputed sway. And this is mainly the character of the large triangular tract 

 of country lying to the west of the Great Northern Line ; of which Tenterfield and 

 Mungindi may be regarded as the extreme points of the base and Tamworth the apex, 

 while the two railway routes bound it on either side. Within these lines cluster a 

 number of villages more or less important. The principal are Yetman, \Yarialda, Emma- 

 ville, Stannifer, Tingha, Bundarra, Bingera and Barraba. None of all this number has, 

 however, arrived to the rank of a town ; they are merely mineral or pastoral villages, 

 whose growth and whose future hang upon the caprices of climate and the success 

 which may attend the enterprise of mining speculators. 



The high table-land, on which Glen Innes and Tenterfield stand, lies between the 

 great pastoral slope towards the west and the rich agricultural province on the east. 

 The elevation of the table-land makes the descent to the coast necessarily steep, and 

 for this reason the connection between the two is difficult and expensive. In early days 

 a bullock-track was cleared up the ridges from Grafton to the high land ; later a coach- 

 road was made, and the streams were crossed by substantial bridges. But even this 

 road is a severe one for traffic, and the inhabitants both of the highlands and the 

 lowlands have been pressing for a railway. Such a line, it is said, would not only g ve 

 to the table-lands the quickest access to the sea, but it would also facilitate an inter- 

 change of the semi-tropical coast produce with the wheat of the colder climate / the 

 plateau. Two different routes have been surveyed ; one goes from Grafton to Gl^n 

 Innes, the other starting from the same point passes through the Richmond River 

 District to Tenterfield ; each has its local advocates. The latter route would pass throng 'i 

 the townships of Casino and Tabulam. 



Casino is ninety miles from the sea, at the head of navigation of one of the 

 branches of the Richmond River. In early days it was a rendezvous for stock-men, 

 squatters and drovers, who sent their fat "mobs" across the river, where now stands the 



